|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Book
|
|
9781737797920
|
"A previously unpublished anthology of classic texts from Something Else Press, assembled in the 1970s by Dick Higgins, with works by John Cage, Al Hansen, Claes Oldenburg and many more Conceived by poet, publisher, artist, composer and writer Dick Higgins (1938-98) in the early 1970s to celebrate Something Else Press -- the legendary publishing company he founded in 1963 to showcase Fluxus and other experimental artists -- this volume, which was never realized in Higgins' lifetime, collects an amazing array of 1960s avant-garde creativity. Something Else Press published some of the most radical art and literature of its time and provided a foundation and template for the artist's book medium, which has flourished internationally since the 1960s. The Reader features selections from rare and out-of-print Something Else classics such as Claes Oldenburg's Store Days; John Cage's Notations; Emmett Williams' An Anthology of Concrete Poetry; Richard Kostelanetz's Breakthrough Fictioneers anthology; Jackson Mac Low's pioneering poetry collection, Stanzas for Iris Lezak; Gertrude Stein's Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein; Bern Porter's I've Left; Wolf Vostell's Dé-coll/age Happenings; Al Hansen's A Primer of Happenings & Time/Space Art; and other pamphlets and artist projects for the page by Robert Filliou, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, Philip Corner, Daniel Spoerri, André Thomkins and Richard Meltzer, among others. A critical checklist/bibliography assembled by Hugh Fox and Higgins' introduction from 1973 completes the original manuscript." 369 pages. 6x9.25 inches.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
R 033LP
|
Recital present a reissue of Dick Higgins's Poems And Metapoems, originally released on cassette by New Wilderness Audiographics in 1982. Label head Sean McCann on the reissue: "Since the beginning of Recital, I have been trying to publish the work of Dick Higgins. He is a chief figure in my artistic world, a hero of mine. And now, with the assistance of Charlie Morrow, it has finally happened. The first vinyl album ever published of Higgins! Many know Dick Higgins as the father of intermedia, a key player in the birth of fluxus, and the owner/operator of the fabulous Something Else Press. His own poetry is what stirred me. Namely, his book Foew & Ombwhnw (1969), which contains one of my favorite of his works, 'Moments in the Lives of Great Women,' along with other lovely poems (some included on this LP). This recording is of Dick himself reading his own poetry. Poems And Metapoems begins with a voice/tape manipulation piece from 1962, while the rest of the collection employs only language manipulation. Alike a cantor, each word is delivered perfectly with strong warmth. His ability to relay pattern-based poems into sonics is impressive. This album was recorded in 1982, and contains the reading of poems written between 1958-1980. Originally published as a cassette tape by New Wilderness Audiographics, which is nearly impossible to find now. The audio has been remastered and cleaned up for this edition. Dick lived large and was a busybody. All the faucets were running within him, handles broken off. Always pulling to mesh painfulness with playfulness, heart-warmth with heartbreak, comedy with tragedy etc. It is this plurality that Higgins encourages us to spark and flourish." Includes a 16-page pamphlet of notes and poetry by Higgins and an essay on both Higgins and New Wilderness Audiographics by Charlie Morrow; Edition of 470.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
NMN 077CD
|
2010 release. Alga Marghen presents the first edition ever issued of Dick Higgins' music. Fluxus founding member, in 1958 Dick Higgins studied Composition and Experimental Music with John Cage in his class at the New School for Social Research in New York together with, among others, La Monte Young, Richard Maxfield, Toshi Ichiyanagi, George Brecht, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, and Jackson Mac Low. In the Spring of 1968, Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts told Dick Higgins of a project that was afoot at Douglass College, where both were teaching at the time, to organize a show around guns. At that time the USA police seemed to have nothing better to do than to chase down teenagers for possessing miniscule amounts of marijuana and throwing them in jail, thus ruining their lives. Dick Higgins decided it would be more worthy if one could set all the policemen in the USA to composing symphonies themselves. So he proposed that the beautiful music paper be machine-gunned and that symphonies be derived from the result. Geoffrey Hendricks arranged for Captain Toby of the South Brunswick Police to do this, which duly happened with a 9mm MP40 Schmeisser submachine gun, filmed by Alison Knowles. A volunteer orchestra, conducted by Philip Corner and including Charlotte Moorman, performed nine of the resulting symphonies at Douglass College on December 9th. The Douglass concert was taped, but the only copy disappeared when the Ars Viva! Gallery in Berlin, Germany, went bankrupt in 1984. The whole situation was documented with photographs in Source Magazine in 1970. As Philip Corner, conductor of the recordings presented here, said: "Leave it to Dick Higgins to come up with the most spectacular way to generate a page of patternless notes. Once over this dramatic gesture with machine-gun bullets leaves a stack of paper full of holes. I had not thought of this before but there must have been a conscious connection to the social turmoil of the 60's -- all too unfortunately, come back around to high relevance these days." First press limited to 500 copies with digipack sleeve, also including a 16-page booklet with full documentation presenting two texts by Dick Higgins from the 1960s as well as a Philip Corner testimony, original photos and original scores.
|
|
|
|