SOFT TARGETS v.2.1 + v.2.2 Release Event: 5.30.07

Dear Friends + Enemies,

This notification is to announce the release event for SOFT TARGETS v.2.1., a handheld journal of poetry, artwork, theory, and fiction, as well as v.2.2, a 5" LP. Please join the Front Office for readings and performances by Kalup Linzy, Gary Lutz, Ariana Reines, and Mick Barr

as Octis.

The Kitchen, NYC
512 West 19th Street
Wednesday, May 30th
7pm, FREE

SOFT TARGETS v.2.1 features contributions from Alain Badiou, John Waters, Zoe Leonard, Yto Barrada, Jean-Jacques Schuhl, James Tate, Alexander Kluge, Christian Marclay, Tatiana Trouvé, Paris-based political collective TIQQUN, Chris Marker, Ben Lerner, Arno Schmidt, Roberto Bolaño, Lisa Jarnot, and RAQS Media Collective, among others.

256pp, w/ color illustrations throughout; dusty pink cover.

SOFT TARGETS v.2.2 is a 5" LP recording of the NYC avant-metal band Orthrelm. Side A: "03-7" [0:48]; Side B: "03-8" [0:57]; 33 revolutions per minute.

Visit www.softtargetsjournal.com for an exclusive interview: "Divine Violence and Liberated Territories: SOFT TARGETS talks with Slavoj Zizek."

v.2.1 available for pre-order to bookstores, museums, and other venues through Distributed Arts Publishers (www.artbook.com); v.2.1 + v.2.2 available at www.softtargetsjournal.com beginning May 30th.

Yours,
the Front Office
__________________

Kalup Linzy is an American video and performance artist currently living and working in Brooklyn. Born in Stuckey, Florida, Linzy graduated from the MFA program at the University of South Florida in 2003. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture video art workshop, and in 2005 received a grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Recently, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2007-2008. Linzy's best known work is a series of video art pieces satirizing the tone and narrative approach of television soap opera. Linzy performs most of the characters himself, many of them in drag. Linzy also performs on stage using many of the same characters. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, and Artforum.

Gary Lutz is the author of Stories in the Worst Way and I Looked Alive. He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He will be reading from "Years of Age," a work in progress.

Ariana Reines was born in Salem, Massachusetts. She is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, Fence Books 2006) and the forthcoming Thank You, new life, and The Hand of Thomas. She writes on art for tema celeste and has contributed exhibition essays on Jonas Mekas, Marc Chagall, Ken Jacobs, and Taka Imura for Maya Stendhal Gallery. Ariana graduated from Barnard College in 2003, winning fourteen prizes and scholarships for literature and translation. She has collaborated on sound/vj projects with Ilan Katin for Belgium's MappingFestival and at Brooklyn's Monkeytown. Poems and stories can be found in Skanky Possum, The Open Face Sandwich, WebConjunctions, and Action Yes.

Mick Barr is from New Haven County, CT. He spent most of his early music years playing in metal and hardcore bands. In 1996 he moved to Washington D.C. and started his first drums and guitar duo Crom Tech. In 2000 he started his second drums and guitar duo, Orthrelm, as well as his guitar and drum machine project Octis. Since then he has moved between D.C., San Francisco, and New York City, playing in numerous projects including Quix*o*tic and the Flying Luttenbachers. In 2005 he started his new guitar only project Ocrilim.

__________________

Founded in 2005 and curated by several Offices including the Front Office and the Office of Special Plans, SOFT TARGETS is the tightest of rings; a narrowing, and not widening, gyre; neither a stately pleasure dome, nor the expansive hunger of a corporation. SOFT TARGETS is a colony.

FRONT OFFICE
Daniel Feinberg
Dan Hoy

OFFICE OF SPECIAL PLANS
Rachel Kushner
Jason Smith

OFFICE OF CONCRETE
+ PLASTIC STUDIES
Anthony Allen

OFFICE OF ASSEMBLY
Jane Lewis

OFFICE OF AFFAIRS
Brian Kalkbrenner


www.softtargetsjournal.com

EUROPA! EUROPA? Call for Submissions

First bi-annual conference of the
European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM)
29-31 May 2008 - Ghent University, Belgium
http://www.eam-europe.ugent.be

With initiatives in the cross-disciplinary fields of avant-garde and modernism studies booming throughout European academia, time has come to provide a more permanent platform in Europe for scholars to meet and discuss their research. The European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM) will devote itself to the study of the avant-garde and modernism in Europe within a global setting, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. EAM will promote interdisciplinary and intermedial research on experimental aesthetics and poetics, and aims to encourage an interest in the cultural dimensions and contexts of the avant-garde and modernism. The network aspires to embrace the wide variety within avant-garde and modernism studies, and welcomes all scholars engaged in these areas of research to participate in its founding conference.

EAM's first conference will focus on the relation between the avant-garde, modernism and Europe. For more information about potential topics for panel, roundtable and paper proposals, visit: http://www.eam-europe.ugent.be.

Confirmed key-note speakers include: Charles Altieri (University of Berkeley, California), Astradur Eysteinsson (University of Iceland, Reykjavik), Paul Micheal Lützeler (Washington University, St. Louis), William Marx (University of Orléans and University Institute of France) and Piotr Piotrowski (Mickiewicz University, Poznan - Poland).

Conference proposals and papers can be composed in English, French or German.

Deadline for panel proposals: 1 September 2007
Deadline for roundtable proposals: 1 September 2007
Deadline for paper proposals: 1 October 2007

Contact: eam-europe@ugent.be

The conference is sponsored by the Nordic Network of Avant-Garde Studies, the Centre for Modernist Studies at the University of Sussex, the 'Textual Culture: Modernism and Memory' research group of the University of Utrecht, the Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Poetics at the University of Liège, the L.P. Boon Centre of Antwerp University, OLITH (Research community in literary theory, Flanders), and the department of Dutch Literature and Literary Theory as well as the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of Ghent University.

Download Call for Submissions PDF or as Word document

Extended Reading Period for Full-Length Manuscripts at Octopus Books

Octopus Books is reading full-length manuscripts for publication in the winter. We will continue to take manuscript submissions through May 14th.

All manuscripts will be read anonymously & we will choose at least one book from the submissions we receive. For more information click here:

http://www.octopusbooks.net/submit.htm

http://www.octopusbooks.net
http://www.octopusmagazine.com

New issue of kritya - a web journal of poetry

www.kritya.in

The third edition of Kritya’s festival of poetry is scheduled to be held in late July and this time, it?s going to be an International festival of poetry. To capture the festival distinctively, a number of poets and cultural activists from all over the world will participate in the gathering. To promote the voice of poetry, we are reviving varied voices in art and culture, there is nothing else comparable going on south of the Indian subcontinent. While we have aspirations to earn widespread interest for poetry, we are also putting our necks on the block - but then brass necks are difficult to sever!

Kritya, has grown and thrived in the last couple of years, in almost every way - more events, bigger venues, larger readership and audiences, more awareness and yes, thanks to the faith of the Kritya team for coming this far.

Around 50 poets, from India and abroad will assemble in Trivandrum to present their work. Performance poets and artists will give the festival a cultural dimension.

Rati Saxena