Coffee Coffee

Aram Saroyan, Coffee Coffee
Softcover, 88 pp., offset 1/1, 5 x 7 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9788697-5-5
Published by Primary Information

$10.00 ·

Infamous artist book by one of the 1960s most controversial poets. Coffee Coffee was originally published as a mimeographed edition by Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer on their 0 To 9 press in 1967. True to Saroyan’s minimalist approach of the time, Coffee Coffee’s pages contain one word (sometimes 2 and once or twice, 3), each pulling you to the next (revolving door-like). Selections from Coffee Coffee appear in the recent anthology Complete Minimal Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse) edited by Primary Information co-founder James Hoff; however, this is the first time that this work has appeared in its complete and initial form since 1967.

“In the late Sixties, when I called myself a poet, Aram was the poet I envied. Because you couldn’t be sure if he was fooling or if he had really gotten to all there is to get. Because while the rest of us tried to be verbs, like everybody told us to do, he had the nerve to stop at nouns. Because he took a deep breath and willed himself into the self-confidence of naming. Because it wasn’t ‘nouns,’ it was ‘noun,’ only one noun, because he boiled it all down to one. Because then he let himself go, he let himself stutter, he let the one go and let the one double and go out of focus: while the rest of us ran for our lives all over the place and over the page, his noun shimmered and breathed and trembled and moved-shh! softly, softly-from within.”

—Vito Acconci

Aram Saroyan, Art, Bernadette Mayer, DAP, James Hoff, Performance, Poetry, Primary Information, Vito Acconci

Rock/Music Writings

Dan Graham, Rock/Music Writings
Softcover, 224 pp., offset 4/1, 5.5 x 8.25 inches
Edition of 3000
ISBN 978-0978869-73-1
Published by Primary Information

$18.00 ·

As admired for his writing as for his work in art, photography and architecture, Dan Graham was one of the first contemporary artists to embrace Punk, Postpunk and No Wave, becoming a figurehead for those movements, and an early supporter of (and friend to) Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth among many others. Rock/Music Writings collects 13 of Graham’s most influential writings, on bands ranging from The Kinks to Bow Wow Wow, first published in art journals such as Real Life, Open Letter and ZG between 1968 and 1988, and in the now rare volume Rock My Religion. It includes such landmark essays as “Punk as Propaganda,” which explicates the self-packaging and media critique of The Ramones, Devo, the Sex Pistols, the Desperate Bicycles and others; “Rock My Religion,” in which Graham traces themes of ecstatic reverie in rock performance (with a focus on Patti Smith), through a beautiful composite of quotation, commentary and photography; and “New Wave Rock and the Feminine,” which discusses the onstage personae of Lydia Lunch, Debbie Harry and Siouxsie Sioux, and the gender politics of all-female groups such as The Slits, The Raincoats, Bush Tetras and others. Throughout Rock/Music Writings, Graham’s appraisals are clear-eyed, sophisticated and poetically constructed, a genre of their own within artists’ writings.

Art, Culture, Dan Graham, DAP, Debbie Harry, Glenn Branca, Lydia Lunch, Music, Primary Information

Real Life Magazine: Selected Writing and Projects 1979-1994

Real Life Magazine: Selected Writing and Projects 1979-1994
Softcover, 320 pp., offset 1/1, 8.25 x 11 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 9780978869700
Published by Primary Information

$30.00 · out of stock

Real Life Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979-1994 highlights a selection of writings and artists’ projects from Real Life magazine, which was originally edited by artist, writer, and curator, Thomas Lawson and writer, Susan Morgan. Published in twenty-three issues from 1979-1994 as an intermittent black and white magazine, Real Life featured artists and art historians writing on art, media and popular culture interspersed with pictorial contributions. The development of the magazine through its 15 year history, traces the influences, development and transitions of artists through the 80s.

The anthology features writings by and about Dara Birnbaum, Eric Bogosian, Rhys Chatham, Mark Dion, Jack Goldstein, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kim Gordon, Dan Graham, Thomas Lawson, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Allan McCollum, John Miller, Dave Muller, Matt Mullican, Adrian Piper, Richard Prince, David Robbins, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Michael Smith, John Stezaker, Bernard Tschumi, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, and James Welling among others.

Adrian Piper, Allan McCollum, Art, Bernard Tschumi, Cindy Sherman, Dan Graham, DAP, Dara Birnbaum, Dave Muller, David Robbins, Ed Ruscha, Eric Bogosian, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jack Goldstein, James Welling, Jeff Wall, John Miller, John Stezaker, Kim Gordon, Laurie Simmons, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Lawler, Mark Dion, Matt Mullican, Michael Smith, Miriam Katzeff, Primary Information, Rhys Chatham, Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Susan Morgan, Theory, Thomas Lawson