I just updated the “Work With Me” page: I’m looking for new projects. Do you need a consultant, editor, writer or teacher to help you finish (or start) a creative project? Check it out, thanks!
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Huge congratulations to Mark & Matt & Sean and Wemakecoolsh.it! Could not be happier with how this project evolved, came together, and popped up in random conversations for weeks afterward.
A few links about the L-Train Notwork:
Press (Everyone covered this. Everyone.)
Press release
Credits
This is not the face of someone who can keep a secret.
A few weeks ago I was walking down Bogart Street on the way home from dinner. I ran into my friend Sean McIntyre, who mentioned a project he was working on and said he wanted to introduce me to someone; that maybe we could all work together. And, as though the world really only has about 117 actual people circulating among a few billion extras, that’s when the Someone, Mark Krawczuk, walked up to Sean and joined our conversation.
The project, it turns out, was incredibly cool and ambitious, and secret. Mark and his business partner, Matt McGregor-Mento, decided they wanted to put a Wifi network on the subway. The network would offer content that was interactive, interesting and intelligent, to engage their target audience–not just all subway commuters, but L-train morning commuters. The L-train fills up with editors and illustrators and writers and designers who live in Bushwick and Williamsburg and work for Manhattan ad agencies and publishing companies.
I signed on to help curate writing, and went to my writers collective, 1441, and others and asked them to write for a “Secret Project,” and I couldn’t even tell them what it was for, exactly. Dolan Morgan, also a 1441 member, joined me as co-curator, and between the two of us, we gathered about 30 stories and poems.
Mark and Matt selected just 11 pieces for their network–actually called the “Notwork” because it’s an intranet and not The Internet. And these stories & poems will start to run on Monday, November 14, with new content appearing each day, through Friday.
We tested the Notwork yesterday, and so now, the secret is out! Which means I can also tell you this: a favorite story of mine is running Monday, flanked by poems from two 1441 members–Matt Zingg and Michael Lala. As the week progresses, writing from Craig Savino, Ruth M. Rouse, Rachel Glaser, Melea Seward, Justin Richards and Katelan Foisy will be added. And a brand-new piece from me is scheduled to debut Friday. I’m really happy that this newest story will appear for the first time as part of this experience/installation/social art/call it whatever you want, it’s cool. In fact, Mark and Matt’s company is called WeMakeCoolSh.it.
If you’re in the area, I hope you enjoy the “Notwork” this week.
In addition to all the art & reading & teaching I’m up to this fall (*there’s even a little more craziness upcoming in the next couple of weeks), I’ve also contributed some of my thoughts to an arts blog in Detroit called TheDetroiter.com.
The editor, Colin Darke, contacted me a couple of months ago by email and asked if I’d be interested in working on a collaborative essay. I was interested in the idea. We post as time permits. So far we’ve been talking about beauty, technique, and honesty in art. Feel free to add your two cents.
1. Conversation Starters
2. The Conversation continued
3. Conversation Continued, Concluded, and Started Again by Colin Darke and Robin Grearson
I recently produced three stories that all connect through dreams somehow. Here’s the story behind the stories: I’d wanted to write an essay for a while, about street art and graffiti and my own experiences, but I was stalling because I wasn’t sure I knew how I felt, exactly. One night I had a vivid narrative dream that led me to follow my idea all the way to Kabul, where I found Combat Comms, who became part of the creation of two stories. One, Bullet Points, is an essay that I hope you read for yourself, and the other features a project that Combat Comms conceived and executed, to teach youth in Kabul about art, but the project teaches all of us about culture and rebuilding.
The third story is unrelated to those two but by coincidence is also all about dreams, and the dreamlike feeling of being outside, at night, in your bliss. Artist Chris Stain created a mural with two friends in Bushwick, near where I live, and I asked him about it. The mural says “In the Dream,” in 25-foot-high letters. Given the stories I’d just written, I couldn’t resist learning more about his work.
All of the dream stuff swirling around during waking hours has been deeply inspiring, and I’m committed to making one dream in particular come true before the end of 2011. But I’m not ready to say more about that yet. So if you have a chance to check out any of these three (see links to recent work, in the right sidebar of this page), let me know what you think. Thank you.
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