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UbuWeb Top Ten
June 2017
Samuel Andreyev
1. George Antheil, Ballet Mécanique [MP3]
2. Paul Dutton, Reverberations [MP3]
3. Anton Webern, Fünf Sätze [MP3]
4. Edgard Varèse, Déserts (world premiere) [MP3]
5. Karlheinz Stockhausen, Studie II [MP3]
6. Carl Ruggles, Lilacs (first recording, performed by Nicolas Slonimsky)
7. Phil Niblock, Toral [MP3]
8. Charles Ives, ‘They are There’ (Ives plays Ives) [MP3]
9. Morton Feldman, ‘The King of Denmark’ (performed by Max Neuhaus) [MP3]
10. André Boucourechliev, Archipel 3 (performed by Georges Pludermacher and les Percussions de Strasbourg) [MP3]
Samuel Andreyev is a Strasbourg-based composer and poet. He runs a YouTube channel devoted to modern and contemporary music.
UbuWeb Top Ten
September 2016
Selected by Luc Sante
1. Patti Smith: Parade [MP3]
2. Red Grooms: Fat Feet
3. Henry Flynt & the Insurrections: Uncle Sam Do [MP3]
4. Ron Rice: The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man
5. Kathy Acker: I Was Walking Down the Street [MP3]
6. René Vienet: Can Dialectics Break Bricks?
7. Alexander Mossolov: Steel Foundry [MP3]
8. Jay Leyda: A Bronx Morning
9. John Cage: Experiences #2 (vocals: Robert Wyatt) [MP3]
10. Harry Smith: Heaven & Earth Magic
Luc Sante's books include Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, and The Other Paris. He teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.
UbuWeb Top Ten
August 2016
Selected by Wes Del Val
1. Stan Brakhage - The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971)
2. Don Cherry - Don Cherry (1967)
3. Buckminster Fuller - The World of R. Buckminster Fuller (1974)
4. Gutai - Japanese Performance Art, 1956 - 1970
5. Pierre Henry - The Art of Sounds (2007)
6. Mauricio Kagel - The Time Overcome - A Portrait (2007)
7. Gordon Matta - Clark - Conical Intersect (1975)
8. Harry Partch - The Outsider: The Story of Harry Partch (2002)
9. Sara Sackner - Concrete! (2006)
10. Ludwig Wittgenstein - A Wonderful Life (1989)
Wes Del Val is Associate Publisher at powerHouse Books in New York.
UbuWeb Top Ten
July 2016
Selected by Wave Farm (Galen Joseph-Hunter and Emily Zimmerman)
1. Velimir Khlebnikov-The Radio of the Future (1921/2006)
2. John Cage and Morton Feldman-Radio Happenings I (1967)
3. Max Neuhaus-Radio Net (1977)
4. Pauline Oliveros-Pathways to Grandmothers (1978)
5. Michael Snow-Short Wavelength (1980)
6. Lawrence Weiner / Peter Gordon-Memories of Stu Irwin (1982)
7. Mike Kelley-The Peristaltic Airwaves (1986)
8. Christof Migone-Breathing Identification (1990)
9. Peggy Ahwesh and Barbara Ess-Radio Guitar (2001)
10. Dylan Nyoukis-Interested In Fashion, Harmonica? (2003)
Galen Joseph-Hunter is the Executive Director of Wave Farm. Founded in 1997, Wave Farm is a non-profit arts organization driven by experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves. Emily Zimmerman is Associate Curator of Programs at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, and serves on Wave Farm’s Board of Directors.
UbuWeb Top Ten
June 2016
Selected by derek beaulieu
1. Steve Reich “Livelihood” (1964)
2. Mary Ellen Solt “Flowers in Concrete” (1966)
3. Brain Eno “Discreet Music” (1975)
4. John Riddell “A/Z does it” (1988)
5. Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts (1962-65)
6. Darren Wershler “The Tapeworm Foundry”
7. James Joyce “Finnegans Wake” (1939)
8. Luigi Serafini "The Codex Seraphinanus” (1978)
9. Marcel Duchamp “The Creative Act” (1957)
10. Meredith Monk “Rally”
11. Georges Perec "TENTATIVE DE DESCRIPTION DE CHOSES VUES AU CARREFOUR MABILLON LE 19 MAI 1978 (A. C. R.)
derek beaulieu was Calgary's Poet Laureate (2014-16), is the editor of no press, and the editor of UbuWeb Visual Poetry.
UbuWeb Top Ten
May 2016
Selected by Christopher Hughes
1. Laurie Anderson - Collected Videos (1990)
2. Ericka Beckman and Mike Kelley- Blind Country (1989)
3. Dara Birnbaum - Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978)
4. Martha Rosler - Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained (1977)
5. Eija-Lisa Ahtila - Grey (1993)
6. Lorna Simpson - Corridor (2003)
7. Annika Eriksson - i am the dog that was always here (loop) (2013)
8. Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn - Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out (2006)
9. Stan Douglas - TV Spots/Monodramas (1987-1991)
10. Rodney Graham - Bed-Bug, Love Buzz And Other Short Songs In The Popular Idiom (2001)
11. Mike Kelley - The Peristaltic Airwaves (1986) [MP3]
12. Bruce Nauman - Left or Standing/ Standing or Left Standing (2005) [MP3]
13. Bruce Nauman - Good Boy Bad Boy A, B (1985)
14. John Berger - Ways of Seeing (1972)
15. Artur Zmijewski - Them (2007)
Chris Hughes is an artist and curator living in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He really, really, really loves video art. is a visual artist.
UbuWeb Top Ten
March 2016
Selected by Shahryar Nashat
1. Guillaume Apollinaire - Le pont Mirabeau (Apollinaire on UbuWeb Sound)
2. Fernand Léger - Ballet Mécanique
3. Eleanor Antin - From the Archives of Modern Art
4. Artavazd Peleshian - The Seasons of the Year
5. Jacques Demy - Les Horizons Morts
6. Jean Genet - Un Chant d'Amour
7. Agnes Varda - Plaisir d'amour en Iran
8. Francis Stark - My Best Thing
9. Mark Leckey - GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction
10. Marcel Broodthaers - La pipe Satire
Shahryar Nashat is a visual artist. He lives in Berlin.
UbuWeb Top Ten
February 2016
Selected by Shirt
1. Trisha Brown - "Walking On The Wall
2. John Baldessari - Some Stories
3. Yvonee Rainer - Hand Movie
4. Kenneth Goldsmith - Sucking On Words
5. Dustin Yellin - The Crack-Up
6. Kenny's bio (no joke)
7. Banksy - The Punking Of Paris Hilton
8. Jeu d'échecs avec Marcel Duchamp
9. Bauhaus Face of the 20th Century
10. Tracey Emin Collected Shorts
Shirt is a rapper and visual artist from New York. His influences range from John Baldessari and Marcel Duchamp, to Nas and Biggie.
UbuWeb Top Ten
December 2015
The Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society
1. Nam June Paik - "Topless Cellist" Charlotte Moorman (1995)
2. Marina Abramoviç - Balkan Erotic Epic (2006)
3. Bruce Conner - Breakaway
4. Aldo Tambellini, Thomas Tadlock, Allan Kaprow, James Seawright, Otto Piene, Nam June Paik - The Medium is the Medium (1969)
5. Rubén Gallo - Fidget's Body
6. Jorge Luis Borges - The Mirror Man (1999)
7. George Kuchar - Hold Me While I'm Naked (1966)
8. Jean Genet - Un Chant d'Amour (1950)
9. Arena - Robert Mapplethorpe (1988)
10. Ken Russell - Always on Sunday (1965)
Ten down-and-dirty pulp novels you need to read, from the Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society:
1. QUEENPIN by Megan Abbott
2. MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust
3. SONGS OF INNOCENCE by Richard Aleas
4. THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT by Fredric Brown
5. WHEN THE SACRED GINMILL CLOSES by Lawrence Block
6. MIAMI PURITY by Vicki Hendricks
7. THE GETAWAY MAN by Andrew Vachss
8. THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN by Gil Brewer
9. QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
10. INTO THE VOLCANO by Forrest DeVoe, Jr. Ten down-and-dirty pulp novels you need to read, from the Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society:
The Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society is a New York-based book club, founded in 2011, whose hundreds of members have met and red topless in dozens of locations around New York City, where female toplessness is legally permitted anywhere male toplessness is.
UbuWeb Top Ten
September 2015
Roy Voragen
1. Adorno's Punctuation Marks
2. The Aesthetics of Silence by Susan Sontag
3. Sentences on Conceptual Art (1968) by Sol Lewitt
4. John Cage, Conceptualist Poet by Marjorie Perloff
5. Against Expression (PDF), edited by Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith
6. Seen of the Crime, Essay on Conceptual Writing by Derek Beaulieu
7. E U N O I A by Christian Bök
8. Mit Schreibmaschine by H.N. Werkman
9. Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters, Live at Laterna, Tampere 11-02-2005
10. Tibor Szemző performs Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
11. Musique Concrète, Soundtracks To Experimental Films (1956-1978)
12. Pierre Henri & Pierre Schaefffer - Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950; musique concrète)
Writer and curator Roy Voragen is based in Bandung, Indonesia, since 2003. For 365 days, he wandered around UbuWeb and for one year he tweeted every day something from this website (all the above are from these 365 days, a complete list can be downloaded here.) His #superduperdecorativeart manifesto will be published this fall.
UbuWeb Top Ten
August 2015
Olivia Locher
1. John Baldessari - Six Colorful Inside Jobs (1971)
2. Mike Kelley and Ericka Beckman - Blind Country (1989)
3. Marina Abramoviç - Four Performances (1975-76)
4. Andy Warhol - Andy Warhol Talks to The Chelsea Girls (1970-71)
5. Matthew Barney - Hoist (2006)
6. Delia Derbyshire - Dreams (1964)
7. Christian Marclay - Guitar Drag (2000)
8. Alex Bag - Untitled Fall '95 (1995)
9. Merce Cunningham - Septet (1964)
10. Richard Serra - Hand Catching Lead (1968)
Olivia Locher is a photographer based in New York City.
UbuWeb Top Ten
July 2015
Robert Reginio
1. Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Richard Hulsenbeck: L'amiral Cherche Une Maison à Louer
2. Joseph Cornell: By Night With Torch and Spear
3. Jack MacGowran Speaking Beckett
4. Cornelius Cardew: The Great Learning
5. David Wojnarowicz: ITSOFOMO
6. Marcel Broodthaers: Un Voyage en Mer du Nord (A Voyage on the North Sea)
7. Tacita Dean Berlin Project
8. Bruce Andrews: Reading Language Reading Gertrude Stein
9. Trinh T. Minh-ha: Shoot for the Contents
10. Rosemarie Waldrop: shorter american memory
11. Hollis Frampton: Nostalgia
Robert Reginio is an Associate Professor of English at Alfred University and is the editor of Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art.
UbuWeb Top Ten
July 2015
Syros Film Thing
1. Presque Rien Avec Luc Ferrari (2005)
2. Henning Christiansen, Abschied-ssymphonie Side A Side B
3. Jaap Blonk - Ursonate (Kurt Schwitters) 2003 Version
4. Robert Ashley - In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoveen there were men and women (1972)
5. Eugene Deslaw - Montparnasse (1929)
6. Francis Thompson - NY, NY: A Day in New York (1957)
7. Robert Smithson & Nancy Holt "East Coast West Coast" (1969)
8. Frans Zwartjes - Spare Bedroom (1970)
9. Bruce Baillie - Castro Street (1966)
10. Standish Lawder - Corridor (1970)
Syros Film Thing programs uncommon films in an uncommon way on a rock in the Aegean.
UbuWeb Top Ten
June 2015
Wobbly / Jon Leidecker
1. The Films of Carolee Schneemann
2. Shana Moulton - Whispering Pines 6, 7, 8
3. Francois Bayle - Erosphere (Tremblement de terre très doux / Toupie dans le ciel)
4. Brenda Hutchinson - Violet Flames
5. Toshio Matsumoto - Atman
6. Residents - Baby Sex
7. Charlotte Moorman / Terry Jennings - Piece for Cello and Saxophone
8. People Like Us - Lassie House
9. Phil Niblock / Sun Ra - The Magic Sun
10. Robert Ashley - Music With Roots In The Aether
Wobbly is the moniker of Jon Leidecker a San Francisco–based musician/composer of experimental electronic music.
UbuWeb Top Ten
May 2015
R. Sikoryak
1. Dara Birnbaum - Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79)
2. "American Masters" John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It (1990)
3. Mike Smith - Take Off Your Pants Prologue (2005)
4. Marcel Duchamp - Anemic Cinema (1926)
5. Komar and Melamid & Dave Soldier - The Most Unwanted Song [MP3 link]
6. Cindy Sherman - Doll Clothes (1975)
7. The Music of Jean Tinguely
8. William S. Burroughs Sings
9. Alive From Off Center - Episode A (First episode, 1 Jul 1985)
10. Yoko Ono - Eye Blink (1966)
R. Sikoryak is the author of Masterpiece Comics (Drawn & Quarterly) and the host of the live comics performance series Carousel.
UbuWeb Top Ten
April 2014
Roddy Bogawa
1. "I will not make any more boring art" - John Baldessari
2. Grids - Rosalind Krauss
3. Dance or Walk on the Perimeter of a Square (1967) - Bruce Nauman
4. Kurt Kren - 3/1960 Trees in Autumn, (1960)
5. The South Bank Show (1985) - Francis Bacon
6. Strange Space (1993) - Leslie Thornton
7. Rhys Chatham (with Glenn Branca, Nina Canal, Wharton Tiers) - Guitar Trio (1977) [MP3 link]
8. Vladimir et Rosa (1971) - Dziga Vertov Group
9. Handsworth Songs (1986) - Black Audio Film Collective
10. Lives of Performers (1972) - Yvonne Rainer
Born in Los Angeles, Japanese-American Roddy Bogawa studied art and played in punk bands before turning to filmmaking. His films on UbuWeb can be found here.
UbuWeb Top Ten
March 2015
Egan Frantz & Liz Wendelbo
1. Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, Marchorka-Muff (1963)
2. Joseph Beuys - JA JA JA JA JA, NEE NEE NEE NEE NEE (1968)
3. Chris & Cosey - European Rendez-Vous (1984)
4. Kurt Kren - 3/1960 Trees in Autumn, (1960)
5. Jack Spicer - Vancouver Lectures (1965)
6. Guy Debord - Situationisten, Double-7", Track C
7. Steina Vasulka - Switch! Monitor! Drift! (1976)
8. Frans Zwartjes - Anamesis
9. Iannis Xenakis - -NEG-ALE (1960)
10. Norman McLaren, Synchromy/Synchromie (1971)
Egan Frantz and Liz Wendelbo are artists based in Brooklyn. His sculptures can be seen here and the site for her minimal electronics musical project Xeno & Oaklander is here
UbuWeb Top Ten
Dec 2014 - Feb 2015
Selected by AA Bronson
1. Ethel Waters "That Da Da Strain"
2. Glossolalia: Speaking In Tongues
3. Occult Voices – Paranormal Music, Recordings of unseen Intelligences 1905-2007
4. Yves Klein, The Monotone Symphony [MP3]
5. Sun Ra: Message to Earthman
6. Kurt Weill: Die Dreigroschenoper / Berlin 1930
7. William S. Burroughs reads Junky
8. Jack Smith: Flaming Creatures
9. George Kuchar: Hold Me While I'm Naked
10. General Idea - Shut the Fuck Up
AA Bronson is an artist and healer living and working in Berlin.
UbuWeb Top Ten
December 2014
Selected by Gabriele Marino
1. James Joyce - Anna Livia Plurabelle (1929) [MP3]
2. John Cage (w/ Richard Kostelanetz) - Writing for the Third Time through Finnegans Wake (1978)
3. Alvin Lucier - I am sitting in a room (1969) [MP3]
4. Milan Knížák - Broken Music (1983)
5. The Visual Poetry of Adolf Wölfli
6. Alan Schneider - Samuel Beckett's Film (1965)
7. "Fuck You" - A Magazine of the Arts (1962-1965)
8. "291" edited by Alfred Stieglitz (1915-1916)
9. Daniele Lombardi - Futurism and musical notes (1981)
10. The Western Round Table on Modern Art (1949)
Gabriele Marino is a young semiotician from Italy. His website (which plagiarizes ubu's layout) is here.
UbuWeb Top Ten
November 2014
Selected by Simon Reynolds
1. Fylkingen Text-Sound Festivals – 10 Years
2. Canada - Jeux Vocaux Des Inuit (Inuit du Caribou, Netsilik et Igloolik)
3. Lily Greenham - Tabula Plena
4. Paul Lansky – Artifice
5. Furious Pig - I Don’t Like Your Face
6. Delia Derbyshire (and Barry Bermange) - Dreams
7. Extended Voices - Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, John Cage, Robert Ashley, Toshi Ichyanagi, Morton Feldman
8. Jaap Blonk - Flux de Bouche
9. Trevor Wishart - Vox
10. Tellus#22 ‘False Phoneme’
Simon Reynolds is the author of Retromania and maintains a bunch of blogs centred around blissblog.
UbuWeb Top Ten
October 2014
Selected by Open Culture
1. Finnegans Wake (1939), Read by Patrick Healy
Open Culture: Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Reading
2. The Craft of Verse: Jorge Luis Borges' Norton Lectures, 1967-68
Open Culture: Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967-8 Norton Lectures On Poetry (And Everything Else Literary)
3. Three rare films by Susan Sontag
Open Culture: The Filmmaking of Susan Sontag & Her 50 Favorite Films (1977)
4. M.A. Numminen Sings Wittgenstein (1983 / 1989)
Open Culture: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Gets Adapted Into an Avant-Garde Comic Opera
5. Aldous Huxley’s Visionary Experience
Open Culture: Aldous Huxley, Psychedelics Enthusiast, Lectures About “the Visionary Experience” at MIT (1962)
6. Jacques Derridia’s interview with Ornette Coleman [PDF]
Open Culture: Philosopher Jacques Derrida Interviews Jazz Legend Ornette Coleman: Talk Improvisation, Language & Racism (1997)
7. Joey Ramone Sings a Piece by John Cage Adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,”
Open Culture: Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
8. The Avant-Garde Project
Open Culture: The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cutting-Edge Composers, Including Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Cage & More
9. Alice Toklas Reads Her Hashish Fudge Recipe
Open Culture: Alice B. Toklas Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)
10. Jean Baudrillard Sings!
Open Culture: Jean Baudrillard Reads His Poetry, Backed By All-Star Arts Band (1996)
Dan Colman is the editor of Open Culture, the web site he created in 2006. He’s also the Director of Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program.
UbuWeb Top Ten
September 2014
Selected by Monoskop
1. Viking Eggeling - Diagonale Symphonie (1924)
2. Robert Filliou - Whispered History Of Art
3. JODI - My Desktop OS X 10.4.7 (2007)
4. Lumière Brothers - Danse Serpentine (1896)
5. Dick Raaijmakers - Intona (1992)
6. Maja Ratkje - Live in Paris (2005)
7. Sound Experiments in The Russian Avant-Garde (1908-1942)
8. Sainkho Namchylak - Live at Roulette (2000)
9. Erik Satie - Pianoless Vexations
10. Sonic Arts Union
Dušan Barok is founding editor of Monoskop.
UbuWeb Top Tens Variations
September 2014
Selected by Florian Cramer
Top 7 of Ubuweb uncreative poetry from low-fi remediation
(1) Yves Klein, The Monotone Symphony (1949, rec. March 9, 1960)
The compression artifacts are so extreme that they turn the piece into something else: something truly monochrome.
(2) Toshi Ichyanagi, Opera "From The Works Of Tadanori Yokoo" (1969)
On this vinyl rip, only the left stereo channel survived, but is left with a constant low hum from the wrongly grounded record player. Ichyanagi's great piece, which combines post-war avant-garde electronics with traditional Japanese music, thus gains a minimal music drone as its third compositional element.
(3) Carolee Schneemann, Fuses (1965)
The mother of all alternative porn films loses its explicitness and gains mystery thanks to heavy video codec artifacts.
(4) La Monte Young, Drift Study
La Monte Young's experiment with the drifting pitches between two analog sine wave generators either defeats its purpose when frozen into digital zeros and one or preempts today's popular simulations of analog through digital technology.
(5) Nam June Paik, Zen for Film
The film consists of a reel of blank film looping in a 16mm projector, gradually acquiring its image through the dirt and dust ending up on the film strip. It is a film that is, by virtue of its concept, impossible to digitize. The UbuWeb version makes up for this by adding heavy digital dirt such as pixely resolution and codec artifacts.
(6) Marie Menken, Go! Go! Go!
In UbuWeb's version of this classical avant-garde film of New York, a low quality encoding makes the video codec constantly break down, adding a layer of abstraction to an otherwise photorealist film.
(7) Various artists, 500 locked grooves
500 locked vinyl grooves would normally create 500 infinite loops along with 500 necessities to manually advance the record player' s pick-up arm. Putting them into one linear mp3 file, UbuWeb effectively provides a digital cheat code for the gameplay of the LP.
Top 10 of serendipity surprises when digging through UbuWeb
(1) Will Hindle, Saint Flournoy Lobos-Logos and the Eastern Europe Fetus Taxing Japan Brides in West Coast Places Sucking Alabama Air (1970)
An intense work of the visual genius and too-little-known 1960s underground filmmaker Will Hindle.
(2) Larry Wendt - Silicon Valley Ghost Town (1986)
A pre-net.art and pre-Post Internet visionary vocoder piece against Silicon Valley, made in the very area that it attacks.
(3) 101 Happy Collapse by Son of Spam, PhonoStatic 10, 1989
Another stunningly visionary piece, preempting Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" by several decades & created four years before the first spam message hit the Internet.
(4) Ancient Order flyers
No comment.
(5) Gutai, Japanese Performance Art
A great, extensive, historical documentary film about the pioneers of happening/event/durational/performance art.
(6) Kurt Kren, Fenstergucker, Abfall, etc.
...and all other films by Kurt Kren, available in excellent video quality on UbuWeb. Kren is the real pioneer of structuralist experimental filmmaking. His collaboration with the Vienna actionists yielded a unique productive clash between radical formalism and radical expressionism. Kren's films are still better than the often joyless works of formalist and structuralist filmmakers in his time and later.
(7) Experiments in Disintegrating Language / Konkrete Canticle (1971)
Like many projects in which Bob Cobbing had been involved, concrete poetry with a critical edge, critiquing the politics of language through its very medium, language.
(8) Oskar Pastior - Krimgotische Gedichte (1987)
Speaking of politics of language: the Crimean Gothic poems of Romanian-German Oulipo member Oskar Pastior have the same significance today in 2014 as Zurich Dadaist sound poems during WWI a century ago.
(9) Ulises Carrión, Hamlet for two Voices (1977)
An early work of uncreative writing by the (still underrated) Mexican-Dutch philologist, bookworks/artists' books pioneer, Mail Artist and conceptual archivist Ulises Carrión, stripping Shakespeare's play to merely the names of the speaking characters.
(10) Diether De La Motte, Mixed Music II: Tonbandkomposition unter Verwendung eines Textes von Konrad Bayer (1970)
A mixture of contemporary classical music and experimental poetry, written in Berlin six years after Konrad Bayer's death, likely still under the impression of his legendary reading at Literarisches Colloquium Berlin in the early 1960s.
Avant-garde canon Top 4
(1) Velimir Khlebnikov - Laughing Charm read by Roman Jakobson
This piece was as seminal for 20th century experimental poetry as Malevich's black square for 20th century visual art. Read by Roman Jakobson whose concept of the "poetic function" is hard to get without Khlebnikov.
(2) Gertrude Stein, If I Told Him
Gertrude Stein's verbal portrait of Picasso that translates the poetics of cubist painting into the grammar of spoken language.
(3) La Monte Young, Jackson Mac Low (editor), An Anthology (of Chance Operations), 1963 [PDF]
Simply a classic with which Fluxus (and everything that followed it) really began.
(4) Henry Flynt & The Insurrections, I Don't Wanna (1966)
The first ever punk song, and at the same time the thoroughly logical consequence of Flynt's radical analytical critique of art and politics. See also Henry Flynt, Art or Brend? and Cornelius Cardew's book Stockhausen Serves Imperialism in which Cardew, founder of the Scratch Orchestra, attacked his former teacher Stockhausen for the same reasons as Henry Flynt and George Maciunas when they picketed a Stockhausen concert in 1964.
Mixed Feelings Top 8
(1) Music before Revolution
Perhaps the only concept album of 20th century avant-garde composer music, with music by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff and Toshi Ichyanagi, produced in 1970s West Germany by Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn in a crazy attempt to co-opt Cage for Maoism (to quote critic Diedrich Diederichsen). But Cage's soft-spoken American Zen that leaves no questions to be asked can be no less totalitarian.
(2) Peter Gidal, Structural Film Anthology
This is an important work; but it also marks a time when experimental film became dogmatic and when "the optical printer was the death of underground film", to quote underground filmmaker Wilhelm Hein.
(3) Dictionary of Moscow Conceptualism [PDF]
An important publication, and just one piece of evidence of Eastern European avant-garde concept art often having been better than Western conceptual art. Moscow conceptualism still is somewhat tainted by the way in which some of its protagonists and adepts went to become major art world players today.
(4) William S. Burroughs, The Electronic Revolution [PDF]
My favorite part is Burroughs' reported months-long psych-ops attack against a café in London where he had been served a piece of moldy cheese cake. It's hard to cut through radical ideas, intentional and unintentional humor, bullshit and redundancy in Burroughs' "avant-pulp" work. In the best cases, it's all at the same time. It still remains tainted by the dead-serious cult following it received since the 1980s.
(5) Tom Johnson, The Voice of New Music [PDF]
Likely the most important documents of the 1970s New York downtown music (and arts) scene, but significantly missing one key protagonist: Arthur Russell, who was both artistic director of avant-garde hub The Kitchen and running New York's most legendary disco club, The Loft. Just like 1970s structuralist film, Tom Johnson's work also marks the point where undogmatic avant-garde experimentation becomes formalist.
(6) George Kuchar, The Kiss of Frankenstein [PDF]
Kuchar was a true king of camp and filmic folk art. Nevertheless, his work is never far away from something that could go from underground to fairly mainstream college humor comedy.
(7) Marcel Broodthaers, La Pluie (Projet pour un texte)
Like nearly all of Broodthaers' work, this one (showing a writer literally writing against the rain) needs no comment or explanation. It's also dangerously romantic and made to preserve the attribute "fine" in fine art.
(8) Anton Webern, Fünf Sätze für Streichquartett Op. 5
An odd piece to find on Ubu Web since it is closer to late romanticism and Bach than to, for example, Futurist intonarumori noise. Uniquely beautiful in its complexity, at the same kitschy and late romanticist, misread by later serialist composers and avant-garde filmmakers as a construction blueprint for formalist work.
Florian Cramer, applied research professor and director of Creating 010, the research center affiliated to Willem de Kooning Academy and Piet Zwart Institute at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. He also works for WORM, a Rotterdam-based venue for DIY avant-garde culture. Last publications: Anti-Media, NAi010 Publishers, 2013, What Is Post-Digital?.
UbuWeb Top Ten
August 2014
Selected by Don Share
1. Bern Porter -- Wisdom of the Questioning Eye
Five books from the 1960s, by found poet Bern Porter (1911-2004)
2. Chris Marker – Junktopia
Ocean junk avant le lettre.
3. Jack Kerouac - The Northport Tapes (1958-64)
Kerouac reading from his work while getting drunk and occasionally singing along with Frank Sinatra records that are being played in the background.
4. John Oswald – Plunderphonics
How long I have waited to hear this legendary stuff again!
5. Lou Reed – The View from the Bandstand
Life among the Poobahs!!
6. Ian Hamilton Finlay – Various
Just read his phenomenal cranky letters to Stephen Bann this year (Midway); Finlay’s work has never been surpassed and is almost irreproducible, which makes these UbuWeb resources invaluable
7. Mary Ellen Solt – essay on concrete poetry in the U.S., from Concrete Poetry: A World View (1968)
A blueprint for much that was, and still is, to come.
8. Nicholas Moore - Spleen: Thirty-one versions of Baudelaire's Je suis comme le roi...
A classic. Why isn’t this, and all of Moore’s work in print?
9. Hannah Weiner -- Little Books / Indians
You can never get to the bottom of Weiner’s work, and so you can never have enough of it.
10. H-Dirksen L. Bauman – Redesigning Literature – Poetics of American Sign Language Poetry
A discourse that needs to be revisited. Poetry magazine will shortly feature an exchange among poets with disabilities that we hope will open the door to further discussion.
Don Share is the editor of Poetry magazine.
UbuWeb Top Ten
July 2014
Selected by McKenzie Wark
1. The Mekons & Kathy Acker - Pussy King of the Pirates
Made around the time we hung out in New York. The sound of your voice still chills me.
2. Kenneth Anger - Scorpio Rising
Never forget him presenting this at the State Theater in Sydney. Still have my signed copy of Hollywood Babylon.
3. Joseph Cornell - Rose Hobart
Détournement before its time. So beautiful.
4. Maya Deren - A Study In Dance for the Camera
Human and machine movement, timeless meshings. For the one who introduced me to her work.
5. Madeleine Gins - What The President Will Say and Do
Tracked this down around the time of Arakawa+Gins show at Guggenheim Soho, which was a revelation
6. Jean Genet - Un Chant d’Amour
Masterpiece of queer lust and love.
7. Tracey Moffatt - Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy
Reclaiming the Aboriginal image.
8. Valerie Solanas - Scum Manifesto
Cyberfeminism ahead of its time.
9. Sun Ra - Space is the Place
You have to fast-forward to the moments of beauty, but its worth it.
10. René Viénet - Girls of Kamare
More visceral and passionate than Debord's détournement.
McKenzie Wark is the author of Gamer Theory, The Beach Beneath the Street and various other things. He teaches at The New School.
UbuWeb Top Ten
June 2014
Selected by Hari Kunzru
1. Alvin Lucier – I Am Sitting In a Room
2. Omer Fast – The Casting
3. Pandit Pran Nath – In Between the Notes
4. JG Ballard – The Atrocity Exhibition: JG Ballard and the Motor Car (1970)
5. Delia Derbyshire – Running
6. Shuji Terayama – Experimental Image World
7. Bob Cobbing - Performing Concrete Poetry
8. Martha Rosler – Semiotics of the Kitchen
9. Alexander Calder – Le Cirque de Calder
10. Johan Grimonprez – Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y
Hari Kunzru is the author of four novels and numerous stories and essays. His most recent work is Twice Upon a Time: Listening to New York (Atavist 2014).
UbuWeb Top Fifteen
May 2014
Selected by Heman Chong
1. A Day in the Life of a Musician - Erik Satie
2. Olivier Assayas - Sans titre AKA Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung (1997)
3. Theodor Adorno -- "Punctuation Marks" (1956) [PDF]
4. Hito Steyerl - November (2004)
5. Susan Sontag - The Aesthetics of Silence
6. Annika Eriksson - Staff at Moderna Museet (2000)
7. John Baldessari - Six Colorful Tales: From the Emotional Spectrum (Women) (1977)
8. Spike Jonze - Weapon of Choice
9. Pina Bausch - Kontakthof mit Senioren ab "65" (2000)
10. Dora García - The Deviant Majority from Basaglia to Brazil (2010)
11. Philip K. Dick Interview
12. Profile Of A Writer: Borges (documentary film)
13. Paul Pfeiffer - John 3:16
14. Joan Jonas - Vertical Roll (1972)
15. Samuel Beckett - Not I (1973)
Heman Chong is an artist, curator and writer.
UbuWeb Top Sixteen
April 2014
Selected by Greg Allen
1. Aspen: the magazine in a box, complete
I'd found one copy of one issue in 1999, and it was a revelation to be able to read the entire series in 2002.
2. On Kawara, One Million Years (1993) [MP3]
This project left a deep impression on me at documenta xi in 2002.
3. Aspen 1 - "Configurations of the New World"
A series of ambitious, visionary essays from the Aspen Design Conference, 1964
4. Aspen 5+6 - Lichtspiel, by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
an excerpt of an abstract film made from the Bauhaus pioneer's Light Space Modulator, a machine whose reincarnations I began researching in depth
5. Nancy Perloff, Postmodernism and the Music of John Cage (2002)
Cage talked about bringing "about a situation in which there is no difference between the audience and the performers."
6. Kenneth Goldsmith, Archinect Interview, 2007
great insights from the early days of the Ubu film & video collection
7. Yves Klein, Conference á La Sorbonne (1959)
This limited-edition LP recording captures the giddy atmospherics of Klein's 1959 lecture on monochromes.
8. Gordon Matta-Clark: Day's End (1975)
Betty Susler films the guerrilla creation of a giant cut out in a sanitation department warehouse on the Hudson River: "I had no faith in any kind of permission."
9. Chris Burden, The TV Commercials, 1973-77
Watching these made me wonder why artists don't put more things on TV. Also how Burden's beefcakey early imagery affected his reputation.
10. Tony Smith, The Maze (1967)
a four-piece sculpture/installation and cardboard model the artist granted permission to be reproduced in wood or steel. Everybody should have one.
11. Henning Lohner, John Cage's One11 and 103, The Making Of (1992)
Seeing this documentary about composing and performing Cage's feature film made me want to reperform/remake it myself, whatever that means.
12. Answering Machine: Labeled "Lennon, Cage, Yoko, Thanksgiving, Paik. November 24-December 6th" (1972) [MP3] (via Stephen Vitiello's Top Ten, October 2013)
The whole list is worth relistening, but I include it here because it introduced me to the incredible 1972 recording from Charlotte Moorman's aswering machine.
13. Jordan Wolfson's Top 18, June 2011
Wolfson's in the news lately, and his list holds up pretty well, too.
14. Yvonne Rainer, Hand Movie (1966)
When I broke my ankle a couple of months ago, I was laid up, reading Bruce Hainley's book about Sturtevant's reperformances of Yvonne Rainer pieces, and taking solace in this mesmerizing film of a bedridden Rainer.
15. Alexander Calder, Le Cirque de Calder (1961)
Something changed when my blog post on the different film versions of Calder's Circus turned up on Ubu as the description text; I felt like a performer, not just the audience.
16. Alex Hubbard, Bootleg film of Robert Smithson's Hotel Palenque, 1969/2004
I actually presented Hubbard's faux-bootleg film as being from 1969 when I gave a lecture on Smithson's lecture where he gave the lecture, at the University of Utah. It took me more than a year to realize I'd been punk'd. Sorry, Utes!
Greg Allen writes about art on his blog, greg.org: the making of.
UbuWeb Top Ten
March 2014
Selected by Steve Roggenbuck
1. Assorted Street Posters
2. Charles Bernstein Reads the Yellow Pages
3. Ryan Trecartin I-Be AREA
4. Judith Copithorne Horizon [PDF]
5. Tristan Tzara Unpretentious Proclamation
6. Ron Silliman Sunset Debris [PDF]
7. Hannah Weiner Little Books/Indians [PDF]
8. Aram Saroyan Aram Saroyan
9. Gertrude Stein Reads from "The Making of Americans"
10. John Cage, "Laughtears" Part 1, Part 2
Steve Roggenbuck is the first poet to be catalogued as a meme by Know Your Meme. Watch his poem-videos at here.
UbuWeb Top Ten
February 2014
Selected by Matmos
1. Steina Vasulka Switch! Monitor! Drift!
2. Electronic Music Review No. 5. 1968
3. John Baldessari Baldessari Sings Lewitt
4. Robert Hughes The Shock of the New
5. Storm de Hirsch Peyote Queen
6. Lou Reed View From the Bandstand" essay from Aspen No. 3
7. William S. Burroughs + Brion Gysin + Genesis P.Orridge Cold Spring Tape (1989)
8. Jon Leidecker Variations
9. Mark Leckey Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore
10. Call Jeff One Lonely Guy
First, this was AGONY as there's just way, way, way too much killer stuff on the site now, it's kind of an overload situation to think about creating some kind of lifeboat of advocacy when there's that much there, so this wouldn't be our "TOP TEN OF ALL TIME" but a kind of "TEN FOR TODAY" type of thing- we love all ten of these things and hope others do too. Thanks so much for asking us to do this, it was a fun sort of agony.
Matmos is Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt, a Baltimore based electronic duo. Their most recent LP, "The Marriage of True Minds" is out now on Thrill Jockey Records. Thank you.
UbuWeb Top Ten
January 2014
Selected by Sasha Frere-Jones
1. Peggy Ahwesh She Puppet (2001)
2. Yvonne Rainer Hand Movie (1966)
3. Johanna Drucker Diagrammatic Writing (2013) [PDF]
4. Leslie Thornton Peggy and Fred In Kansas (1987)
5. Spartacus Chetwynd The Call of The Wild (2007)
6. Laurie Anderson Difficult Listening Hour (1986)
7. Sue de Beer The Ghosts (2011)
8. Pina Bausch Café Müller (1978)
9. Alison Knowles Thirty Years’ Audio Survey (1962-1992)
10. Gertrude Stein The Making of Americans (read by Gregory Laynor in 2008)
Sasha Frere-Jones is a writer and musician. With the band Ui, Frere-Jones released five albums, including Lifelike (1998) and Answers (2002). Staff writer and pop critic for The New Yorker since 2004, Frere-Jones will be an Artist In Residence at Park Avenue Armory during 2014. Frere-Jones is the co-founder of arts collective BATAN, and his critical writing has been compiled in various books. He no longer has a dog.
UbuWeb Top Ten
December 2013
Selected by Juliet Jacques
1. Guillaume Apollinaire Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War (1913-1916)
2. Germaine Dulac La coquille et le clergyman (1926)
3. Orson Welles Frozen Peas Slot
4. Delia Derbyshire & Anthony Newley Moogies Bloogies [Derbyshire on Ubu]
5. Bas Jan Ader Selected Films
6. Rosa von Praunheim Stadt der verlorenen Seelen AKA City of Lost Souls (1983)
7. Andy Warhol An Artist and His Amiga [PDF]
8. Deimantas Narkevičius The Role of a Lifetime
9. Sue Tompkins Country Grammer
10. Hito Steyerl Lovely Andrea
Juliet Jacques's December AIDS Awareness Month Picks:
1. David Wojnarowicz & Phil Zwickler Fear of Disclosure
2. Momus The Homosexual (from Tender Pervert)
3. Rosa von Praunheim Positiv
4. Reza Abdoh Sleeping with the Devil
5. David Wojnarowicz ITSOFOMO
6. Leslie Thornton Strange Space
7. Isaac Julien The Attendant
8. Yann Beauvais Still Life
9. Nan Goldin: In My Life (documentary)
10. Gerard Byrne New Sexual Lifestyles
Juliet Jacques is a contributing writer to The Guardian, The New Statesman, London Review of Books, The New Inquiry, 3:AM and other publications. She writes on literature, film, art, gender, sexuality and football.
UbuWeb Top Ten
November 2013
Selected by Nein Quarterly / Eric Jarosinski
1. Theodor W. Adorno Punctuation Marks [PDF]
2. Ernst Jandl What You Can Do Without Vowels
3. Klaus Kinski reads Brecht's An die Nachgeborenen
4. Jorge Luis Borges The Metaphor
5. The Voice of Samuel Beckett
6. Spalding Gray excerpt from "Sex and Death to Age 14"
7. Henry Miller Henry Miller Recalls and Reflects
8. Out of Orbit: The Life and Times of Marshall McLuhan
9. Susan Sontag Unguided Tour AKA Letter from Venice
9. Paul Celan Todesfuge
Eric Jarosinski teaches modern German literature, culture, and critical theory at the University of Pennsylvania. He also writes and edits the journal @NeinQuarterly, a Compendium of Utopian Negation found on Twitter and soon at neinquarterly.com. He is currently preparing his exit from the academy to embark upon an exciting new career as an aphorist, failed intellectual, translator, journalist, and cultural critic at large.
UbuWeb Top Ten
October 2013
Selected by Stephen Vitiello
1. Charlotte Moorman Terry Jennings's "Piece for Cello and Saxophone" (1964)
Answering Machine: Labeled "Lennon, Cage, Yoko, Thanksgiving, Paik. November 24-December 6th" (1972)
2. David Behrman Sounds for a Film by Robert Watts (1968)
3. Samuel Beckett MacGowran Speaking Beckett (1966)
4. Vito Acconci Ten Packed Minutes (1977)
5. Christopher Knowles Tell It Like It Is (1984)
6. Pauline Oliveros Alien Bog (Excerpt)
7. John Grayson Sound Sculpture (book, 1975)
8. Alison Knowles On Orchard Street (1992)
9. Tony Oursler The Weak Bullet (1980)
9. John Cage and Nam June Paik in Conversation (1985) Part 1, Part 2,
Stephen Vitiello is a sound artist and media artist. His sound installation, A Bell For Every Minute is currently installed in MoMA's Sculpture Garden (through Nov 3, 2013) as part of the Soundings exhibition. He is on the faculty of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.
UbuWeb Top Twenty
September 2012
Selected by People Like Us
1. Dick Higgins "Danger Music Number Seventeen" from Tellus 24 - Flux Tellus
2. Bruce Nauman "Work Work" from Raw Material
3. La Monte Young "Poem For Chairs Tables Benches" from Tellus 24 - Flux Tellus
4. Christian Bök "Ubu Hubbub" | Bök on UbuWeb
5. Gwilly Edmondez "What Do People Do All Day" from Max Kurt / Anatomical Disseminator
6. Jem Finer "Piano Pieces"
7. Komar and Melamid & Dave Soldier "The Most Unwanted Song" from The People's Choice Music
8. Wim Schippers "Stemmen AKA Voices" (1972)
9. Meredith Monk "Procession" from Airwaves
10. Sean Landers "The Man Within" | Sean Landers on UbuWeb
11. Kenneth Anger "Lucifer Rising"
12. Dick Higgins "In Memoriam" | Higgins on UbuWeb
13. Hermann Nitsch "Sunrise Music" from Das 6-Tage-Spiel Des Orgien Mysterien Theaters: 5-Tag
14. Robert Hughes "The Shock Of The New" (1982)
15. Patrick Ireland "Vowel Drawing" from from Tellus 21 "Audio By Visual Artists"
16. Kenneth Goldsmith "Fidget"
17. Charles Bernstein "1-100, 1969" | Bernstein on UbuWeb
18. Claude Closky "The First Thousand Numbers Classified In Alphabetical Order"
19. On Kawara "One Million Years"| Kawara on UbuWeb
20. John Cage "Lecture On Nothing" Performed by Kaegan Sparks
Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us has archived all her work on UbuWeb. You can find her music here and her films here. Her own website is here.
UbuWeb Top Twenty
August 2012
Selected by Jesse Darling & Belinda Blignaut
1. Martin Kippenberger covers Joseph Beuys' Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee (for grown-ups) | Martin Kippenberger on UbuWeb Sound
2. Stanya Kahn's It's Cool, I'm Good
3. Michael Nyman's Decay Music
4. Survival Research Laboratories: 10 Years of Robotic Mayhe
5. Wolf Vostell's Sun in Your Head (Television Decollage)
6. Ryan Trecartin's script for K-Corea [PDF]
7. A compilation of Gutai: Japanese Performance Art 1956-70
8. Alan Kaprow's Untitled Essay & Other Works [PDF]
9. Bas Jan Ader's Selected Works
10. Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life
11. Assorted Street Posters #Outsiders
12. Art & Language with Red Krayola: Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (1976)
13. Guy Ben-Ner: Stealing Beauty (2007)
14. Seth Price's Go Home/Stay at Home [PDF]
15. Chris Marker: Junkopia
16. Jodi: My Desktop OS X 10.4.7 (2007)
17. Lance Wakeling: SIC, NOTES FRMDELOM A KEYLOGGER
18. Shaker Visual Poetry: Gift Drawings & Gift Songs
19. Stephen Prina: Vinyl II (2007)
20. Lynda Benglis: Female Sensibility (1974)
Jesse Darling [LDN/NYC] works in digital media, installation, intervention, text and video, "dasein by design", and the spaces in which performance becomes unmediated experience. She has performed, published, collaborated and exhibited internationally. Belinda Blignaut is a South African artist, living and working near Cape Town.
UbuWeb Top Ten
July 2012
Selected by Bryan Waterman
1. Allen Ginsberg talks to Margaret Mead about the origins of the term Beat | Allen Ginsberg on UbuWeb Sound
2. 32 minutes of Yoko Ono's "Cough Piece" (1963) | Kenneth Goldsmith's Poetry Foundation Fluxus podcast
3. Fluxus Anthology 30th Anniversary Recordings
4. Allan Kaprow, How to Make a Happening LP (1968)
5. John Cage and Morton Feldman, "Radio Happenings I - V"
6. Antonello Branca, dir. What's Happening? (1967)
7. Giorno Poetry Systems / Dial-a-Poem Poet recordings (1972-82)
8. Aspen No. 3 (The Pop Art Issue)
9. The Andy Warhol Tapes narrated by John Giorno
10. Patti Smith early poetry readings & rock shows, 1971-74
Bryan Waterman teaches English at NYU, including courses on New York writing. He is the author of the 33 1/3 book on Televison's Marquee Moon.
UbuWeb Top Ten
June 2012
Selected by Nick Zedd
1. Guy Debord - Society of the Spectacle
2. Ant Farm - Media Burn
3. Ulrike Meinhof - Bambule (film)
4. Jon Moritsugu - Mommy, Mommy, Where's My Brain?
5. Robert Clampett - Russian Rhapsody
6. Jean Genet - Un Chant d'Amour
7. Kenneth Anger - Invocation of My Demon Brother
8. Buckminster Fuller - Interview on "Into the 21st Century
9. Marcel Duchamp - Jeu d'échecs avec Marcel Duchamp
10. Terrence McKenna - Riding Range with Marshall McLuhan | Marshall McLuhan's UbuWeb Sound Page
Nick Zedd is a filmmaker and theorist of The Cinema of Transgression.
UbuWeb Top Ten
May 2012
Selected by Ina Blom
1. Kenneth Anger - Puce Moment
2. Charlemagne Palestine - Island Song
3. Christian Marclay - Record Without A Cover | Marclay on Ubu
4. Keith Sonnier - Air to Air I & II
5. Raoul Hausmann- Phonemes | Hausmann on UbuWeb
6. Robert Filliou - A Filliou Sampler
7. Philip Guston's Poem Pictures
8. Wilhelm Sasnal - The Band
9. Pina Bausch - Café Müller
10. The fact that George Brecht's eight tampon and absorbent product-related patents are listed under Electronic Musical Resources
Ina Blom is a curator, writer, art historian and teacher, at the University of Olso.
UbuWeb Top Twenty-One
April 2012
Selected by Linda Norden
1. George Kubler - Style and Representation of Historical Time
2. Robert Smithson - Strata, a Geographic Fiction
3. Ed Ruscha - Parking Lot (detail)
4. The Musical Works of Alexander Scriabin
5. Jorge Luis Borges - The Craft of Verse: The Norton Lectures, 1967-68
6. Erik Satie - Pièces pour Guitare
7. Leslie Thornton - Peggy and Fred in Kansas
8. The Films of Ryan Trecartin
9. Todd Haynes - Dottie Gets Spanked
10. Frances Stark - This is not exactly a Cat Video
11. Joyce Wieland - Cat Food
12. Sun Ra - Brother From Another Planet
13. Phil Collins - The Louder You Scream The Faster We Go
14. The Films of Rodney Graham
15. Emile de Antonio - Point of Order
16. Rare Audio from Anthology Film Archives
17. The Films of Peggy Ahwesh
18. Bruce Nauman
19. Jordan Wolfson - Untitled
20. Mike Kelley - Extracurricular Activity & Superman Recites Selections from "The Bell Jar" and Other Works by Sylvia Plath
Linda Norden is a curator, writer, art historian and teacher, currently at large in New York.
UbuWeb Top Thirty-Five
March 2012
"1960"
Selected by Al Filreis
FILMS
Iannis Xenakis, NEG-ALE (1960)
Cioni Carpi, Punto e contrapunto (1960)
Joseph Cornell, Gnir Rednow (1960)
Ed van der Eisken, Handen (1960)
Stan VanDerBeek, Achooo Mr. Kerrooschev (1960)
Stan VanDerBeek, The Smiling Workman (1960)
Stan VanDerBeek, Blacks and Whites, Days and Nights (1960)
Stan VanDerBeek, Skullduggery Part II (1960-1961)
Harry Smith, Heaven and Earth Magic (1950-1960)
Alexander Kluge, Brutality in Stone (1960)
Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart, Lines: Vertical (1960)
Richard Myers, The Path (1960)
Nobuhiko Obayashi, Dandanko (1960)
Nobuhiko Obayashi, E no Naka no Shouja (1960)
Ken Jacobs, Little Stabs at Happiness (1960)
TEXT
Gustav Metzger, Auto-Destructive Art Manifesto (1960)
Jose Lino Grunewald, aromamora; falo; sempre ceder (all 1960)
Friedrich Achleitner, o-i-study; ouch; alas! (all 1960)
John Cage, Tacet (1960)
Louis Zukofsky, Julia's Wild (1960)
Eugen Gomringer, The Poem as Functional Object (1960)
Luis Bunuel, A Statement (1960)
SOUND
Berio, Luciano - "Momenti" (1960)
Clementi, Aldo - "Collage II" (1960)
Kagel, Maurizio - "Transicion I" (1958-1960)
Maderna, Bruno - "Dimensioni II (Invenzione su una Voce)" (1960)
Mathews, Max - "Numerology" (1960)
Nono, Luigi - "Omaggio a Emilio Vedova" (1960)
Pousseur, Henri - "Electre" (1960)
Xenakis, Iannis - "Orient-Occident" (1960)
Stockhausen, Karlheinz - "Kontakte" (1958-1960)
Brion Gysin, Mektoub: Recordings (1960-1981)
Salvador Dali, Salvador Dali Speaks (1960)
Richard Maxfield, Pastoral Symphony and Amazing Grace (1960)
William Carlos Williams, Interviews with Walter Sutton, Recorded October 11 & 20; November 3 & 15, 1960
WHY 1960?
I've been avidly researching the year 1960 with a special emphasis on poetry & poetics. Was '60 the turning-point year that I think it was? I suspect a claim could be made either way and in fact I'm more interested at the moment in describing why, despite all the new-decade & new-generation rhetoric, it is a point of continuity more than of change. Change was touted; continuity is the understory. In any case, I want to reach widely across politics and culture to get as rich a context as I can. Is '60 the moment when the end of the end of the Old Left had been reached and the New Left began to emerge? Is it the final ascendancy, in certain scenes at least, of poetic postmodernity? Surely the publication of Donald Allen's The New American Poetry that year suggests this, but then again--once again--we look back on "New" here and see continuity. The rhetoric of the Kennedy-Nixon contest made much less of a dent than everyone (at the time as well as since) claimed, so one wonders why were such great claims made? Had we come to expect "1960" to be truly ubiquitously modern in a way that the 1950s really were not--not quite? And what specifically does "modern" mean in the Kennedyesque talk then and now about the torch being passed to a new generation, etc.? The First Lady really meant "modernist" when Camelotians said "modern." What about the others across the new young cultural leadership? I've been surprised by how frequently the "Beat movement" was covered in 1960 in the mainstream press. I was expecting a fair measure but I've found tonnage. 1960 was the year when the figure of the beat was beginning to find acceptance, although still 80% of these stories are mocking, rebels-without-cause condescension. For anyone whose analysis made an impact nationally, do these antipolitical adolescents count as part of the "new young cultural leadership"? No, but rather than the two being opposites, they fall along a Continuum of the New American. Now that's a change for '60. -- Al Filreis, 1960 blog
UbuWeb Top Ten
February 2012
Selected by Rob Walker
1. Richard Prince & Bob Gober, “Tell me everything” | Richard Prince on UbuWeb Sound
2. David Greenberger's Duplex Planet
3. Patti Smith, “Jesus Christ.” | Patti Smith on UbuWeb Sound
4. People Like Us, “Dolly Pardon” | from Stifled Love
5. Olivier Messiaen – Oraison, “For Ondes Martenot” | from History of Electronic / Electroacoustic Music (1937-2001)
6. Terry Allen, “Juarez.”
7. Language Removal Services, “Marilyn Monroe,” | from Music Overheard
8. Charles Amirkhanian “Just.” | Charles Amirkhanian on UbuWeb Sound
9. "Discourses of Gender and Desire: The Semiotics of Media in the 60s,” | from Soundings, with Wayne Pond
10. UbuWeb Radio
Rob Walker is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and Design Observer.
UbuWeb Top Fifteen
January 2012
Selected by WFMU
1. Delia Derbyshire - Dreams
2. Sun Ra - Space is the Place Film
3. Tellus Cassette Magazine
4. Komar and Melamid & Dave Soldier - Most Un/Wanted Song
5. DJ Food - Raiding the 20th Century
6. People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz - Rhapsody in Glue
7. Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage
8. Vito Acconci - Ten Packed Minutes [MP3] Vito Acconci on UbuWeb Sound
9. Lumiere and Company - Three Short Films
10. Yukio Mishima - Yukoku, aka Patriotism
11. Weegee - The Real Weegee
12. Unknown - Learn to Speak Hawaiian
13. Assorted Street Posters
14. Francis E. Dec - Rants
15. Paul Dutton - Mouth Pieces
WFMU is the longest-running freeform radio station in the U.S.
UbuWeb Top Ten
December 2011
Selected by Geeta Dayal
1. Electronic Music Review No. 5 & No. 7 [PDFs]
2. Bell Telephone Laboratories - Computer Speech
3. Lillian Schwartz - UFO's
4. Pandit Pran Nath - Ragas of Morning and Night
5. Terry Jennings & Charlotte Moorman - Piece for Cello and Saxophone [MP3] | Charlotte Moorman on UbuWeb Sound
6. Tellus #14: Just Intonation
7. Frederic Rzewski - Coming Together, Attica (1973 Opus One recording)
8. The films of Piotr Kamler (soundtracks by Francois Bayle, Luc Ferrari, and Bernard Parmegiani)
9. Carolee Schneemann - Viet Flakes (sound collage by James Tenney)
10. James Tenney - Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow [MP3] | James Tenney on UbuWeb Sound
Geeta Dayal is a frequent contributor to Frieze and many other publications, writing on music, art, and technology.
UbuWeb Top Sixteen
November 2011
Selected by Los Angeles Free Music Society
1. Richard Serra - Railroad Turnbridge
(Joe Potts)
2. An Interview With Henry Miller; Life As I See It; Henry Miller Recalls and Reflects (Dennis Duck)
3. The Poetics - Soundworks (1977-1993) (Fredrik Nilsen)
4. Kenny Graham and his Satellites - Moondog and Suncat Suites (1957) (Rick Potts)
5. Sun Ra on WXPN Christmas Day 1976 (Ace Farren Ford)
6. The Films of Mauricio Kagel (Tom Recchion)
7. The Outsider: The Story of Harry Partch (Dennis Duck)
8. The Fims of Michael Snow (Joe Potts)
9. Tod Dockstader - Interview 1963 (WRVR, Riverside Radio, New York City)(Fredrik Nilsen)
10. GUTAI - Japanese Performance Art, 1956-1970 (Tom Recchion)
11. Salvador Dalí - A Soft Self Portrait (1967) (Ace Farren Ford)
12. Jack Smith - Flaming Creatures (Ace Farren Ford)
13. Out of Orbit: The Life and Times of Marshall McLuhan (1999) (Tom Recchion)
14. La Monte Young - The Well-Tuned Piano in The Magenta Lights (87 V 10 6:43:00 PM – 87 V 10 01:07:45 AM NYC) (Tom Recchion)
15. Sculpture Mouvante - Jean Tinguely (1981) (Tom Recchion)
16. The Films of Kurt Kren (1929-1998) (Tom Recchion)
Influential experimental-music anarchists Los Angeles Free Music Society have had an immeasurable impact on the spread and evolution of noise, avant-garde music, and DIY culture in the past 40 years. www.lafms.com
UbuWeb Top Ten for October 2011
Selected by Vijay Seshadri
1. Ketjack: The Ramayana Monkey Chant
2. Sun Ra: The Berkeley Lectures
3. Sound Sculptures (ed. John Grayson)
4. Legendary Epics Yarns and Fables: Stan Brakhage
5. The Films of Vito Acconci
6. Robert Smithson: Hotel Palenque
7. Robert Duncan on Ethnopoetics: "Rites of Participation"
8. Hugo Keesing: Chartsweep
9. Aspen No. 10: The Asia Issue
10. William Kentridge: Repeat from the Beginning
Vijay Seshadri is a poet, essayist, and, sometimes, a translator. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
UbuWeb Top Ten for September 2011
Selected by Rebecca Cleman
1. Zoe Beloff, The Dream Films
2. Patent: Apparatus for Drying and Treating of Hair Via Ultrasonics [PDF]
3. Brian De Palma, The Responsive Eye
4. Philip Guston and Clark Coolidge, A Car Part
5. George Kuchar, The Kiss of Frankenstein script [PDF]
6. Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas, The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology
7. The Space Lady, Major Tom
8. Claude Closky, The first thousand numbers classified in alphabetical order [PDF]
9. Avant Garde Project, Carl Ruggles
10. Ryan Trecartin, K-CoreaINC.K (Section A) script [PDF]
Rebecca Cleman is a writer and the Director of Distribution for Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NY.
UbuWeb Top Ten for August 2011
Selected by Anne Hilde Neset
1. Åke Hodell - Djurgårdsfärjan över floden Styx (Hodell on UbuWeb Sound)
2. JG Ballard -- The Unmade films of JG Ballard
3. Mark Leckey -- Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore
4. Marie Menken -- Go! Go! Go!
5. Marina Rosenfeld -- Teenage Lontano
6. Tony Oursler -- Synesthesia: Genesis P-Orridge
7. William Wegman -- Selected Works (excerpt)
8. Susan Sontag -- The Aesthetics Of Silence
9. Bengt af Klintberg -- The Cursive Scandinavian Slave [PDF] (Great Bear Pamphlets on Ubu Historical)
10. Sun Ra -- The Berkeley Lectures
Anne Hilde Neset is deputy editor The Wire.
UbuWeb Top 10 for July 2011
Selected by Thomas Baumgartner
1. Run For Your Life, Stephen McLaughlin
2. Radioscopie De Jacques Chancel: Salvador Dalí Part 1
3. Luc Ferrari, Le Carnet Nomade
4. Brion Gysin, I am that I am
5. Kurt Schwitters/ Die Schwindlinge, Sonate in Urlauten - Zweiter Teil Largo
6. Philippe Soupault, Interview (1959)
7. Erik Satie, Pièces pour guitares
8. Robert Desnos/ Description of a dream (1938)
9. Jean Dubuffet, Humeur incertaine
10. Laurie Anderson, It's Not The Bullet That Kills You - It's The Hole
Thomas Baumgartner is the host of Les Passagers de la Nuit on France Culture
UbuWeb Top 18 for June 2011
Selected by Jordan Wolfson
1. Takashi Murakami - Superflat Monogram (for Louis Vuitton) (2003)
2. Dara Birnbaum - Damnation of Faust Trilogy (1983)
3. The Death Killers
4. Samuel Becket - Askglöd
5. Frances Stark - [THIS IS NOT EXACTLY A CAT VIDEO]
6. Vito Acconci - Turn-On (1974)
7. Gertrude Stein - Matisse (1911)
8. Richard Kern - My Nightmare (1993)
9. Lacan-Jacques - Télévision
10. Karen Kilimnik - Kate Moss at the Beginning (undated)
11. Jack Goldstein - The Knife
12. Cheryl Donegan - HEAD (1993)
13. Oswald de Andrade - Anthropophagite Manifesto (May 1928)
14. Thomas Hirschhorn - Integrated Videos 1995-1999
15. Martha Rosler - Reads Vogue (1983)
16. Vietnamese Folk Poems
17. Chris Burden - Big Wrench (1980)
18. Wes Harrision - Fun with Sound
Jordan Wolfson is an artist.
UbuWeb Top Ten for April 2011
Selected by Jay Sanders
1. Tom Johnson "The Voice of New Music (1972-1982)
[PDF, 7.8mb]
2. Dylan Nyoukis / Blood Stereo (A Retrospective)
3. Les Levine "Lose" & "Hereditary Language"
4. Hannah Weiner "Little Books / Indians"
5. Alex Hubbard "The Collapse of the Expanded Field I-III"
6. Frans Zwartjes "Living"
7. Jeremy Sigler "Math" [PDF, 3mb]
8. Eric Andersen "Opus 74 Version 2"
10. Bob Brown "1450 - 1950"
10.5 Street Posters:
Ivalo
Mortal Man
Cluck Close's Fifteen Minutes
Jay Sanders is the co-curator of the 2012 Whitney Biennial.
UbuWeb Top Ten for March 2011
Selected by John Zorn
Sound (In Alphabetical Order)
1. Karel Appel - Poeme Barbare
[Appel on UbuWeb Sound]
2. Antonin Artaud - Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement Du Dieu
3. Guy Debord - Situationisten - Tracks 1 - 6
4. Forough Farrokhzhad - Fathe Bagh
[Farrokhzhad on UbuWeb Sound]
5. Howard Finster - Some Of These Days
The Sound Of The Night Howard Finster Got Saved
6. Richard Foreman - Loops From Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty
7. Maurice Lemaître - Improvisation Lettriste Pour Danser
[Maurice Lemaître on UbuWeb Sound]
8. Richard Maxfield - Bacchanale (1963)
[Maxfield on UbuWeb Sound]
9. Harry Smith - Interview 1965 Part One And Two
10. Tristan Tzara - L'amiral Cherche Une Maison A Louer
[Tzara on UbuWeb Sound]
Film (In Alphabetical Order)
1. Harry Smith - Heaven And Earth Magic
2. Joseph Cornell - Rose Hobart
3. Jack Smith - Flaming Creatures
4. Hermann Nitsch - Maria Conception Aktion
5. Kenneth Anger - Lucifer Rising
6. Yayoi Kusama - Kusama's Self Obliteration
7. Forough Farrokzhad - The House Is Black
8. Kiki Smith - Jewel
9. Guy Debord - Critique de la séparation
10. John Cage And Raasaan Roland Kirk - Sound??
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist.
UbuWeb Top Ten for February 2011
Selected by Ràdio Web MACBA
10 Curators Selected 10 Resources
1. Isidore Isou - Traité de bave et d'éternité
(Selected by Frédéric Acquaviva)
2. John Berger - Ways of Seeing: Commercial Art
(Selected by Chris Cutler)
3. Sten Hanson - That Jackson Is My Favourite Poet
(Selected by Ricardo Duque and Lucrecia Dalt)
4. John MacDonald - Strathspey / The Reel Of Tulloch (Celtic Mouth Music)
(Selected by Mark Fell)
5. James Joyce reading 'Anna Livia Plurabelle'
(Selected by Joe Gilmore)
6. Brenda Hutchinson - Violet Flames
(Selected by Barbara Held)
7. Hermann Nitsch -'Allerheiligensinfonie 1', from 6th Symphony / Allerheiligensinfonie
(Selected by Roc Jiménez de Cisneros)
8. Robert Ashley - Music With Roots In The Aether
(Selected by Jon Leidecker)
9. Gregory Whitehead - we all scream alone
(Selected by Felix Kubin)
10. Paul De Marinis - Eenie Meenie Chillie Beenie
(Selected by Anna Ramos)
Ràdio Web MACBA is a radiophonic project that explores the possibilities of the internet and radio as spaces of synthesis and exhibition. This platform, which began in 2006 as a showcase for the exhibitions and activities of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), has developed into a content-generator for specific projects, focusing on the exploration of sound art, radiophonic art and experimental music.
UbuWeb Top Ten for January 2011
Selected by Paula Scher
1. Stan Vanderbeek - Achoo Mrr, Kerrooschev
2. Merce Cunningham - Points in Space
3. John Berger: Ways of Seeing - Women in Art
4. Peggy Ahwesh - Beirut Outtakes
5. Jean Panlieve - Le Vampire
7. Man Ray - The Bazaar Years
8. Thomas Demand - Tunnel
9. Fat Boy Slim - Weapon of Choice
10. Ant Farm - Media Burn
Paula Scher is a graphic designer and artist. She is a principal of the International design consultancy, Pentagram. She is also known for her large scale map paintings of dense and obsessive information.
Top Ten:
December 2010
Selected by Warren Ellis
1. Ketjak: The Ramayana Monkey Chant
2. Orson Welles - The One Man Band (1995)
3. Sun Ra: The Berkeley Lectures, 1971
4. Tuvan Throat Singing
5. John Berger: Ways Of Seeing
6. Samuel Beckett: Film
7. Charlemagne Palestine - Four Manifestations on Six Elements (1974)
8. Delia Derbyshire: Dreams
9. The Ancient Order Flyers
10. Eliane Radigue: Kyema, Intermediate States (1992)
Warren Ellis is an award-winning creator of graphic novels. He blogs here.
Top Ten:
November 2010
Selected by Peggy Ahwesh
1. Jean Painleve - The Vampire Bat
2. Borbetomagus - Snuff Jazz
3. Kurt Kren - O Tannenbaum
4. Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out
5. Pier Paolo Pasolini - Seeking Locations in Palestine for the Film "The Gospel According to Matthew" (Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il film "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo")
6. The Signifying Monkey: Two Versions of a Toast)
7. Forough Farrokhzad - The House is Black)
8. Harrell Fletcher - Blot Out the Sun
9. Leslie Thornton - Photography is Easy, Version 2
10. Germaine Dulac - Invitation au Voyage
Peggy Ahwesh is an artist who works in film, audio and installation. A recent retrospective program of her work, "Laugh My Darling", was held at The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. More at EAI.
Top Ten:
October 2010
Selected by Jennifer Higgie
1. Laurie Anderson - Difficult Listening Hour
2. Fred Astaire - Bojangles of Harlem from Swing Time (1936)
3. The Wooster Group - Rhyme 'Em To Death (1993)
4. Abu Ali Mustafa - They Do Not Exist (Laysa lahum wujud) (1974)
5. Mark Leckey - Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999)
6. Sun Ra - Space Is the Place (1974)
7. Alfred Leslie - The Last Clean Shirt (1964)
8. Marie Osmond recited Hugo Ball's "Karawane" (Hugo Ball on Ubu)
9. Samuel Beckett - Film (1965)
10. Peter Greenaway - Four American Composers: Meredith Monk (1983)
Jennifer Higgie is a writer and co-editor of Frieze Magazine.
Top Ten:
September 2010
Selected by Maira Kalman
1. Speechless 1-8 - Visual & Concrete Poetry Zine
2. Mauricio Kagel - Ludwig Van (1969, complete version)
3. Man Ray - The Bazaar Years [documentary] (1994)
4. Simon Morris - The Royal Road to the Unconscious (2003)
5. Joseph Beuys - Filz TV / Felt TV (1970)
6. Salvador Dalí - Salvador Dalí Speaks (1960) (My favorite of these)
7. Eugene Deslaw - La marche des machines AKA March of the Machines (1929)
8. Merce Cunningham - Points in Space (1986)
9. William Kentridge - Stereoscope (1999)
10. Bertrand Russell ABC of Relativity: Understanding Einstein
Maira Kalman is the co-founder (with Alex Melamid) of the Rubber Band Society. She is an author/illustrator of magazine and newspaper essays (NYTimes, New Yorker) and of childrens' and adult books. A retrospective of her drawings, curated by Ingrid Schaffner at the ICA in Philadelphia, is now making its way around the country. She is represented by the Julie Saul Gallery in NY.
Top Ten:
August 2010
Selected by Mathieu Copeland
An exhibition of the word(s)
A. Dziga Vertov Group - Letter to Jane
B. Michael Snow - So this is
C. Franck Leibovici - 9+11 [PDF]
D. Karl Holmqvist - Rockland
E. Meredith Monk - As if it came from an oral tradition from Chicago '82: A Dip in the Lake
F. James Lee Byars - Pronounce perfect until it appears, 1979, 0'03" from Happy New Ear
G. Salvador Dali - La Méthode Paranoïaque Critique from Je Suis Fou De Dalí!
H. Gilbert and George - Ten Commandments for Gilbert and George
I. Keren Cytter - Der Spiegel
J. Bob Cobbing - Performing Concrete Poetry [here] and [here]
K. Erica Baum - Body Language [PDF] (Erica Baum on Ubu)
L. Bern Porter - The Last Acts of St. Fuck You [PDF] (Bern Porter on Ubu)
Mathieu Copeland is a curator who seeks to subvert the traditional role of exhibitions and to renew our perceptions. More on www.mathieucopeland.net
Top Ten:
July 2010
Selected by Tim Griffin
1. John Baldessari - The Meaning of Various News Photos to Ed Henderson
2. Michael Smith - The MUSCO Story: 1969-1997
3. Al Ruppersberg The Secret of Life and Death (dir. Peter Kirby)
4. Ant Farm - Media Burn
5. Peggy Ahwesh - Beirut Outtakes
6. Paul Sharits - Sears Catalogue 1-3
7. Cecil Taylor - Chinampas
8. Louise Lawler - Bird Calls
9. John Armleder - 16 Great Turn-Ons
10. Marcel Broodthaers Interview with a Cat
11. Djibril Diop Mambéty - Contras City (1968)
12. Seth Price - Cold Soul
Tim Griffin is editor-at-large of Artforum. He is currently at work on Compression, a book due out from Sternberg Press, Berlin, in 2011.
Top Ten:
June 2010
Selected by Rob Young
Dreams and Journeys
1. Delia Derbyshire - Land [Derbyshire on Ubu]
2. JG Ballard - Shanghai Jim
3. Claude Lelouch - Iran (1971)
4. Tacita Dean - Kodak
5. Taj Mahal Travellers on Tour 1973
6. Doug Aitken - Electric Earth
7. Nurse With Wound - Shipwreck Radio
8. Ken Jacobs - Disorient Express
9. Thomas Demand - Tunnel
10. Ake Hodell - Djurgårds Ferry Across the River Styx (1972) [Hodell on UbuWeb]
Rob Young is an English writer and editor-at-large of The Wire magazine. His book Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music is published this summer by Faber. Young blogs at Electric Eden.
Top Ten:
May 2010
Selected by Aram Saroyan
1. Andy Warhol - The Plastic Exploding Inevitable Newspaper
2. John Cage - Memogram Correspondences
3. Vito Acconci - Two Track (1971)
4. Yvonne Rainer - Hand Movie (1966)
5. Ernst Jandl - Sound Poems
6. Carl Fernbach Flarsheim - Visual Poems
7. Morton Feldman - Audio Works
8. Steve Reich - Score for Pendulum Music, 1968
9. Al Hansen - Incomplete Requiem for W. C. Fields (1966)
10. Ian Hamilton Finlay - Wave/rock
Aram Saroyan is an American poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright. His Complete Minimal Poems won the 2008 William Carlos Williams Award. A selection of his works can be found on UbuWeb.
Top Ten:
April 2010
Selected by Kay Rosen
1. Bas Jan Ader - Selected Works (1970-71)
2. Samuel Beckett - from Watt
3. John Cage - A Dip In the Lake
4. Hanne Darboven - Opus 17a
5. Cheryl Donegan - Kiss My Royal Irish Ass (K.M.R.I.A.)
6. Dominique Gonzales-Foerster - Parc Central - Kyoto
7. Steve Reich - Score for Pendulum Music
8. Michael Smith and Joshua White - The Musco Story: 1969-1997
9. Michael Snow - So This Is
10. Geoffrey Young - Kenny
Kay Rosen is an artist. A forty-year survey of her work Kay Rosen AKAK was recently published by Regency Arts Press. A selection of her works can be found on UbuWeb.
Top Ten:
March 2010
Selected by Marjorie Perloff
1. Ernst Jandl, Bist eulen?
2. William Kentridge - Stereoscope
3. Samuel Beckett - Quadrat 1+2
4. Cheryl Donegan - Refuses
5. VerbiVocoVisual Concrete Poetry and Music (1956-1970)
6. Merce Cunningham - Points in Space (1986)
7. Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt - Mono Lake
8. Caroline Bergvall, Via and About Face
9. Derek Beaulieu -"an afterword after words: notes towards a `concrete poetic" [PDF]
10. Öyvind Fahlström - Manifesto for Concrete Poetry (1952-55)
Marjorie Perloff co-edited with Craig Dworkin THE SOUND OF POETRY/THE POETRY OF SOUND (Chicago, 2009). Her UNORIGINAL GENIUS: POETRY BY OTHER MEANS IN THE NEW CENTURY will be published in Fall 2010.
Top Ten:
February 2010
Selected by Christian Wiman
1. Christopher Logue - "This is the final statement..." (1934-35) (From Aspen 7)
2. John Tavener - For Rene Magritte (From Aspen 7)
3. Ed Dorn - from Gunslinger, Book 4 (From Giorno Poetry Systems - Totally Corrupt )
4. UbuWeb Podcast - Women of the Avant Garde Part 2 (Ubu Podcast Page)
5. Indonesian Ketjack
6. Laurie Anderson - Difficult Listening Hour (from The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July (1986) )
7. Ian Hamilton Finlay - Fisherman's Cross (Finlay's page on Ubu)
8. Works by Alexander Scriabin (From Aspen 2)
9. John Baldessari: Some Stories (1990)
10. Susan Sontag - The Aesthetics of Silence From Aspen 5 + 6)
Christian Wiman is the editor of Poetry. His new book of poems, Every Riven Thing, will be published in November by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Top Ten:
January 2010
Selected by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
1. Gertrude Stein - If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (1934-35) (Stein page on Ubu)
2. Paul Chan - Untitled Video on Lynne Stewart and Her Conviction, The Law, and Poetry (2006)
3. Maya Deren - A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945)
4. Forough Farrokhzad - Radio Tehran Sessions (1962-1964) (Farrokhzad page on Ubu)
5. Canada Inuit Games and Songs - Katajjaq (Inuit page on Ubu)
6. John Cage - Mushroom Haiku, excerpt from Silence (1972/69) (from The Dial-A-Poem Poets LP)
7. Dara Birnbaum - from "Damnation of Faust Trilogy" (1983)
8. Tacita Dean - Kodak (2006)
9. Dan Graham - Performer/Audience/Mirror (1975)
10. Jacques Lacan - Télévision
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is the Artistic Director of Documenta 13 to take place in 2012.
Top Ten:
December 2009
Selected by Joan La Barbara
1. Agnes Varda - Plaisir d'amour en Iran (1976)
Reminded me of all that has been lost ...
2. Merce Cunningham - Points in Space (1986)
A wonderful doc about the making of the film and the work itself; great to see the guys happy and in action!
3. Bruce Nauman - Pinch Neck | Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square
Stamping in the Studio is wonderful, too - a veritable dance determinedly without flair - but I love the obsessive singularity of Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square, and Pinch Neck is truly voluptuous.
4. Kathy Acker - Redoing Childhood
Especially track 1: President Bush
5. Alfred Leslie & Frank O'Hara - The Last Clean Shirt
""The Last Clean Shirt" = life without seatbelts ...
6. Demetrio Stratos recordings
Start anywhere, listen as long as you like/can, choose another, listen, choose another; we will not see/hear his like again.
7. Jaap Blonk & Golan Levin - Ursonography (2005)
8. The World Record | Readings at the St. Mark's Poetry Project
It's all wonderful but especially Bob Creeley and Ted Berrigan.
9. John Giorno & Anne Waldman: "a Kulchur Selection"
The Fast Speaking Woman herself: Anne Waldman.
10. David Moss and Peter Rose - Siren
Joan La Barbara's career as a composer/performer/soundartist explores the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument expanding traditional boundaries, creating works for multiple voices, chamber ensembles, music theater, orchestra and interactive technology, developing a unique vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques.
Top Ten:
November 2009
Selected by Purtill Family Business
1. Dick Higgins - A Book About Love & War, 1965. Chapter 7 & Death Canto 1 (PDF)
2. Rege Cordic & Mr. Sargent - Sounds of Ground Breaking
3. Charles Simonds, Birth (1970)
4. Michael Snow, La Region Centrale
5. Robert Smithson - Strata, a Geophotographic Fiction
6. Wallace Berman, Untitled (1973)
7. Bob Lewis and Alfred Etter - The Braille Trail
8. Hollis Frampton, Heterodyne, 1967
9. Clark Coolidge + Philip Guston, Line Drops
10. Seth Price, Dispersion, 2002. (See clip art on page 6!) [PDF, 4.5mb]
Purtill Family Business (Conny Purtill all the time and Jenelle Porter sometimes) is a graphic design studio specializing in catalogues for artists and museums. Lately, they have been thinking a lot about the ground.
Top Ten:
October 2009
Selected by Peter Gidal
1. Samuel Beckett - A Piece of Monologue (performed by David Warrilow (MP3)
when writing my beckettbook having heard this piece on the radio perchance one day in ny I visited david w. and he was fab!
2. Samuel Beckett - Not I (performed by Billie Whitelaw)
still one of the best theatre pieces in existence
3. John Cale - Loop (1966)
which ive loved since it first appeared with my aspen subscription in the mail at brandeis
4. Ernst Jandl - deutsches gedicht (MP3)
5. Kurt Schwitters - Ursonate (MP3)
6. Malcolm Le Grice - Berlin Horse (1970) (MP3)
just such a stunning work I literally see it whenever I can multiscreen single screen since inception....
7. Gertrude Stein - If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (MP3)
8. Bruce Nauman - Stamping in the Studio
9. James Joyce- Anna Livia Plurabelle (MP3)
10. Art Worker's Coalition - Open Hearing [PDF, 22mb]
speaks for itself. and reminds me of discussions with gregory battcock about warhol etc on the ss maasdam crossing atlantic, in the mid 60's.....
Peter Gidal is both the chief theorist of the 1970s film avant-garde, and its most austere image-maker. He also is the foremost exponent of British structural cinema. His films can be viewed here on UbuWeb.
Top Ten:
September 2009
Selected by Hans Ulrich Obrist & Andy Dancer
Ten Oulipian-inspired UbuWeb Resources
1. Caroline Bergvall - Via (MP3)
2. Christian Bök - Chapter E from Eunoia
3. Claude Closky - All the Musical Notes Classified in Alphabetical Order (French and English Versions)
4. Cheryl Donegan - Refuses
5. Marcel Duchamp - La Mariée mise à nu par ses Célibataires, même" (MP3)
6. Xavier Gautier - Lydia (MP3)
7. Kenneth Goldsmith - No. 111 2.7.92-10.20.96
8. Helmut Herbst - Deutschland Dada
9. Hollis Frampton - Palindrome
10. Peter Manson English in Mallarmé (PDF, 684k)
My first Eureka moments in terms of curating was when I met Fischli/Weiss in 1985.
They sent me to see Alighiero Boetti in Rome and soon after I met Christian Boltanski in Paris. These conversations had freed me up in terms of what curating was concerned. I started to think about exhibitions which were unlike anything I had thought about before. They taught me the importance of experimentation, that there was not a prescriptive way of doing exhibitions. They also taught me that we only remember exhibitions which invent new rules of the game. These conversations and many other conversations led to my first exhibition World Soup the Kitchen show where my kitchen was transformed into an exhibition space and then one thing led to the next. Soon after these first conversations with artists I was very inspired by literature . Particularly important for me in relation to constraints and the invention of new rules of the games of exhibitions was the Oulipo group through which I became familiar thanks so Christian Boltanski who urged me to read Georges Perec and Jacques Roubaud. I then also read Raymond Roussel's How I Wrote Certain of my Books where he describes the games he plays with language and how these games would produce what Harry Mathews one of the protagonists of the group calls "absolutely unimaginable incidents of fiction".
Francois Le Lionnais another Oulipo protagonist emphasizes the importance of the term potentiality which he prefers to experimental, potentiality meaning the attempt to find something which has not yet been done and which could be realised.
Oulipo became the trigger for many of my curatorial projects in the 90s such as do it and unbuilt road.
-- Hans Ulrich Obrist, September 2009
Hans Ulrich Obrist is the Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
Andy Dancer is a freelance curator.
Top Ten:
August 2009
Selected by Lionel Marchetti
1. Paul Sharits - Epileptic Seizure Comparison (1976)
2. François Dufrêne - Crirythme pour Bob Cobbing
3. William Carlos Williams - The Yellow Flower from Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems
4. Trevor Wishart - Red Bird (1980)
5. The Soundworks of Ilhan Mimaroglu
6. UbuWeb Ethnopoetics - Soundings
7. Celtic Mouth Music
8. Thomas A. Clark - Mantra
9. Jean Dubuffet - Coq à l'oeil
10. John Duncan - No
Lionel Marchetti is a composer. A selection of his works can be found on UbuWeb here.
Top Ten:
July 2009
Selected by Sina Najafi
(Cabinet magazine)
1. Forough Farrokhzad - The House is Black / Khaneh Siyah Ast (1962)
2. Ali Akbar Sadeghi - Malek Khorshid (1975)
3. Tacita Dean - Kodak (2006)
4. Derek Jarman - Shadow of the Sun (1980)
5. Survival Research Laboratories - Virtues of Negative Fascination (1985-86)
6. William Burroughs | Keynote Commentary & Roosevelt After Inauguration (MP3, 5:52) [from The Nova Convention]
7. Bengt af Klintberg - The Cursive Scandinavian Slave (1967)
8. Ezra Pound - Canto XVII ("So that the vine burst from my fingers')(MP3, 7:00)
9. The Signifying Monkey: Two Versions of a Toast, Example 2 (MP3, 2'58")
10. Unknown Artist -- No One Should Collect Anything
""Ubu is an embarrassment of riches. After hours of aimless but enjoyable rummaging, I finally decided to employ the ultimate organizing principle -- narcissism. This list is structured around my own life and comprises works I like from the four countries I've lived in. The ten items are chronological (Iran, UK, US, Sweden, and back to the US) and proportioned according to the time I spent in each place. I included Tacita Dean, who is exactly my age, not only because I like her work but because she went to a school across the street from mine in Canterbury, England." - Sina Najafi
Sina Najafi is editor-in-chief of Cabinet magazine.
Top Ten:
June 2009
Selected by Mika Tajima
1. C. Spencer Yeh--Solo Violin
2. Yvonne Rainer--Three Distributions
3. Agnes Varda--Black Panthers-Huey!
4. Vito Acconci--Theme Song
5. Tellus #13--Power Electronics
6. Nam June Paik--Edited for Television
7. Peter Campus--Double Vision
8. Liliann Schwartz--Pixellation
9. Edgard Varese, Iannis Xenakis & Le Corbusier
9. Rahsaan Roland Kirk and John Cage--Sound?
Mika Tajima is an artist and also works under the collaborative moniker New Humans. Recent shows include SFMoMA, X Initiative, The Kitchen, Whitney Biennial 2008, among others.
Top Ten:
May 2009
Selected by David Toop
1. Henri Michaux: Images du Monde Visionnaire
2. Yves Klein: Anthropometries of the Blue Period & Fire Paintings
3. Jacques Lacan: Télévision
4. Yukio Mishima: Rite of Love and Death
5. Chris Marker, John Chapman & Frank Simeone: Junkopia
6. Ethnopoetics: Canntaireachd - Earl of Seaforth's Salute
7. Ethnopoetics: Slim and Slam - 'African Jive'
8. La Monte Young: Drift Study 31 1 69, Aspen 8, item 5.
9. J.G. Ballard: Shanghai Jim
10. Group Ongaku: Automatism
David Toop is a musician/composer, writer and curator. More here.
Top Ten:
April 2009
Selected by Pauline Oliveros
1. Billy Bang - "Daydreams"
2. Guy Klucevsek - "Clairvoyant"
3. Mauricio Kagel - Antithese
4. Tehching Hsieh (b. 1950) - One Year Performance, No. 2 (1980-81)
5. Her Noise - The Making Of
6. Terry Fox - Children's Tapes
7. Glenn Gould - Karlheinz Klopweisser Promo for CBC
8. Sainkho Namtchylak - Roulette TV
9. John Baldessari (b. 1931) - Baldessari Sings Lewitt
Pauline Oliveros (b. 1932) is an accordionist and composer who was a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music. Oliveros was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director. She has taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros has written books, formulated new music theories and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of Deep Listening and "sonic awareness". More here.
Top Ten:
March 2009
Selected by Naomi Beckwith
1. Tristan Tzara "A Note On Negro Poetry" (1918)
2. Stan Douglas "Der Sandmann"
3. Ben Patterson Tells Fluxus stories [MP3]
4. Stephen Vitiello "Drum and Organ" [MP3]
5. Farfa "Affaraffari" [MP3]
6. Alfred Leslie & Frank O'Hara "The Last Clean Shirt
7. Anton Corbijn "Some YoYo Stuff: An observation of the observations of Don Van Vliet"
8. Mona Hatoum "Measures of Distance"
9. Tehching Hsieh "One Year Performance No. 2"
10. Aram Saroyan "Crickets" [MP3]
Naomi Beckwith is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of The Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Top Ten:
February 2009
Selected by Dennis Cooper
1. Alexander Kluge 'Brutality in Stone (Yesterday Goes on Forever)'
2. Ryan Trecartin 'I-Be AREA'
3. Alain Robbe-Grillet 'Jealousy'
4. Douglas Huebler 'Variable Piece 4 New York City: Secrets' [PDF]
5. Tellus #15: The Improvisors
6. Rene Ricard 'Rene Ricard famous at 20'
7. Chris Burden 'Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74'
8. Claude Simon 'Properties of Several Geometric and Non-Geometric Figures'
9. Glenn Branca/The Static 'The Static'
10. Terayama Shuji 'Experimental Image World Vol. 1'
Dennis Cooper is the author of eight novels, most recently 'The Sluts' and 'God Jr.' (both 2005). With the French director Gisele Vienne, he has co-created theater five works, most recently 'Jerk' (2007). He's a Contributing Editor of Artforum, and editor of the publishing imprint Little House on the Bowery/Akashic Books. His blog is here.
Top Ten:
January 2009
Selected by James Hoff
1. Sjollander/Weck: Extracts from Monument
2. Ron Rice: A Brief History of Anti-Records and Conceptual Records
3. Alan Sondheim: Run by Me
4. Ulay: Action in 14 Predetermined Sequences
5. Joseph Nechvatal: viral symphOny (28'09")
6. Henry Chopin Performance: Undated
7. CoLab: All Color News Sampler
8. John Cage / Wim Mertens "So that each person is in charge of himself."from A Dip in the Lake
9. Dec-Francis: Rant 2
10. Charlemagne Palestine: Island Song
James Hoff is an artist living in New York City. He, along with Miriam Katzeff, is the co-founder of Primary Information.
Top Ten:
December 2008
Selected by Julian Cowley
1. Robert Ashley - Music with Roots in the Aether
2. Joe Jones/ Chicken to Kitchen Fluxus Meditation from Fluxsaints (1992)
3. Robert Wilson - Christopher Knowles The Sundance Kid Is Beautiful (1975) from Giorno Poetry Systems, Big Ego
4. Wolf Vostell - De/Collage [LP] (1980)
5. John Cage and Raahsan Roland Kirk - Sound?? (1966)
6. Nicholas Moore, Spleen (Ubu Editions, 2004)
7. Pina Bausch Documentary (directed by Anne Linsel) (2006)
8. David Behrman, Long Throw (Roulette, 2008)
9. Derek Bailey, Interview by Henry Kaiser (1987)
10. Vito Acconci, The Bristol Project (2001)
Julian Cowley contributes regularly to The Wire and occasionally to other music magazines. He has also lectured and written extensively on literature. During the 1980s he had the good fortune to work closely for several years with poet and critic Eric Mottram, whose inexhaustible conversation was, in effect, a foretaste of the UbuWeb experience.
Top Ten:
November 2008
Selected by Neville Wakefield
1. Willoughby Sharp Interviews Vito Acconci (1973)
2. Bas Jan Ader - Selected Works (1970-71)
3. Pipilotti Rist - Video Works (1986-2003)
4. Chris Burden - Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74
5. Johan Grimonprez - Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997)
6. The Films of Jack Goldstein (1974-1978)
7. Gordon Matta-Clark - Splitting, Bingo/Ninths, Substrait (Underground Dailies) (1974-1976)
8. Lawrence Weiner - WATER IN MILK EXISTS (2008)
9. Psychic TV - "Unclean"
10. Robert Smithson - Bootleg of Hotel Palenque by Alex Hubbard (1969 / 2004)
Neville Wakefield is a writer and curator living in NYC. Recent film projects include 'destricted' a compilation of commissioned films by Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Marco Brambilla, Larry Clark, Gaspar Noe, Richard Prince and Sam Taylor Wood. Senior curatorial advisor to PS1 and curator of Frieze he is also creative director of 'tar' magazine.
Top Ten:
October 2008
Selected by Gary Sullivan
1. Jaap Blonk's sound files
2. Dada Magazine
3. Drew Gardner's sound files
4. Kenneth Goldsmith, editor, "Publishing the Unpublishable" series
5. George Kuchar's films (especially "Corruption of the Damned")
6. Anders Lundgerg, Jonas Magnusson and Jesper Olsson, editors, "After Language Poetry" papers
7. Paper Rad's "P-Unit Mixtape"
8. Bern Porter's page
9. Jerome Rothenberg's Ethnopoetics : Soundings page (especially "Ca Dao, Vietnamese Folk Poems")
10. Survival Research Laboratories, "Virtues of Negative Fascination"
Poet and cartoonist Gary Sullivan lives in Brooklyn with Nada Gordon. Together, they wrote the book Swoon. Gary's most recent book is PPL in a Depot. He has published three issues of a comic book, Elsewhere, and maintains a blog by the same name at http://garysullivan.blogspot.com.
Top Ten:
September 2008
Selected by Rick Moody
1. Komar and Melamid & Dave Soldier, "The Most Unwanted Song"
2. Jacques Derrida, "On Religion" Part 1, Part 2
3. Assorted Street Posters
4. William Carlos Williams, "Danse Russe."
5. Beth B., "Stigmata"
6. James Joyce, "Anna Livia Plurabelle"
7. Tellus #14, "Just Intonation"
8. Hugo Ball, "Karawane," performed by Marie Osmond
9. Gregory Whitehead, "We All Scream Alone"
10. John Cage Meets Sun Ra
Rick Moody is the author of four novels, three collections of stories, and a memoir, THE BLACK VEIL. He also plays music with The Wingdale Community Singers.
Top Ten:
August 2008
Selected by Ben Rubin
1. Erik Saite - A Day in the Life of a Musician
2. Richard Leacock - For an Uncontrolled Cinema
3. William S. Burroughs - The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin
4. Claude Cloksy - The first thousand numbers classified in alphabetical order
5. Robert Smithson - A Heap of Language
6. Vito Acconci - RE
7. Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage, Side A , Side B
8. Raphael Rubinstein - A Brief History of Appropriative Writing
9. Marjorie Perloff - The Music of Verbal Space
10. Steve Reich - Pendulum Music (score)
Ben Rubin is a media artist based in New York City. He has been a frequent collaborator with artists and performers including Laurie Anderson, Diller+Scofidio, Ann Hamilton, Arto Lindsay, Steve Reich, and Beryl Korot.
Top Ten:
July 2008
Selected by Zach Feuer
1. Paul McCarthy - Painter (1995)
2. Pipilotti Rist - Video Works (1986-1999)
3. Richard Kern - My Nightmare (1993)
4. Bas Jan Ader - Fall I & II (1970)
5. Lynda Benglis - Female Sensibility (1974)
6. Sophie Calle & Greg Shepard - No Sex Last Night aka Double-Blind (1992)
7. Kembra Pfahler - Cornella; The Story of a Burning Bush (1985)
8. Robert Morris & Stan VanDerBeek - Site (excerpt) (1964, .mov)
9. Carolee Schneeman - Meat Joy (1964)
10. Dan Graham - Rock My Religion (1982-84)
Zach Feuer owns the creatively named Zach Feuer Gallery in New York City.
Top Ten:
June 2008
Selected by Ron Silliman
1. Frank Film (1973), Frank and Caroline Mouris
2. The Name (1973), Robert Creeley
3. Recollections of Grande Apachería (1973), Edward Dorn
4. Reading at Goddard College (1973), Robert Creeley
5. Carnival The First Panel: 1967-1970 (1973), Steve McCaffery
6. Black Tarantula Crossword Gathas (excerpt) (1973), Jackson Mac Low
7. A Vocabulary for Sharon Belle Matlin (1973), Jackson Mac Low
8. Heavy Aspirations (1973), Charles Amirkhanian
9. Armand Schwerner (1973), Phil Niblock (real video .rm file)
10. High Kukus (1973), James Broughton
Ron Silliman was once a slow left-handed second baseman. Now he lives in a faux forest in what was once the Biddle Estate.
Top Ten:
May 2008
Selected by Christian Bök
1. Claude Closky: "The First Thousand Numbers Classified in Alphabetical Order" (1989) [PDF]
2. Derek Beaulieu: "Flatland" (2007) [PDF]
3. Darren Wershler-Henry: "The Tapeworm Foundry" (2002)
4. Claude Simon: "Properties of Several Geometric and Non-Geometric Figures" (1971)
5. F. T. Marinetti: "Dune, Parole in Libertà" (1914)
6. Survival Research Laboratories: "Virtues of Negative Fascination" (1985-86)
7. Seth Price: "Video Game Soundtracks 1983-1987" (2001)
8. Trek Bloopers
9. Anton Bruhin: "Rotomotor" (1976-77)
10. RACTER: "The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed" (1984)
BONUS TRACK:
IBM 7090: "Music from Mathematics" (1962)
Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia.
Top Ten:
April 2008
Selected by Laura Beiles
1. Anita Feldman and Michael Kowalski, Riffle (1985)
2. MoMA: Writing in Time (2007)
3. Piotr Kamler, Films (1960s-90s)
4. Fortunato Depero, Verbalizzazione astratta di signora (1916)
5. Penelope Umbrico, All the Dishes on Ebay (2002-03)
6. Catherine Jauniaux & Ikue Mori, 'Smell' (1992)
7. Abbie Hoffman Makes Gefilte Fish (1973)
8. Mary Lou Green on Andy Warhol's Hair (1963)
9. Sophie Calle and Gregory Shephard, Double Blind (1992)
10. Cioni Carpi, Three Short Films (1960-62)
Laura Beiles is an associate educator in the Department of Education (Adult and Academic Programs) at The Museum of Modern Art, where she has organized programs with artists, poets, scholars, architects, and designers for seven years. In May of 2007, she received her MA in Art History from Hunter College, and received the Shuster Award for her thesis, "Creating National and International Identities: The Futurist Exhibitions at the Venice Biennale under Fascism, 1928-1942". Prior to coming to MoMA, she worked at NYU's La Pietra in Florence and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
Top Ten:
March 2008
Selected by Seth Price
1. Tessa Hughes-Freeland "Baby Doll" (1982)
2. Marie Menken "Glimpse of the Garden" (1957)
3. Robert Barry "Interview (1969)"
4. Ethyl Eichelberger "Jocasta (Boy Crazy) or "She Married Her Son" (1986)
5. Lytle Shaw "Low-Level Bureaucratic Structures: Principles of the Emeryville Shellmound
6. Taj Mahal Travellers "Taj Mahal Travellers on Tour" (1973)
7. Asger Jorn "Pataphysics: A Religion in the Making"
8. Racter "The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed" (1984)
9. Tristan Tzara "A Note on Negro Poetry" (1918)
10. I.B.M. 7090 "Music From Mathematics" (1962)
Seth Price is an artist.
Top Ten:
March 2008
Selected by Stephanie Strickland
1. Maya Deren, "Divine Horsemen"
2. "Concrete!" Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive
3. Jason Nelson, "Poetry Cube"
4. b. p. Nichol, "White Text Sure"
5. Yoko Ono, "Snow Is Falling All the Time"
6. Dick Higgins, "Horizons" [PDF
7. Ketjak: the Ramayana Monkey Chant
8. "Concrete Poetry: A World View" Mary Ellen Solt
9. Raphael Rubinstein, "Gathered, not Made: A Brief History of Appropriative Writing"
10. Kenneth Goldsmith and Conceptual Poetics
Bonus
11. Glossolalia: Speaking in Tongues
12. Caroline Bergvall, "About Face"
Stephanie Strickland is a poet. Her latest collaborative hypermedia work is slippingglimpse first shown at e-Poetry 2007 in Paris and published in hyperrhiz: new media cultures. Her latest book, Zone : Zero (with digital poetry CD) will appear from Ahsahta Press in fall 2008. She recently published "Quantum Poetics: Six Thoughts, in Media Poetry: An International Anthology," edited by Eduardo Kac, co-edited The Iowa Review Web issue, Multi-Modal Coding: Jason Nelson, Donna Leishman, and Electronic Writing, and also co-edited the first Electronic Literature Collection, published by the Electronic Literature Organization.
Top Ten:
February 2008
Selected by Alan Licht
1. Derek Bailey Interview by Henry Kaiser
2. Richard Foreman MP3 loops from Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty
3. Bruce Nauman "Record"
4. bpNichol -- all sound works
5. Cornelius Cardew "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism"
6. Philip Guston/Clark Coolidge "Poor Richard"
7. Lou Reed "the View from the Bandstand"
8. Jack Smith "Buzzards Over Baghdad"
9. Richard Meltzer "Barbara Mauritz: Music Box"
10. Adrian Piper "Untitled 1968"
Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who's who of the experimental world. He has released five albums of compositions for tape and solo guitar, and his sound and video installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. His new book Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media, the first extensive survey of the genre in English, was published by Rizzoli in fall 2007.
Top Ten:
February 2008
Selected by Bettina Funcke
1. Harun Farocki, Inextinguishable Fire (1969) and How to Live in the German Federal Republic
2. UbuWeb Hall of Shame
3. Robert Frank, Energy and How to Get It (1981)
4. J. G. Ballard, Shanghai Jim (1991)
5. Pandid Pran Nath Ragas of Morning and Night (1968)
6. Hrabanus Marus De adoratione crucis ab opifice / De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis Augsburg (ca. 845)
7. Jacques Lacan, Télévision (1973)
8. Joan Jonas "The Anchor Stone" (1988)
9. Inuit Throat Singing, from Ethnopoetics
10. Assorted Street Posters (1985-present) from Outsiders
Bettina Funcke is the Senior U.S. Editor of Parkett Magazine.
Top Ten:
January 2008
Selected by Alex Ross
1. Robert Ashley "She Was a Visitor"
2. Kurt Schwitters "Sonata in Urlauten"
3. John Cale "Loop"
4. The Films of Mauricio Kagel
5. Charles Amirkhanian "Dog of Stravinsky"
6. Bernd Alois Zimmermann "Musique pour le soupers de Roi Ubu"
7. Pauline Oliveros "Sound Patterns"
8. Ezra Pound "Sestina: Altaforte"
9. John Cage "4'33""
10. Robert Ashley "The Wolfman"
Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His work has also appeared in The New Republic, The London Review of Books, Lingua Franca, and The Guardian. From 1992 to 1996 he was a critic at The New York Times. He has received two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism, fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for contributions to the field of contemporary music. He played keyboards in the noise band Miss Teen Schnauzer, which gave only one public performance, in 1991. His first book, "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century," a cultural history of music since 1900, was published in October 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Top Ten:
December 2007
Selected by Alejandra & Aeron
1. The Films of Toshio Matsumoto (all, especially Weavers, Mothers, Ki, and Sway)
2. The Films of Jack Goldstein (all, especially MGM, Bone China, and the 7" Records with Sound Effects.)
3. Marie Mencken "Glimpse of the Garden" (1957)
4. Peter Campus "Three Transitions" (1973)
5. Edgard Varêse and Le Corbusier "Poême électronique" (1958)
6. Kristin Oppenheim "Selected Audio Works 1994-1997"
7. David Grubbs' Soundworks
8. Pandit Pran Nath "Ragas of Morning and Night"
9. I.B.M. 7090 - Music From Mathematics
10. "Tagasode" Edo period, 17th century
11. Hidatsa: Lean Wolf's Complaint
12. Penelope Umbrico (especially Arrhythmia (All The Dishes On Ebay) and Your Choice)
Aeron Bergman and Alejandra Salinas are artists whose work meets aesthetics and politics. They currently live and work in Oslo where Bergman is head professor of the digital department at the Art Academy of Oslo, Norway, and special advisor to the Nordic Sound Art Master program, a joint program between the major Scandinavian art academies. The artist duo have done major installations at art centers such as Centre d'Arte Santa Monica in Barcelona, Taipei Fine Art Museum, ICC Tokyo and the Serralves Museum in Porto; and sound performances around the world such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Knitting Factory in New York, and the CCCB in Barcelona; as well as running the sound art publisher Lucky Kitchen.
Top Ten:
November 2007
Selected by Christof Migone
1. Brion Gysin "I Am" Machine-poem (1960)
2. Janet Zweig "Mind Over Matter"
3. Gregory Whitehead "Pressures of the Unspeakable"
4. R. Henry Nigl "Shout Art"
5. Sam Taylor Wood, from "Stoppage"
6. François Dufrêne, "Tenu-tenu" Crirythme (1958)
7. John Giorno "I Don't Need It, I Don't Want It, and You Cheated Me Out of It"
8. Georgina Dobson & Cupboard Simon "The Message"
9. Louis-Ferdinand Céline "Television Interview" (1961)
10. Adrian Piper "Here and Now"
Special Offsite Bonus: Kelly Mark "I Really Should" (Audio CD)
Extra, offsite: Santiago Sierra "11 PEOPLE PAID TO LEARN A PHRASE"
Christof Migone teaches graduate seminars on sound, silence, performative writing, and failure at Concordia University in Montreal. He co-edited Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (Errant Bodies Press, 2001). His first book, la première phrase et le dernier mot (Le Quartanier, 2004) synopsized his library. The second, Tue (Le Quartanier, 2007) obsessed over the second person singular pronoun. His audio, performance, and video work is documented in Sound Voice Perform (Errant Bodies Press, 2005), and Trou (Galerie de l'UQAM, 2006).
Top Ten:
October 2007
Selected by Joshua Clover
1. Guy Debord "In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni"
2. Guy Debord "Howlings Against Sade"
3. Yoko Ono "Snow Is Falling All The Time"
4. Tadanori Yokoo "Three Animation Films"
5. Susan Sontag "The Aesthetics of Silence"
6. Gertrude Stein "The Making of Americans"
7. Xu Cheng "050414"
8. Patrizia Vicinelli "Seven Poems"
9. Shaker Visual Poetry
10. Apollinaiire "Le pont Mirabeau"
Special Offsite Bonus: Marc Lavoine "Le pont Mirabeau"
Joshua Clover teaches poetry, poetics, film studies and theories of postmodernism at University of California at Davis; his book on The Matrix for the British Film Institute is currently being translated into Russian and Czech. He has been a DJ both on the radio and in clubs; poetry books include The Totality for Kids (California, 2006) and Madonna anno domini (LSU, 1997). All the new thinking is about money; in this is resembles all the old thinking.
Top Ten:
September 2007
Selected by Juliana Spahr
1. Learn to Say Penis
2. Germaine Dulac "La coquille et le clergyman"
3. Maya Deren "Ritual in Transfigured"
4. Carolee Schneeman "Fuses"
5. Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères
6. Carolee Schneemann, "Fuses"
7. Janet Zweig "Mind Over Matter"
8. Caroline Bergvall "About Face"
9. Barbara Cole, "Situation Comedies: Foxy Moron"
10. Pierre Coulibeuf and Marina Abramoviç "Balkan Baroque"
BONUS: Emma Hedditch "The Making of Her Noise"
Juliana Spahr's most recent book is the Transformation (Atelos P, 2007)
Top Ten:
Summer 2007
Selected by Wayne Koestenbaum
1. Robert Desnos, "Description of a Dream" (MP3, 1938)
2. Adolf Wolfli, "Gelesen und vertont" (specifically either Der Fluch (MP3) or the Trauermarsch 599 Lied (MP3) [1978])
3. Ketjak, the Ramayana Monkey Chant (MP3, in Ethnopoetics Soundings)
4. John Cage and Morton Feldman in Conversation (1967)
5. Dieter Roth, "Berliner Dichterworkshop" (1973)
6. Carolee Schneemann, "Fuses" (film)
7. Mauricio Kagel, "Ludwig Van..." (film)
8. Jack Goldstein, "MGM" and "The Knife" (films)
9. Antonin Artaud, "Pour finir avec le jugement de dieu"
10. Severo Sarduy, "Big Bang"
BONUS: Joseph Cornell, "Rose Hobart"
Wayne Koestenbaum has published five books of poetry: Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films, Model Homes, The Milk of Inquiry, Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender, and Ode to Anna Moffo and Other Poems. He has also published a novel, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes, and five books of nonfiction: Andy Warhol, Cleavage, Jackie Under My Skin, The Queen's Throat (a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist), and Double Talk. He wrote the libretto for Michael Daugherty's opera, Jackie O. Koestenbaum's new book, Hotel Theory, will be published in June 2007. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and currently also a Visiting Professor in the painting department of the Yale School of Art.
May 2007
Selected by Adalaide Morris
1. Billie Whitelaw, "Not I" (1973)
2. Jonas Mekas - Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997)
3 Agnes Varda - Black Panthers, Huey! (1968)
4. John Cage Meets Sun Ra, Side B" (MP3)
5. Henri Chopin - Le Ventre de Bertini, Audio-poème (MP3)
6. Philip Glass - Score of "1 + 1 for One Player and Amplified Table-Top."
7. Christian Bök - Eunoia, Chapter u
8a. Cecil Taylor - Chinampas 1987 (MP3)
8b. Fred Moten on Cecil Taylor's Chinampas
9. Peter Greenaway - Four American Composers: Meredith Monk (1983)
10. Gregory Whitehead, "What Words Want"
Adalaide Morris is John C. Gerber Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary poetry and poetics. Her publications include How to Live / What to Do: H.D.'s Cultural Poetics (Illinois, 2003) and two edited collections, Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies (North Carolina, 1997) and, with Thom Swiss, New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories (MIT, 2006). Her current project is a book with the tentative title What Else Can Poetry Do? With Alan Golding and Lynn Keller, she co-edits the Contemporary North American Poetry Series at the University of Iowa Press.
April 2007
Selected by Anthony Huberman
1. Art by Telephone 1969 (MP3)
2. Richard Prince with Bob Gober, "Tell Me Everything" 1988 (MP3)
2.5 John Armleder, "16 Great Turn-Ons" 1988 (MP3)
3. Jack Goldstein, "Soundworks" (MP3)
4. Roman Opalka, "1 to Infinity" 1965 / 1977 (MP3) (MP3)
5. Seth Price, "Dispersion" [PDF]
6. Erik Satie, "A Day in the Life of a Musician"
7. Ian Baxter "Statements" (1970)
8. Robert Smithson "Hotel Palenque Bootleg"
9. Richard Serra, "Verb List Compilation: Actions to Relate to Oneself" (1967-1968)
10. Robert Rauschenberg "Portrait of Iris Clert"
Anthony Huberman is Curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He has curated several group exhibitions in New York and in Europe, many special projects with emerging artists, as well as a broad range of performance, radio, and music events. "Grey Flags," a group show co-curated with the artist Paul Pfeiffer, was recently on view at the CAPC contemporary art museum in Bordeaux, France.
March 2007
Selected by Caroline Bergvall
1. Augusto de Campos' "Dias Dias Dias" spoken by Caetano Veloso 1979 (MP3)
2. Robert Ashley, "In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women" 1972 (MP3)
3. People Like Us, "The Sacred Erm" 2002 (MP3)
4. Beth Anderson, "Ocean Motion Mildew Mind" 1979 (MP3)
5. John Cage, "excerpt from Silence" 1969 (MP3)
6. Meredith Monk "Rally" 1977 (MP3)
7. Miya Masakoa, "Ritual with Giant Hissing Madagascar Cockroaches" (excerpt) (MP3)
8. John Ashbery, "A Blessing in Disguise" 1966 (MP3)
9. On Kawara, "One Million Years" 1993 (MP3)
10. Roland Barthes, "Inaugural lecture at the Collège de France" 1977 (MP3)
Caroline Bergvall is a poet, performance writer and critic, loosely based in London. She works internationally and is involved in page-based as well as off-page and collaborative poetics. Latest book: FIG (Salt, 2005). Latest text-recordings: "Shorter Chaucer Tales" hosted at PennSound. She was the Director of Performance Writing, Dartington College of Arts (UK) and is currently co-Chair of Writing, Milton Avery School of the Arts, Bard College (NY).
February 2007
Selected by Charles Bernstein
1. Kevin Davies, "Pause Button" [PDF]
2. Craig Dworkin, "Legion II" [PDF]
3. Deanna Ferguson, "The Relative Minor" [PDF]
4. Marjorie Perloff, "Concrete Prose: Haraldo de Campos Galáxias and After"
5. Yunte Huang, "Angel Island and the Poetics of Error" [PDF]
6. George Kuchar, "The Kiss of Frankenstein" [PDF]
7. Ron Silliman, "Sunset Debris" [PDF]
8. Aram Saroyan, "Aram Saroyan"
9. Brian Kim Stefans, "Alpha Betty's Chronicles"
10. Hannah Weiner, "Little Books/Indians"
Bonus Track: Gertrude Stein, from Five Words in a Line
Ubu is justly famous for its extraordinary collection of audio and movie files and historical sound and visual poetry. For this list, however, I mostly chose from UBU's contemporary selection of poetry books and essays. - Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein's most recent book is Girly Man. With Al Filreis he directs PennSound and with Loss Pequeño Glazier the Electronic Poetry Center, where he has a web log.
January 2007
Selected by Mónica de la Torre
1. Caroline Bergvall "Via: Dante Variations" (MP3)
2. Softpalate: Gertrude Stein's "For the Country Entirely" (MP3)
3. Henri Chopin "Definitión des lettres suivantes" (MP3)
4. Samuel Beckett "Not I" (Video)
5. Charles Amirkhanian "Radii" (MP3)
6. bpNichol "Pome Poem" (MP3)
7. Mauricio Kagel "Hallelujah" (Video)
8. Alvin Lucier "I Am Sitting In a Room" (MP3)
9. Emmett Williams "The Last French-Fried Potato and Other Poems" (PDF)
10. Brion Gysin "Three Permutations" (MP3)
11. María Sabina "Sacred Mushroom Chant" (MP3)
12. Gertrude Stein "Interview" (MP3)
Mónica de la Torre is the author of the poetry books Acúfenos, published recently in Mexico City, and Talk Shows, forthcoming from Switchback Books in February 07. She translates poetry from the Spanish and frequently participates in collaborative book projects, one of which was Appendices, Illustrations and Notes, co-written with artist Terence Gower. She is the poetry editor of The Brooklyn Rail.
December 2006
Selected by Raphael Rubinstein
1. Clark Coolidge, "I Kicked into Precise Space Without Touching"
2. Frank O'Hara, "Adieu Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul" (MP3)
3. Susan Howe, "There is No Good on Earth and Sin is But a Name" (MP3)
4. Leevi Lehto, "Google Poem"
5. Christopher Logue, "This is the Final Statement" (MP3)
6. Tan Lin, "The Edge of Summer Cleans Autumn"
7. Gherasim Luca, "Son Corps Leger" (MP3)
8. Nicholas Moore "Spleen: Thirty-one versions of Baudelaire's Je suis comme le roi..."
9. Ara Shrinyan "2005 Resolution: I Promise to Write Better Poetry" [PDF, 5.2 mb]
10. Louis Zukofsky, "Julia's Wild"
11. Ogden Nash "Word About Winter" (MP3)
12. Charles Bernstein reads "The Yellow Pages" (MP3)
13. Patrizia Vincinelli "Sette Poemi" (MP3)
14. Gertrude Stein "If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso<"/a> (MP3)
15. Guillaume Apollinaire "Le Pont Mirabeau" (MP3)
Raphael Rubinstein is a poet and a senior editor at Art in America. He has just edited an anthology titled Critical Mess: Art Critics on the State of their Practice (Hard Press Editions). A book of poems, The Afterglow of Minor Pop Masterpieces, is forthcoming from Make Now Press.
November 2006
Selected by Ingrid Schaffner
1. Aspen Magazine, No. 3: The Pop Art Issue
2. Charles Bernstein "The Ballad of the Girly Man" (MP3)
3. Christian Morgenstern: Sound Poems
4. Bern Porter "The Last Acts of St. Fuck You" (MP3)
5. William S. Burroughs "Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut Ups" (MP3)
6. Patti Smith "Parade" (MP3)
7. The Free Jack Ads
8. Salvador Dali "Apoth du Dollar" (MP3)
9. The Signifying Monkey in Ethnopoetics (MP3)
10. Ethel Waters "That Dada Strain" (MP3)
11. Paul McCarthy "Boston Bay" (MP3)
12. Marcel Broodthaers "Interview with a Cat"
(MP3)
Ingrid Schaffner is a writer and curator. She is currently working on 2 exhibitions steeped in collage: "Karen Kilimnik" (with the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia) and "Jess: To and From the Printed Page" (with Independent Curators International).
October 2006
Selected by Nick Currie (aka Momus)
1. John Cage "Mushroom Haiku, excerpt from Silence" (1972/69) (MP3)
2. Vito Acconci "The Bristol Project", 2001 (MP3)
3. Mike Kelley, Excerpt from "Plato's Cave, Rothko's Chapel, Lincoln's Profile" (MP3)
4. Todd Dockstader "Interview" 1963 (WRVR, Riverside Radio, New York City) (MP3)
5. e.e. cummings, Let's From Some Loud Unworld's Most Rightful Wrong [PDF]
6. Piers Plowright "Radio Radio, Program 11" (MP3)
7. Ernst Jandl "What you can do without vowels" (MP3)
8. Scanner / Jean Cocteau "The Human Voice" (MP3)
9. Laurie Anderson For "Electronic Dogs/Structuralist Filmmaking/Drums" (MP3)
10. Momus and Anne Laplantine "Summerisle Horspiel" (MP3)
Nick Currie, perhaps better known as Momus, is an "electronic folk singer" with twenty albums to his credit. Born in Scotland in 1960, he has lived in London, Paris, Tokyo, New York and Berlin. More recently he's diversified into writing and art. He appeared in the 2006 Whitney Biennial as an "unreliable tour guide". LINK: Click Opera.
September 2006
Selected by Damon Krukowski
1. George Brecht, "Chance-Imagery" [PDF]
2. Bob Brown, "1450-1950"
3. John Cage, "Memogram Correspondences"
4. Cornelius Cardew, "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism and Other Articles"
5. Robert Filliou, "A Filliou Sampler" [PDF]
6. Yves Klein, "Selected Writings, 1928-1962" [PDF]
7. Alison Knowles, "By Alison Knowles" [PDF]
8. Aram Saroyan, "Pages"
9. John Barton Wolgamot, "In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women" (introduction by Keith Waldrop) [PDF]
10. La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela, "Selected Writings" [PDF]
Damon Krukowski is a writer and musician. He is the publisher of Exact Change and teaches at Harvard University.
Summer 2006
Selected by David Grubbs
1. Craig Douglas Dworkin, "Unheard Music" [PDF]
2. Henry Flynt Interview by Kenneth Goldsmith on WFMU
3. John Cage and Morton Feldman in Conversation
4. Luc Ferrari France Culture Tributes and Documentaries
5. Marcel Broodthaers, "Interview with a Cat"
6. Dan Graham, "Performer/Audience/Mirror"
7. Marjorie Perloff, "The Music of Verbal Space: John Cage's 'What You Say'"
8. Mike Kelley, "The Peristaltic Airwaves"
9. Erik Satie, "Pieces pour Guitare"
10. Hanne Darboven, "Opus 17a"
David Grubbs is known for his solo work, as well as for collaborations with Stephen Prina, Susan Howe, Tony Conrad, Angela Bulloch, Will Oldham, and many others. He is a professor of Radio and Sound Art at Brooklyn College. David Grubbs Wikipedia Entry
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