NEW! David Baptiste Chirot At The Continental Review

Saturday, February 23, 2008
from
Nicholas Manning's blog





The Newer Metaphysicals

adequatio intellectus et rei

http://www.thenewermetaphysicals.blogspot.com

NEW! David Baptiste Chirot At The Continental Review

http//:www.thecontinentalreview.com




Though The Continental Review is currently metamorphosing, and its new associate editors busily working in some temporary shadows, preparing what to me is a staggeringly exciting range of projects, this in no way means that we are on hiatus.
Au contraire! Which is why I'm delighted to be featuring our first ever (micro) documentary, in the form of a portrait of artist and poet David Baptiste Chirot





David will already be known to many of you via the form of his various creative capacities and avatars: his visual and text-based work has been featured in numerous galleries and exhibitions, his poetry published in a vast array of journals (beautiful work notably in Mark Young's OTOLITHS), and there have been chapbooks and collections - notably ZERO POEM (Traverse), HUNG ER (neotrope), and found rubBEings (Xerolage32).

For those less familiar, or more curious, a solid starting place would be Eileen Tabios' excellent profile of David's work in the third installement of Galatea Resurrects,
http://galatearesurrection3.blogspot.com
where Eileen, in a sentiment echoing my own, refers to David's "rubBEings" as being "among the most moving, evocative and conceptually-sound art works I've witnessed /experienced". Also highly recommended is Geof Huth's interview-article on David,
There is Nothing but Sunlight and Shadow in the Open Street to be found also in OTOLITHS.http://the_otolith.blogspot.com





This video was available before, in an altered state, and was shown on public television if I understand correctly, but The Continental Review thinks it necessary to be giving it another, and perhaps wider, airing. The wonderful thing about the piece, and the reason that Gwen Wojcik, Benjamin Clark, Matthew Miller and Kelly Poindexter have done such a wonderful job, is that we see nearly all aspects of David's creative life presented as a more or less harmonious ensemble. There is no erected barrier here between the making of rubbings or clay-prints and the reading of poems or stories; no false cloistration of quiet composing from the outside wanderings in search of meaningful debris.

And very special thanks to Ben Clark for all his work in getting this video out to Paris.

So, the basic pitch? "Come discover a great American artist in one nine minute installment."




And stay tuned for our next video: a reading by the wondrous and inimitable Pierre Joris.

The Continental Review
Posted by Nicholas Manning at 6:00 PM 0 comments