Flash Art magazine

I met Alison Knowles through a friend from Paris, Sébastien Pluot, (who is married to my friend Nina) and who was organizing the exhibition of Alison´s “House of Dust” at the Grey Gallery, tied to some academic program he teaches on Conceptual Art.

I went to the opening and Alison had us all do a piece there!! “The Newspaper Piece” I think it was called, where we all read a different newspaper, in a different language sometimes, in unison but she would command us like an orchestra director the intensity of the reading… It was great! I went there with my Chinese-Canadian roommate and we both had a ball. I even became friends with a poet from California who was also reading 😊

Thanks to Sébastian I fell in love with Alison and her computerized poems machine. So avant-garde! Imagine a permutational compositional poetry printer in the 60s!!! AMAZING.

So of course I wanted to interview her, to learn more 😊 DAMn was not incredibly interested, being more designee oriented magazine. Alison is pure poetry.

I knew Omar from Apartamento magazine and he was interested. He even came to Alison´s house with me, met her and seal the deal! He was so excited!!

I wanted it to be such a beautiful piece that I contacted a photographer I also knew superficially, but who was a real poet as well with light: Mark Borthwick. Being the artist he is, he accepted immediately.

We had a fantastic photo session with even a rooftop performance by Alison and her beans paper rolls… The two of them were totally in sink, and it was indeed a beautiful moment. The pictures came out gorgeous.

I am not going to dwelve here in why Apartamento was obliged to drop my piece while hiring Mark to do the pictures for an interview with Laurence Weiner for that same issue. Not a poet Weiner. Somebody urged Omar to drop ME. We all know who by now…

Anyway, while being in Miami for Art Basel I met a very nice guy from Flash Art! It was their 50th anniversary edition and he was there in his booth. The cover was Peter Halley and we started chatting. As I was leaving, I realized they might be interested in Alison and came back to tell him about the interview.

He was immediately interested, and as the issue was going to print in a week, my interview came out immediately. But with only one of Mark´s gorgeous images. I think something happened there as well 😊

Anyway, since those images were seriously bullied out of shear beauty, I am putting here the pictures I took of them two and some of the pictures Mark took as well, plus some of Alison´s archival.

It is true what they say, that raw beauty is so threatening to some people… The sad part is when those people pretend to deal in culture.