Art Metropole

16 Aug. 2014

Alexander Nemser: The Sacrifice of Abraham

Time

4:00pm-6:00p

In this Series

29 Mar. 2014
Bookieman

The Sacrifice of Abraham
By Alexander Nemser / Published by Bookieman.

The Sacrifice of Abraham contains fifty short pieces composed in poetic prose, centering on the Biblical story of Isaac and Abraham: a father commanded by God to sacrifice his only son. As the orbit of the sequence circles around the sun of Isaac and Abraham, the book reveals its deeper themes: what is our relation to the past, history, and culture, whose force reaches us so much in the form of trash, hearsay, and gorgeous, illusory misinformation? How does culture live in our mind, and what shape does it take, particularly now that all of our knowledge exists in the abundant, eerie contiguity of the Internet? The book’s answer is something like an enormous apartment complex where Zeus, Athena, Jonah, Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah live simultaneously beside refugees, insurgents, scholars, drug addicts and poets. It is the Renaissance School of Athens in Grand Central Station.

Performance
Nemser will share text from the book, and open a discussion of bringing new life to old stories.

Alexander Nemser is a writer, performer, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, AGNI and Zeek. His one-man show, Moshe Feldstein, Icon of Self-Realization, premiered in the 2011 New York Fringe Festival at the Cherry Lane Theater, and was praised by The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog for its “incandescent, deracinating prose poetry.” He has performed his work internationally, from the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan, to the Galle Literary Festival in Galle, Sri Lanka. He is currently working on a new play for five actors titled, Peepshow. The Sacrifice of Abraham, is his first book.
Alexander Nemser Tumblr

Bookieman is an independent publishing platform that focuses on limited editions of artists’ books, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborations between artists and writers.

So far, Bookieman has released six books: Acting Souls, Childhood Memories, The Museum to Come, Habitat, Journal of Absence: New York City, February–June, 2013 and The Pool. For each book launch, Bookieman organizes a unique event, such as: the seminar The Museum to Come at the MFA, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; and, the Habitat exhibition at the Noga Contemporary Art Gallery Tel Aviv and Kunst und Kulturverein 2025 E.V Hamburg.

Bookieman was founded by Nino Biniashvili and Omri Grinberg in Stockholm in 2009, and is currently based in Toronto. With the book The Sacrifice of Abraham Bookieman is collaborating with the local press: The Swimmers Group.
bookieman.org

Image

2: Alexander Nemser, _The Sacrefice of Abraham_, book cover. Bookieman.

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