Dana F. SmithMarshall WeberRigo 23

Street Our Street

Dana F. Smith, Marshall Weber, Rigo 23

Street Our Street

Date

2013

Edition Size

20

Media

Inkjet

Binding

Cloth case, Hand-sewn

Format

Artist Book

Dimensions

15 × 11.5 in

Publisher

Dana Dana Dana Limited Editions

$ 3,200.00

1 in stock


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Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla

Harvard University, Widener Library

Ringling School of Art and Design

San Diego State University (SDSU)

Stanford University

University of California, Berkeley (UCB), The Bancroft Library

University of Delaware Library

University of Minnesota

Marshall Weber has been doing solo, marathon recitals of literature in public spaces and on the streets since 1994 when he started “The Ulysses Cycle” with a 33 hour long reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses. The “Cycle” ended with a 23-hour long recital of Homer’s Odyssey and also included a 72-hour long recital of the Old and New Testament. Weber believes that these endurance pieces are designed to challenge his physical and mental limitations as well as unreasonable constraints on the use of public space. The hallucinatory trance state attained while under the effect of sleep deprivation and fatigue blurs the lines between sleep and wakefulness, consciousness and unconsciousness, literature and reality, private and public, language and thought, and rational and mystical experience. Weber is projecting his existence into fictional space and vice-versa.

For 74 hours, from noon on May 20th to 2 PM, May 23, 2013, Weber lived in the streets and parks of San Francisco, dragging a poetry wagon filled with poetry books and loose pages of poetry and reciting poetry at appropriate places throughout the city. Weber attempted to trace a small personal song line across the historic and poetic geography of San Francisco. The performance was part of “Streetopia” an art exhibition and culture festival curated and produced by artist/musicians Erick Lyle, Chris Johanson and Kal Spelletich, that was centered in San Francisco’s Luggage Store gallery. The poetry wagon was designed and built by Andy DeGiovanni, Fred Rinne and Kit Young, the founding members of National Disgrace, the urban folk art band.

The white or black texts, whether typed or handwritten, are an original poem written for this book by Marshall Weber, which was inspired by a concept of and then edited by Dana Smith. The colorful texts are excerpts from poems by the poets from the marathon reading.

Artwork by Dana Smith and Marshall Weber. Photography by Dana Smith, Marshall Weber, and Rigo 23. Printing, binding, book, and digital design by Dana Smith. This book is printed with Epson pigment inks on Canson Duo Photographique Rag paper. It is bound by hand with a damask upholstery cover and canvas printed image.