Thursday, April 27, 2017

Coming Soon! Codex Abyssus by Volodymyr Bilyk | Post-Asemic Press #004


Page 1 of the Codex Abyssus




Codex Abyssus is in the lettrist vein, but the abysses I see (or imagine seeing), make it more conceptual, and coherent - and also funny. I look at an otherwise innocent circle or dot or a black rectangle, and see another pit, because the small icons (many of them definitely stairs, funnels, mazes, black rays from the underworld) interfere. The title is instructive of course, but this work could not be replaced with its description. The main reading pleasure comes from the fact that first I see, say, a window-like object, drawn with childlike simplicity, then I realize that it must open to a precipice, and I look down and start feeling dizzy. The great variety of compositions combines with a great economy of forms. After a while I already search for their abyss-like qualities. Expectations and impressions meet halfway. And each page as a whole, too, has a third dimension, owing to the hand-drawn, irregular frames. Anything with contours becomes the icon of an abyss. Some icons are even multi-abyssed, for the sheer joy of creating danger, and escaping it (perhaps), in the same process. If you need ideas for falling, here are many-many options, tirelessly and playfully intuited.
Two-dimensional depth calling attention to itself is also a joke about representation. Thanks to this wise and humorous work, we are saved again and again by a new pit, precipice, abyss from the void of the blank page, from the fear of emptiness. But it is always momentary only. Who knows what comes next.

Márton Koppány
 


Volodymyr Bilyk is a writer, translator and visual artist from Ukraine.

His book of visual poems was published in the series This is Visual Poetry, book of asemic short stories, CIMESA was published in White Sky Books, book of visual poems SCOBES was published by No Press and book of poetry, Casio’s Pay-off Peyote published by The Red Ceilings Press. His works were exhibited on Bright Stupid Confetti Asemic Show, Yoko Ono Fan Club and Venti Leggeri in Bologna. His works appeared in The New Post-Literate, A-Minor magazine, REM magazine, Cormac McCarthy’s Dead Typewriter, The Otolith, Altered Scale, Ex-Ex-Lit, Truck, Maintenant, Apparent Magnitude, The Gin Mill Cowboy and many others. Among the authors he has translated are Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Jack Spicer, Mina Loy, James Joyce, Kurt Schwitters, Anne Waldman, Charles Reznikoff, Billy Childish, Leonard Cohen and others.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Zinc Zanc Zunc: An Asemic Conjugation by Rosaire Appel is now available at Amazon!



Page 1 of Zinc Zanc Zunc



Zinc Zanc Zunc: An Asemic Conjugation by Rosaire Appel is available now from Amazon!

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Amazon Canada

Amazon France

Amazon Italy (Italia)

Amazon Germany (Deutschland)

Amazon Spain (España)

Amazon Brazil (Brasil)

Amazon India

Amazon Japan 

Amazon Mexico

Amazon Australia

 
 

 



 Self Portrait by Rosaire Appel

Her bio: Rosaire Appel (NYC) is an ex-writer, graphic artist exploring the betweens of reading/looking/listening. She makes books  (commercially printed, hand-made and recycled), ink drawings and digital drawings. Her subject is, basically, visual language. Using a combination of abstract comics and asemic writing, she develops sequences which remain open to interpretation by keeping the relationship between the viewer and the work active. Her website is: www.rosaireappel.com.

 

Friday, April 21, 2017

A Photo of Three Publishing Heroes, and a note about Post-Asemic Press from the Publisher


Even though Post-Asemic Press will not at the moment be focusing on publishing verbal works, reading literary works is where I cut my teeth. Asemic writing is a counter-reaction to words, and to the physical authority of alphabets. Not all thoughts can be expressed with words, and so here is the mission of Post-Asemic Press: advance asemic free writing. I love words, except when they are used for manipulation and control. Asemic writing puts the reader in the driver's seat of the non-verbal asemic rocket ship. But where to go? What is the destination? Heaven of course! I have self-published chapbooks of asemic writing since 1998, and eventually in perfect bound paperback books since 2006. What I learned from self-publishing is to make mistakes and how to clean them up. I am a "practicing" author, that is, I practice creating abstract animated gif calligraphy and make planet poems; my publishing efforts will be reflective of my personal writing and reading tastes. Post-Asemic Press is my investigative proboscis into the book publishing world. The titles that this press will produce will be different from what every other press is doing, with the press's intention being to focus on the global post-literate asemic writing culture, and related forms, such as post-graffiti, undeciphered scripts, non-verbal communication, alien writing, and experimental literature (words) eventually down the road. Thanks to all the future readers and authors! It's because of you I get out of bed every morning, so send me some crazy good work (60+ pages of asemic writing), and check out our new titles!

 Michael Jacobson
Curator @ The New Post-Literate
& Publisher @ Post-Asemic Press

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Post-Asemic Press Official Launch and Book Signing with Michael Jacobson: 6 to 8pm Tuesday May 16th 2017 @ Minnesota Center for Book Arts

I will be signing books and meeting people in the gallery at MCBA from 6 to 8 pm on Tuesday May 16th 2017. This book signing will also be a closing event for the exhibit Asemic Writing: Offline & In The Gallery, though the show still runs till May 28th. It will be a laid back event. Three books will be available for purchase: Unknown Message by Spencer Selby, Zinc Zanc Zunc by Rosaire Appel, and Works & Interviews by Michael Jacobson. The gallery will be open till 9pm. I will have wine to share, and will be free to answer questions about asemic writing. Come down to see the amazing job MCBA staff did in presenting asemic book art, and view the first large scale group exhibit of asemic writing to be held in the US.

Here is the facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/386130258437583/

        

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Post-Asemic Press #002: Unknown Message by Spencer Selby is now available at Amazon!

Page 1 from Unknown Message


Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Amazon Canada

Amazon Germany (Deutshland)

Amazon Italy (Italia)

Amazon France

Amazon Spain (España)

Amazon Brazil (Brasil)

Amazon India

Amazon Japan

Amazon Mexico

Amazon Australia 





Words for UNKNOWN MESSAGE

“Here are some Petri dishes, each full of an alternative writing culture or sample of writing from an alternative civilization. Some of this writing appears to have been yanked and stretched, as if it had been written on a sheet of elastic material. Other pages resemble maps, diagrams, digital crystals, tattoo designs or ancient pictographs. Noise or wind or smeariness is a common feature. Throughout this work, the third dimension seems to be trying to push itself forward from the flat paper surface. There's a human presence hiding on one page, perhaps the author hard at work. I suggest that this book contains a message from the future.”
                        Tim Gaze

“The physical act of reading is altered here, it undergoes a shift. The challenge is to assess how a reader views and how the veiwer reads. A sentence carries information from one margin to the other. The line travels across the page. What happens between margins is open to interpretation, to some divine corruption. In UNKNOWN MESSAGE, Selby not only adjusts the content of the line and how it reaches a margin, but he takes alphabet to new visual potentials. Meaning is in the seeing meaning form new ways of seeing. These poems are derived from visual chromatin conveying the genetic material of a future language event. Again, the cycle of disintegration to renewal in visual language approaches. These asemic missives find you, are awaiting your attention.”
Nico Vassilakis

“Fuzzy-wuzzy, cranky, cryptic, vibrant, prickly, deterritorialized, endearing… no, these are not names of Snow White’s avant-garde dwarves but just a few adjectives that adhere to the overwhelming variety of Spencer Selby’s asemic marvels. These textural, textilic surfaces invite engagement of the most tactile kind, but they can’t be touched except with our loving, delighted eyes.  Poring over them is a wild ride into the possibilities of illumination and meaning. If Plato’s cave were the ideal rather than the simulacrum, its walls would feature these brilliant marvels. We are drawn toward these angelic morsels of signification, flickering sememes that reveal and conceal.”
Maria Damon


Spencer Selby


                                                                              ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Poet, artist and film historian, Spencer Selby has performed work and presented slide shows in many North American cities and in Europe. He is the author of nine poetry books, five collections of visual poetry and two reference works on film noir. Selby ran the Canessa Park Gallery Series in San Francisco, co-edited the visual poetry magazine Score and was a curating member of Glitch Artists Collective.  http://www.selbysart.com/