(2001-2005)
Schizzi Ska is a multi-bibliographic literary endeavor that engages with the very core processes of literary creation, production and dissemination/distribution. The project is, at its core and in its essence, engaged with those visual arts where the single artifact is privileged.
Schizzi Ska is a multi-year on-going venture that began in 2000/2001 and ended in 2005. It is comprised of a series of books written in English and French mostly, with the occasional Persian and Spanish interventions. Although a majority of the books are handwritten, the project as a whole engages with the very process of tracing by interjecting typographic and alternative tracing/publishing systems, along with the use of various material traditionally felt to belong to painting, sculpture and other forms of ‘visual arts’ – specifically, oils, pastels, and concrete materials, including tools such as brushes and canvases.
These are single literary artifacts and each of the books is engaged in a web of relationships with the others, in a non-gratuitous and important way. These works are not to be reproduced or published, although fragments and excerpts might occasionally appear online or in magazines or journals.
The types of books span a variety in content, style, structural and formal properties, and, as mentioned above, the material used. There are works whose content is purposely conventional, but the mode of presentation and the particular experience of the reader, allows for not only this altered experience, but for the work to acquire different meanings and status as a literary object. They go from the hyper readable and accessible to incorporating a collusion of languages, and onto more complex texts where several languages appear in the same artifact. There are works that play on the very undecidability of the nature of a handwritten letter (between the ‘a’ and the ‘o’ in lafin’ d’all), while some texts involve simple drawings, and still others play on the content against the material and the size. There is also a wide array of genres represented, although most of the works defy easy categorization: from a book comprised of found letters to simple story-like unfurlings to the “Little Book of Zuttographie”. Finally, there is a series of children’s books, ranging in size from very regular book-size to a final six-feet specimen that is a grand overture to the children’s reading experience, and a literal performance of the reading phenomenon, while a delicate invitation to a wondrous ritual of reading with children: there will literally be only one place to read these books, and that place will impose happiness and wonder.
In short, the books come in different sizes, are formed by a variety of paper and pages, with a variety of looks and bindings. They straddle the borders of literary artifact and book objects.
The project constitutes: 1/A very deliberate critical engagement with the industry of dissemination and production of texts 2/Transformation of the process of literary creation and the relation of writer to artifact; 3/the transference of the written unto a new plane and the freeing of writing in the direction of painting and other single-artifact works; 4/ The transformation of the processes of scriptor/reader exchanges and the creation of new relationships and rituals between reader and artifact; 5/An exploration of the theatricality of reading; 6/the sociological and anthropological (in terms of rites and rituals) repercussions of the publishing industry and the reading experience as they stand and 7/ An alternative to the invasion of the electronic fields in the real of the written word.
Comprising thus a constellation and a universe of exploration, Schizzi Ska also functions as a sanctuary, a constellation of works imposing a certain ritual of reading and presence on the potential reader/audience. It institutes a series of critical gestures and interventions, and fashions a new approach to understanding the forms and functions of literature: in its very essence and quiddity. It is finally an invitation to the reader: to partake and share with the writer, in the most intimate of atmospheres and circumstances.
From: lafin’ d’all
alas, again, that time it’s – that time of: not day not month that time of: life – that time of dark it’s – that word end all it’s – haha looking at me sort of kind of the doll it’s: that: the end, the game, the ride: is near, over, over: over it’s that: is the: trick or end or –
what: the deal is done whose deal mine that is: the ride is: over – the game is: over – the end is: near – that is: there is a doll there is: not: the end of all things: laughin’ doll la fin d’all: the end of all things, that is: end of all – I’m sure it’s –
la fin d’all: doubts I mean and thoughts and words I mean strung together lines, the lies I say the lives, tales I mean and verses and tricks and shticks I say and, dances and dashes and runs and ruses I mean I say it’s, over: seriously, that’s what it is it’s that: over as in la fin as in – end all of all it’s – here it –
is: what’s happening: a scriptural suicide: end of all things, good bye, to writings: but a doll is there, or is it really, laughing: as if saying: you know you won’t, end it all, know you can’t: end it all: the two inseparable, intertwined, one: the end of all things, and the doll laughing, not so, la fin, d’all:
then I begin: tap tap without wings that’s fine, on my toes not even, just lying back eyes to the sky the big blue: elbows bent palm under head up all around a stillness: a serenity all about asking: is that a squirrel on the tree-top cracking nuts and shooting the leftovers and the shells down at me?
I look up torso half way up perturbed by cracking squirrel cracking nuts on treetop’s branches hopping from one to another I should, I think, why not hop from one to another, I mean: the face peering sitting still saying as if end all means still without breath or water or –
life say – that the way is – not lost not abandoned even is – not even tricky or rocky or spooky is – just damn painful haha the face that’s right gazin’ lookin’ brazen – brave still but if I just stood up silently and broke the damn doll, with a nut too, courtesy of feasting squirrel – then the end that’s all it’s –
.