November 21-22, 2015
MAK Center Schindler House
835 N. Kings Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069

MANIFESTOS:

hurry up please its time
a body is wise and holds its connections
Only after she begins her do the in her appear.
Love is also a knot.
stranger than we
ojos que veulven artás
Language doesn’t come from nothing
a mouth rushing with doves

MANIFESTOS:

It’s a celebration!
A book release!
A reading and performance!
A public writing workshop followed by an open mic! .
A two-day literary event celebrating 10 years of Les Figues Press and the
release of TrenchArt Monographs: hurry up please its time.

Featuring:

Dodie Bellamy, Allison Carter, Lily Hoang, Pam Ore, Frances Richard, Stephanie Taylor, Matias Viegener, and Janice Lee & Michael du Plessis performing the work of Sissy Boyd.

Saturday, November 21, 2015
4:00 pm: Performance

Sunday, November 22, 2015
1-3:30 pm: Writing workshop (free)
4 pm: Feminestos & Open Mic!

Writing workshops will be facilitated by Allison Carter, Lily Hoang, Frances Richard, and Dodie Bellamy. Participation is free and open to the public, though please RSVP to guarantee your spot because space is limited.

This event is sponsored by the City of West Hollywood through its Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission. For more information on WeHo Arts programming please visit weho.org/arts or follow on social media @WeHoArts. Manifestos is also supported in part by Poets & Writers through grants it has received from The James Irvine Foundation and the Hearst Foundations.

The events are being curated by the 2015 Les Figues Kathy Acker Fellow, Margaret Rhee.

About the Featured Performers:

Dodie Bellamy’s books include the buddhist, Academonia, Pink Steam, Cunt-Ups, and The Letters of Mina Harker. Time Out New York named her chapbook Barf Manifesto “Best Book Under 30 Pages” for 2009. She has been awarded a Firecracker Alternative Book Award and a Bay Guardian Goldie Award for Literature. She is a frequent contributor to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space blog, and she teaches in various creative writing programs.

Allison Carter is the author of A Fixed, Formal Arrangement (Les Figues Press) and Here Vs. Elsewhere (Insert Blanc Press) as well as several shorter collections, including Sum Total (Eohippus Labs), All Bodies Are The Same and Have The Same Reactions (Blanc Press), Shadows Are Weather (Horse Less Press), and We All Are Afraid of Repeating Mistakes That I Have Already Made: Breakfast Poems (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has recently been included in Fence, Diagram, and other journals. Allison teaches creative writing to adults suffering from eating disorders in Los Angeles, CA.

Lily Hoang is the author of five books: Parabola (Chiasmus Press, 2008), Changing (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008), The Evolutionary Revolution (Les Figues Press, 2009), Unfinished (Jaded Ibis Press, 2010), and Old Cat Lady (1913 Press, forthcoming 2014-15). With Blake Butler, she edited 30 Under 30 (Starcherone Books, 2011), and with Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she is editing the anthology The Force of What’s Possible: Writers on the Avant-Garde and Accessibility (Night Boat Books, forthcoming 2014-15). She is Associate Department Head at New Mexico State University, where she teaches in the MFA program and serves as Prose Editor for Puerto del Sol.

Pam Ore lives in Portland, Oregon. Among her many jobs, she worked for ten years as a zookeeper in Oklahoma City and Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Cream City Review, 13th Moon, 4th Street, and 37 Oklahoma Poets.

Frances Richard is the author of Anarch. (Futurepoem, 2013), The Phonemes  (Les Figues Press, 2012), and See Through (Four Way Books, 2003), as well as the chapbooks Shaved Code (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2008) and Anarch. (Woodland Editions, 2008). The Anarch. Film Project, a collaboration in which filmmakers produce original short films in dialogue with the poems inAnarch., is ongoing. Richard writes frequently about contemporary art; with Jeffrey Kastner and Sina Najafi she is co-author of Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Fake Estates” (Cabinet Books, 2005). She has also been a member of the editorial teams at Fence and Cabinet magazines. Her writing on visual art has appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, The Nation, BOMB, and in many other publications.

Stephanie Taylor received her M.F.A. from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She has exhibited her work internationally and is represented by Galerie Christian Nagel, Köln, Germany and by Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles.

Matias Viegener is a Los Angeles based writer, artist, and critic who works alone and collaboratively in the fields of writing, video, installation, and performance art.  Viegener is the author of 2500 Random Things About Me Too, a book of experimental writing, and has co-edited two books, The n/o/ulipian Analects and Séance in Experimental Writing with Christine Wertheim. He is the editor and co-translator of Georges Batailles’ The Trial of Gilles de Rais.  His art work has been shown internationally in museums and galleries, and he’s a co-founder of Fallen Fruit, a participatory art practice focusing on fruit, urban ecology and public space.  Forthcoming work includes a chapbook on the death of Kathy Acker from Guillotine Press, and I’m Very into You, the edited correspondence of Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark, from Chiasmus Press.

Michael du Plessis teaches Comparative Literature and English at the University of Southern California. His novel, The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker, was published by Les Figues Press. He has written about a wide variety of subjects, from Goth culture to the French fin-de-siècle and has also performed, amongst other venues, at Highways and at the MAK Center/Schindler House.

Janice Lee is a writer, artist, editor, designer, curator, and scholar. Her work can be found in sidebrow, Action, Yes, Joyland, Luvina, Everyday Genius, elimae, Black Warrior Review, Fanzine, Azalea,The Account, Tierra Adentro, The Feminist Wire, and elsewhere. She is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), a multidisciplinary exploration of cyborgs, brains, and the stakes of consciousness; Daughter(Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), a book-length meditation on the films of Béla Tarr, and Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015). She also has several chapbooks Red Trees, Fried Chicken Dinner (Parrot/Insert Press, September 2012), The Other Worlds (Eohippus Labs, June 2012), and The Transparent As Witness (Solar Luxuriance, 2013), a collaboration with Will Alexander. She is Co-Editor of the online journal [out of nothing], Editor of the new #RECURRENT Novel Series for Jaded Ibis Press, Assistant Editor at FANZINE, Executive Editor at Entropy, and Founder/CEO of POTG Design. She also curates the LA Literary Calendar (a calendar of literary events in Los Angeles) with Harold Abramowitz.

Sissy Boyd studied with Martha Graham and has danced with many diverse and avant-garde companies in NYC. She has appeared in the video art of Peter Campus, the films of Mark Rappaport, and several Allison Anders films. She studied poetry with Holly Prado, and playwriting with John Steppling. As a former member of Oxblood Theater Company, she participated in the production of challenging theater. Her own play, The Definite Child, was directed by Wes Walker; her last play, The Green Shoes, which she directed, was an LA Weekly Pick of the Week; and her play Liddy was the text for Guy Zimmerman’s short film by the same name and has been published in Fever Dreams: Recent Work from Padua (Padua Playwrights Press, 2012). She is a member of the Evidence Room’s Theatre Company and Ken Roht’s Orphean Circus. In 2005, Boyd was featured in Fearless Women (Stewart, Tabori & Chang). Boyd is a member of John Steppling’s Gunfighter Nation where she continues to write and perform at theaters such as The Odyssey, The Lost Studio. She recently performed a piece at MorYork Gallery, which was then moved to Bootleg Theater, (April. 2014).  The title, Riddance, contained her play:  “Movement For Two Voices,” directed by Wes Walker whose play “The Entire Man” also ran. Her play The Sabine River will appear in the newest Padua Anthology.

About TrenchArt Mongraphs: From 2005-2013, the TrenchArt book series was the cornerstone of Les Figues Press. The series took its name from “trench art”—artistic creations produced by soldiers made in wartime using whatever material was at hand, from shell casings to scrap metal to bone. It is art born of conflict and forced community: here we are, together in the trenches.

Each year, the Press published four TrenchArt titles. Accompanying and preceding the release of each annual set was one hand-bound collection of aesthetic essays distributed exclusively to Les Figues members. TrenchArt Monographs: hurry up please its time collects these essays and brings them, for the first time, to a wider readership.

Contributors include: Harold Abramowitz, Danielle Adair, Stan Apps, Nuala Archer, Dodie Bellamy, Sissy Boyd, Melissa Buzzeo, Amina Cain, Jennifer Calkins, Teresa Carmody, Allison Carter, Molly Corey, Vincent Dachy, Lisa Darms, Ken Ehrlich, Alex Forman, Lily Hoang, Jen Hofer, Paul Hoover, Alta Ifland, Klaus Killisch, Alice Könitz, Myriam Moscona, Doug Nufer, Redell Olsen, Pam Ore, Renée Petropoulos, Vanessa Place, Michael du Plessis, Frances Richard, Sophie Robinson, Kim Rosenfield, Mark Rutkoski, Susan Simpson, Stephanie Taylor, Axel Thormählen, Mathew Timmons, Chris Tysh, Julie Thi Underhill, Divya Victor, Matias Viegener, Christine Wertheim

2015: Marks the City of West Hollywood’s 30th birthday. Happy Birthday!

2015: Marks the time you took a free workshop with Figues authors. RSVP today.