now available: a call to farms
Yes, the MRCC/Drift book is finished. Except now I think it should have been titled a A Call To [F]Arms, considering the rad elements of Sam Greenlee and Gerald Raunig. Yes, food and revolution. But whatever. That is not the only criticism I have of the book, of course. On the design tip, Mike Koppa emailed me comments before I saw the thing, noting that the gutter is too tight. Absolutely, I agree with that. The margins could be chopped by a quarter inch, at least.
You can buy it from me for, oh, ten bucks or so, or order it from Mike, or download the pdf for free.
Then there is the writing. Mine is not first rate, that's for sure. The C/CURE item is way too short, and captures nothing of how amazing our afternoon spent on the far, far south side of Chicago was. And then there are the omissions: no mentions at all of Gerald Raunig, InCUBATE, the AREA release event, not much on Mess Hall, nothing on Kevin Hamilton, Brett and Bonnie's Garage & Garden space, and probably other things I'm forgetting.
But who cares. It's still great–even more so when you consider it went from an idea in conversation to a real object in less than three months as a side project! (Recall that Downtime at the Experimental Station took about two years to reach fruition.) Compared with most of the quick-and-dirty publications that come out of the critical/social art scene, this one is anything but cheap looking. And some of the texts are fabulous. Sarah Kanouse's introduction is beautiful. Claire Pentecost's reflections are (as usual) insightful, self-critical, and expansive. Sarah Holm's devout and grace-filled dairy-chore narrative may be the single least expected text I've ever encountered in a publication coming out of a critical art effort. Finally, mIEKAL aND's avant-theory maps the outer limits of intellectual analysis, and proves that the work of poets is absolutely and vitally necessary if we are ever to crack the logocentrism of our linguistic prisons. And oh my god is his text fun to read.
