Art Metropole

#13524

Ecstatic Essays 1-3 (set)

Writers

David Bradford, Fan Wu, and Casey Wei

Date

2018

Publisher

Blank Cheque Press

Format

Artists' Books

Genre

Arts Writing, Film/Video, Film/Video

Description

Ecstatic Essays is a series of pamphlets presenting nuanced opinions on obscure topics in arts & culture.

No. 01: Nell Zink Is Damn Free // David Bradford
“To those who’ve read [Nell Zink], she seems at once better than us, out of her mind, a queen of the idiom, a king of the digression, sharp/concise/tangential, and/or the best possible ‘just keep at it’ success story.”

David Bradford is a poet and MFA candidate at the University of Guelph. His work has appeared in various places, including Lemon Hound, Prairie Fire, and Toronto Lit Up’s The Unpublished City. He is the author of the chapbook Call Out (knife|fork|book, 2017). He edits knife|fork|book’s poetry imprint and splits his time between Montreal and Toronto.

No. 02 : Thom Gill’s Now & Neverending // Fan Wu
“[Thom Gill] is no confessional lyricist nor genuflector at the booth of psychic interiority. He prefers the wiggy infinity of surfaces; he favours the indefinite address: the you, the he, and especially the now…Look around you. Cultivate a boy, a garden, a crush—risk the shame that may remain unredeemed.”

Fan Wu is a writer, student and incurable fantasist living in Toronto. He has published a chapbook of interpretive translations of Chinese poetry (Hoarfrost & Solace) and has edited an anthology of ten translation projects (Himalayan Musk Rambler). He runs a series of critical reading & writing workshops through Art Metropole.

No. 03: Ozu’s Seasons // Casey Wei
“I honestly just think Ozu wasn’t regarded as very cool to the young filmmakers growing up in post-war Japan. Mundane anecdotal family dramas that pulled on the repressed and buried emotions of guilt, piety, resentment, genocide, and so on, were not cool. Aging was again, not cool. […] But in the case of Ozu, I think of the long game.”

• Casey Wei is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and musician based in Vancouver. Her practice has evolved from filmmaking (Murky Colors in 2012, and Vater und Sohn / Father and Son / 父与子 in 2014), into work that moves between art, music, and the community at large. These include the Kingsgate Mall Happenings (2014), the Chinatown Happenings (2015), the art rock? music series (2015-present), and the Karaoke Music Video Free Store (2017). In 2016, she began Agony Klub, a music and printed matter label that releases material under the framework of the “popular esoteric”. Her music projects include Kamikaze Nurse, hazy, and Late Spring. She is currently working on a documentary about the Vancouver music scene.

3 booklets, staple-bound, softcover, single-colour risograph with paper sleeve

1.