Bøger udgivet af Blank Forms Editions

Archival documents and new writings on Jerry Hunt, video-art pioneer and electronic magusJerry Hunt (1943-93) is sometimes described as a shamanic figure with the look of a "Central Texas meat inspector." One of the most compelling composers in the word of late 20th-century new music, he made work that combined video synthesis, installation art and early computers with rough-hewn sculptures, scores drawn from celestial alphabets and homemade electronics activated by his signature wands and impassioned gestures. Hunt lived his entire life in Texas, between Dallas, Waco, Houston and Austin, eventually settling in a house he built himself ("an interactive environment") on a ranch in Canton, but his pataphysical, abrasive and humorous performances took him all over North America and Europe, where he amassed a small but dedicated following.This volume represents the first ever book-length collection devoted to the underknown composer's work, and includes an introductory essay by Tyler Maxin and Lawrence Kumpf, interviews with Hunt, detailed analyses of his music and video practices, and remembrances and reflections on his work from his friends and collaborators. Given the diversity of Hunt's practice, this book will be of great interest to scholars, practitioners and enthusiasts in the fields of contemporary art, music and sound art, video and media, and performance. The publication is occasioned by a 2021 exhibition of Hunt's work at Blank Forms.

The amazing life of Jerry Hunt, Texan avant-garde composer, occultist and artist, with appearances from Pauline Oliveros, Karen Finlay and othersJerry Hunt (1943-93) was among the most eccentric figures in the word of new music. A frenetic orator, occultist and engineering consultant, his works from the 1970s through the early '90s made use of readymade sculptures, medical technology, arcane talismans and all manner of homemade electronic implements to form confrontational recordings and enigmatic, powerful performances.Tracing Hunt's life across his home state's major cities to a self-built house in rural Van Zandt County, this memoir-cum-biography by Stephen Housewright, Hunt's partner of 35 years, offers illuminating depictions of Hunt's important installations and performances across North America and Europe. Housewright narrates a lifetime spent together, beginning in high school as a closeted couple in East Texas and ending with Hunt's battle with cancer and his eventual suicide, the subject of one of his most harrowing works of video art. This highly readable narrative contains many private correspondences with, and thrilling anecdotes about, Hunt's friends, family and collaborators, including Joseph Celli, Arnold Dreyblatt, Michael Galbreth, Karen Finley, James and Mary Fulkerson, Guy Klucevsek, Pauline Oliveros, Paul Panhuysen, Annea Lockwood and the S.E.M. Ensemble. This publication accompanies reissues of seven albums from Hunt's record label, Irida.

In 1977, Art Ensemble of Chicago Publishing Co. published Jarman's Black Case, a collection of writing conceived across America and Europe between 1960 and 1975. Comprised largely of Jarman's flowing, fiery free verse--influenced by Amus Mor, Henry Dumas, Thulani Davis, and Amiri Baraka--the book also features a manifesto for "GREAT BLACK MUSIC," notated songs, concert program notes, Jarman's photos, and impressions of a play by Muhal Richard Abrams. Jarman writes poetry of personal revolutionary intent, aimed at routing his audience's consciousness towards growth and communication. He speaks with compassionate urgency of the struggles of growing up on Chicago's South Side, of racist police brutality and profound urban alienation, and of the responsibility he feels as a creative artist to nurture beauty and community through the heliocentric music that he considers the healing force of the universe. A practicing Buddhist and proponent of Aikido since a 1958 awakening saved him from the traumatic mental isolation of his time dropped by the US army into southeast Asia, Jarman sings praise for the self-awareness realization possible through the martial arts. With cosmic breath as its leitmotif, his poetry both encourages and embodies a complete relinquishing of ego. While some of the poems contained within Black Case have already been immortalized via performances on classic records by Jarman and Art Ensemble of Chicago, its republication in print form breathes new life into a forgotten document of the Black Arts Movement.