Reviews

Reconsidering the environment

A review of 'Kindergarde'

Children often have the ability to cut to the chase and say something without dissembling. Within such purity, gems often leave their small mouths, hence the saying, “From the mouth of babes … ” All children possess this capacity, but I suspect that for orphans — or perhaps any child with a difficult (so to speak) background — this ability to swiftly and directly see and analyze is honed.

On QED II, part one: The presence of absence

Kim Calder

For the past two years, Les Figues Press has hosted the series Q.E.D., a three-part event named for Gertrude Stein’s Quod Erat Demonstrandum. Stein’s coming-out text, written in 1903, was suppressed at her request until its posthumous publication in 1950. Hence the appropriate title for the first Q.E.D. II 2013: The Presence of Absence. Each Q.E.D. panel this year featured a Les Figues Press author, two artists or writers their work is in conversation with, and a moderator. For the first event, Matias Viegener selected Tisa Bryant and Catherine Lord. Anna Joy Springer moderated.

QED II, part two: Inchoate affinities

Kim Calder

The second Q.E.D. II emphasized R. M. Schindler’s definition of “space architecture” as a way of thinking through questions of gender. Curator Kim Rosenfield associated the “radical flow” of the Schindler House with the way her work, and that of the panelists’, engages with these questions. Rosenfield chose Yedda Morrison and Vanessa Place as her fellow panelists, and Andrea Quaid moderated.

QED II, part three: Not (quite) easily done

Kim Calder

The third Q.E.D. II event of 2013 featured one of Les Figues’s earliest authors, Jennifer Calkins, in conversation with Amanda Ackerman and Anne de Marcken. Teresa Carmody, the press’s cofounder, moderated.

Between time and the topology of flesh

A review of '7 Days and Nights in the Desert'

Emji Spero

Sabrina Dalla Valle’s 7 Days and Nights in the Desert [Tracing the Origin] is a spell. It wraps itself around your body, clinging to your cells in the terrible pauses between readings. As though it, in fact, is reading you. I found myself entranced. I found myself noticing. I found myself encountering synchronicities at an accelerated rate. I could not have expected this.