A Midsummer Ruckus
Comprising a slips slips deadline, a city-within-a-city, a list of books without context
Hi, it’s me, Jeff! I’m floating down to earth from the midst of my summer hiatus (which has been exactly like the rest of the year just with less newsletter-writing) to bestow hazy wishes of grace upon my loyal readership and convey a few salient messages for your enterfication and editainment.
Most pressing of these is the impending deadline to contribute the fruits of your imagination to America’s most beloved farraginous short-form print-only broadsheet publication, slips slips. The deadline is August 31, meaning you have until the last day of the very month on the first day of which I’m writing these words to sock it to us with your prose, poetry, illustration, cartooning, or other less categorizable creative output. Here are the details worth knowing:
slips slips Issue 2: Dialogues
In other words, points with counterpoints, exchanges of text and image, voices that connect or conflict. Points and counterpoints. Meetings. Mergings. Collaborations. Criticisms. Responses. Salvos.
FOR WRITERS: Please send a submission of no more than 500 words, in any genre, style, or format you prefer.
FOR VISUAL ARTISTS: Please send 1-6 scalable, black and white images that would reproduce well on newsprint. These can be either a serial/sequence (e.g., a comic strip) or stand-alone images (e.g., spot illustrations, cartoon panels). If you’re not sure what might work, pitch us some ideas, and we’ll talk!
DEADLINE: Please send us your contribution via email at slipsslipsslipsslips@gmail.com no later than Sunday, August 31. We will contact you after that time if we have any concerns or to confirm that your contribution will be included in our second issue.
We already have a bunch of excellent entries, but I won’t be satisfied unless we hear from YOU. Yes, YOU. Yes, that YOU.
For a splash of inspiration, let me tell you about a wonderful exhibit we caught a couple of weeks ago at the Brooklyn Museum. Hope and Kristen and I met up there to take in some art before talking about slips slips as part of the salon series hosted by our friends at Drops in the Vase. While there, we happened to stumble upon the Staten Island Ferry. Well, it was a lot smaller than the Staten Island Ferry, but it sure looked like one - only BETTER:
This piece was part of Ruckus Manhattan, an insane mid'-’70s downtown installation that attempted to recreate the entirety of New York City in all its bustling, gleaming, sleazy, exhausting glory all within the space of a single gallery. The project was the creation of a whole team of wild folks who called themselves the Ruckus Construction Co., who built the whole thing under the leadership of artists Red Grooms and Mimi Gross. This particular piece, called Dame of the Narrows, was only one small piece of the larger whole, the construction of which is the subject of an hour-long documentary film that also runs in the space (it can be rented online via the Film-Makers’ Cooperative if you’re into that kind of thing).
A reason I bring all of this up is that apparently the original installation had a program of sorts, which was printed in the form of - you guessed it - a broadsheet newspaper. The Daily Ruckus features tongue-in-cheek headlines about the project’s creation along with collaged process photos and blurbs about the many folks who contributed to its construction. I wish it had been possible to get it out from behind glass and flip through every page, but even without a closer look I hope I can be forgiven for sensing a kinship between this artifact and the heterogenous collaborative effort of slips slips.
Sure, we haven’t constructed an entire physical city in miniature (YET), but I like to believe some of the spirit that animated the original Ruckus Manhattan project has sprinkled over to us. I think there’s a common denominator between many projects that incorporate a cacophony of voices to build something more than the sum of its parts. It can be FUN to make a lot of noise and mess, especially when we do it together as one big group. Capturing that energy on paper is part of our goal. The world right now is full of noise and nonsense, but this is OUR noise and nonsense.
In any event, lest all of this sound too utopian and squeaky clean, the Brooklyn Museum exhibit also featured another piece from Ruckus Manhattan: 42nd Street Porno Bookstore. Because as much we try to stifle it today, that raunchy verve is a vital element of both the city itself and the general human urge to create - or, well, procreate.
I’ve not read any of the books in this exhibit, but I’ve read plenty of others. I’ll bring this brief interlude to a close with a list of selections from my summer reading. No time for descriptions - I’m too busy cajoling people into contribution to slips slips! So come be one of them, why don’t you??? Meanwhile, let me know if you’ve read any of these:
All-Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
A Book About Ray, by Ellen Levy (a new top-10 all-time favorite book, FYI!)
The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, by Elizabeth Bishop
Concrete Poetry: A 21st-Century Anthology, Nancy Perloff ed.
King of a Rainy Country, by Brigid Brophy
Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan, by J. Hoberman
Moominpapa at Sea, by Tove Jansson
The Owl Service, by Alan Garner
Punk Rock Karaoke, by Bianca Xunise
Santos Sisters, Vol. 1, by Greg and Fake
Stages of Rot, by Linnea Sterte
Maybe I’ll write a bit more about some of these down the line (especially A Book About Ray, because I have many swirling, overwhelming thoughts about Ray Johnson, some of which might spill into slips slips #2), but not today. Hope you’re enjoying your summer!