In his emotionally raw yet darkly hilarious Tentative Armor, Michael Harren combines piano, synthesizers, a laptop and live string players with his unique storytelling, resulting in a deeply moving, highly entertaining performance. In its book form, Tentative Armor captures Harren’s resonant, powerful, very personal stories, and immerses the reader in a funny, poignant, highly intimate tour of his own self-discovery through spirituality, sexuality and grief. The entire text of the show is combined here with video stills from the show’s premiere at NYC experimental performance landmark Dixon Place along with original photos by luke kurtis.

Tentative Armor: A Darkly Comedic Musical Exploration

Arts & Photography

Harren, Michael

Performing Arts

bd-studios.com

INTERSECTION is a collection of poetry, photography, and found texts by luke kurtis created as part of the artist’s rediscovery of his southern heritage. It’s his self-described “ode to the south.” Paired with the companion INTERSECTION zine, also published by bd-studios.com, the artist’s rural upbringing is contrasted with his adult life as a New York artist.

INTERSECTION

kurtis, luke

Photography & Video

In 1963, Allen Ginsberg traveled to Cambodia and visited the ancient Khmer temples. He wrote “Angkor Wat,” an eponymous poem about the temple complex. It was a very different time: pre-Vietnam War, pre-Khmer Rouge, and before the bustling tourism trade that is now the lifeblood of Siem Reap. Yet the Angkor Wat temples themselves remain a unique source of inspiration for poets and photographers who travel there from all over the world. Over half a century later, Angkor Wat by luke kurtis is both the artist’s homage to Ginsberg’s text as well a celebration of his own pilgrimages to the ancient city. Published in 1968, Ginsberg’s Angkor Wat book was a single long poem accompanied by photographs by Alexandra Lawrence. kurtis’s book is a suite of poems paired with his original photography. Chronicling the poet’s own travels where he explored mythical stories and experienced mystical visions, kurtis’s poems take you on a tour of Angkor Wat (and beyond) unlike any other and tell the story of one American poet deepening his Buddhist spirituality.

Angkor Wat: poetry and photography

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Jordan's Journey is something new to the world of ancestry. It's a genealogical mashup incorporating photography, writing, design, research, and more. Gone are the boring register reports and dry descriptions found in genealogical tomes of old. This book takes a new approach, fusing together the creative and academic in a way that breathes new life into family history.Equal parts genealogical memoir, art photography, and local history, Jordan's Journey pulls you in with a rich and immersive experience. With more than 75 original photos by the author, as well as over 150 vintage images, Jordan's Journey invites you on a trip into the rural south of yesteryear.The book traces the major family lines of Pope, Jordan, Scoggins, and Holcomb, along with the associated families of Clement, Love, Robbs, Goodson, Visinand/Whisenant, Anderson, Chapman, Lawrence, Rambo, Hawkins, Ward, Keown, and Cavender. Other allied families are discussed, as well as general local history of the Armuchee Valley region of northwest Georgia.

Jordan's Journey: An Illustrated History of my Family Ancestry

Scoggins, Jordan M.

Since moving to New York City in 2012, Belfast-born visual artist Jonathan David Smyth has been photographing reflections of himself. Shot completely with his camera phone, this ongoing series of self-portraits combines issues of identity, displacement, belonging, and impermanence. As Smyth says, “I make photographs to prove I am here. My work is cathartic, but I want other people to relate to what I am presenting. Just One More is a work of moments; it is a visual diary of my life in New York City, and these photographs are the mappings of where I have been. The pictures already exist; I am just stepping into them.” Featuring fifty plates accompanied with handwritten captions, this monograph also includes a critical essay by the executive director of Photographic Center Northwest, Michelle Dunn Marsh, and a conversation between Jonathan David Smyth and photographer Dana Stirling.

Just One More: Self-Portraits 2012-2017

Smyth, Jonathan David

Stirling, Dana

The Animal Book

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

Sam Rosenthal first used the Internet as a confused and closeted gay teen who longed for an online escape from his offline reality. Rosenthal explores the alienation he experienced socially and the refuge he found on the Internet by appropriating images from real-time network cameras, known as "netcams." The cameras are accessed through unencrypted servers on the world wide web and are available to anyone with an Internet connection. Information such as geographic location and ownership of these netcams isn’t provided, leaving the cameras without identity or clear intention. Yet, still, the artist sees them as an escape. "I believe I've visited these places even though I don't know where they are," he says.For Here Nor There, Rosenthal sought out camera feeds displaying uncanny scenes; the ones familiar and mundane, yet unidentifiable and dreamlike. The book features fantastical imagery of palm trees, pastel colors, and vibrant sunsets that conjure up feelings of an idealistic world. But Internet connections are imperfect and data loss often translates into visual flaws of pixelation and static, breaking those idealistic illusions. This assault of dropped packets disrupts the fantasy and grounds the images in reality. The Internet can never provide a permanent escape, leaving both the artist and his viewers lost somewhere in cyberspace, neither here nor there.

Here Nor There

Rosenthal, Sam

Durm, Todd

In this debut full-length collection of poetry by Dudgrick Bevins, the poet’s memories of his youth become your own. Bevins has crafted not only a tale of personal history but a kind of archetypal roadmap through rural Appalachia where he mines the terrain of his past for remnants of beauty forged among the smothering haze of misty mountaintops. Family, religion, and sexuality intertwine like vines of kudzu strangling old growth trees.

Route 4, Box 358

Bevins, Dudgrick

Springtime in Byzantium collects three distinct but related works by luke kurtis: a poem titled theodora, a series of conceptual photographs titled marble paintings, and a performance art/video art piece titled labyrinth. Structured around and inspired by the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, this trilogy of works is presented alongside photographs and digital collage works also by the artist.The motif that pulls the book together is the bookmatched marble panels of San Vitale. "Its kaleidoscope-like forms are so captivating, yet they're overshadowed by the famous mosaics," says the artist. "If you stop and think about it, the bookmatched marble isn't out of place in a contemporary design sense. You could take the panels out of the church and put them in a modern building, and no one would bat an eye. I wanted to use my photographs to remove the panels conceptually, put them in your hands in the form of a book, and draw a line through hundreds of years to connect the past with the future."The works were created independently over several years and only conceived as a whole specifically for this book, altogether representing a decade of artistic practice, from 2011, when the first work was created, to 2021, when the project was realized in printed form. Though kurtis has published several poetry books, all of which feature his visual work, this is the first book where his visuals are the focus.

Springtime in Byzantium

History & Criticism

Donald Tarantino was an artist and printmaker active in New York City's East Village art scene of the 1980s. He died of AIDS in 1988. Architecture and Mortality is the first published overview of his work.

Architecture and Mortality

Tarantino, Donald

Biographies & Memoirs

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