RE:CONVERSATIONS :: TRULY FREE FILM :: CREATING VALUE IN FREE FILM
Independent film is currently redefining investment, distribution, and business models in the light of changing world economic structures. New dynamics may make film a frightening place to build a career. However, it is important to acknowledge the creative advantages of taking a film from pre-production to self-distribution. I work with ornana films, and we recently took this journey with our first feature, euphonia. Here is my contribution... Read More
MAY 3-4 :: CHAPBOOK FESTIVAL and PRINT! DOCUMENT SERIES 1 READING at MELLOW PAGES
Poetry month has come to a close, but the poetry is still flowing all around us. This weekend will be packed full of amazing events. Exit Strata will be tabling at CUNY’s 5th annual Chapbook Festival. The two day event will have readings, workshops, and a book fair representing 60 organizations and publishers. In addition, Chapfest is putting... Read More
2nd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 27 :: BENJAMIN WIESSNER on HARRYETTE MULLEN
I am going to start with an admission—I have a deep and varied past with the poetry of Harryette Mullen. Her masterpiece, Sleeping with the Dictionary, opened my eyes to so many possibilities in poetry. The experience I had is described best by her line, “I’ve been licked all over by the English tongue.” Read More Read More
2nd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 23 :: JULIET P. HOWARD on PAT PARKER
I first discovered the phenomenal poet Pat Parker (1944-1989) in my early 20’s and immediately fell in love with her poetry. I discovered her poetry around the same time that she passed away, so unfortunately I never had the opportunity meet her, but she lives on through her poetry. The legacy she left behind was powerful, as she had the courage to speak out and write about feminist, racial and class issues. She was all about building community... Read More
2nd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 6 :: UCHE NDUKA on FRIEDERIKE MAYROCKER
Friederike Mayrocker The poems of Friederike Mayrocker are instances of suspense of a peculiar sort. They luxuriate in thematic and stylistic instability. She handles the unknowability inherent in life with both delicacy and daring. She can be deeply accessible and edgily complex. Ambiguity is an enduring locus in her art. To her, most belief systems are hoaxes. She is not daunted by the idea of questioning history, nationality, autobiography. She... Read More
FIELD NOTES :: SARAH PINDER’S WEST COAST GREAT TOUR
So I went to the west coast for a week on a mini tour. The first stop was Portland, OR, at Future Farm for a house reading with Jessalyn Wakefield, Seth Brown and Imogen Binnie. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen Jessalyn, and last we were together, she was living in Sacramento. She’s working on this epic, sprawling poem on masculinities that I’m excited to be tinkering on / editing with her. We spent a morning in a cafe, going through... Read More
NEW SERIES ANNOUCEMENT :: [RE:CON]VERSATIONS
reconnaissance (n.) 1810, from French reconnaissance “act of surveying,” literally “recognition,” from Old French reconoissance (see recognizance). U.S. military abbreviation recon is attested from 1918. conversation (n.) mid-14c., “living together, having dealings with others,” also “manner of conducting oneself in the world;” from Old French conversation, from Latin conversationem(nominative conversatio)... Read More
NYC Readings Roundup :: March 25-31
Jacob Burckhardy reading at The Poetry Project at St Marks, 1968 Editor’s note: welcome to the 5th iteration of our new weekly series, the Readings Roundup…which you might notice is growing steadily! Sorry if I’m repeating myself to some of you but if this is your first time here it bears noting that it’s long been a pipedream of ours to revive the NYC Poetry Calendar (started in 1977 by Bob Holman), to provide for the... Read More
COMMUNITY :: LAUNCHPAD BK :: Women Love The World Festival
Women Love the World: A three day festival and fundraiser celebrating women artist-activists and their contributions to bettering our world community. We are proud to announce Women Love the World (WLTW), a festival co-curated by Caits Meissner, Karla Rodriguez and Lehna Huie, featuring a visual art exhibition, art for social change panel, short film screenings, live music, poetry and on-site activism engagement. Held during Women’s History Month,... Read More
AWP13 RECON :: EXQUISITE CORPSE and AFTERGLOW
Program Assistant Taylor Quilty (l) and Managing Editor Lynne DeSilva-Johnson (r) at the Exit Strata table at AWP. Coordinating animal silhouette shirts entirely coincidental. If you happened by table Q13 this last week at AWP you’ll know that we did our best to lure you with that ineffable combination of craft, collaboration, community, and, er…candy…. that you recognize as uniquely Exit Strata. You also know that alongside the... Read More
FIELD NOTES:: FILM :: LINCOLN LETTERS II: PATRICK WANG
Benjamin Wiessner I met Patrick Wang this summer, as part of a weekend film oasis in Tacoma. Starting then, we have had a running conversation about building the film world that we want to live in, rather than the one that we have begun to inhabit. The blessing and the curse for independent filmmakers remains the open-ended nature of the ever present question, “how?” As the poet, Antonio Machado, wrote, “Wanderer—there is no path; the path... Read More
PRINT! Vol. 2 :: UPDATES AND GENERAL AFTERGLOW
Oh, Exit Strata family. What an amazing journey it’s been! and what an incredible experience we shared just a month ago at our launch party for PRINT! Vol. 2, at the aptly named Launchpad in Brooklyn. We’ve been busy as little bees, getting the issue out to Bookstores (and available everywhere online Print on Demand), getting our first chapbook series ready to print in time for AWP in Boston in March, and the Chapbook festival here in... Read More
CALL FOR COMMUNITY POSTS: BOOKSTORES *YOU* LOVE
Hey, Exit Strata community — we believe in the currency of gratitude and appreciation, and in this vein we want to give a shout out to the small bookstores (and rogue booksellers) we know and love — that make our cities, towns, even our internet (or our sidewalks) a better place — so we’re giving you the opportunity to profile them on Exit Strata! Hopefully, we can help them get some publicity and deserved attention, and you... Read More
AWESOME CREATORS :: THEATRE :: THE (ANYTHING BUT) BASiC THEATRE PROJECT INSPIRES AND SHINES
Especially once you learn that its humble misnomer stands for “Bringing Art and Social Change into Collaboration,” it should come as no surprise that not long after meeting its charismatic, driven artistic director, Zi Alikhan, I invited the BASiC Theatre Project to be Exit Strata’s first community partner focusing on theatrical production. Describing itself as “a New York City-based theatre company dedicated... Read More
IN MEMORIAM, IN SOLIDARITY : AARON SWARTZ’s GUERRILLA OPEN ACCESS MANIFESTO
“With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?” - Aaron Swartz; Eremo, Italy, 2008 Here at Exit Strata, where we live and breathe the belief that Open Source is the answer — that freeing our creative processes and tools for open sharing and collaboration, leaving being the fear of a scarcity economy,... Read More
PRINT! Vol. 2 :: EVOLUTION AND GENESIS : THE PLAY’S THE THING
Ripe For Pleasure on Mysterious Mountain – TRAILER from Eliza Swann on Vimeo. In the 1960′s, Brion Gysin and William Burroughs developed a method which allowed them to free themselves, together, from the strictures of either of their minds, alone. ‘The Third Mind was meant originally as a kind of How-To manual for the use of the “Cut-Up Method” to free human creativity from what [Gysin] and Burroughs both called “Control”... Read More
Independent film:: A New Year Re:solution
After an incredible 2012 it is time to look forward at the challenges and opportunities of 2013. The story of this new year is yet to be defined. I have spent the last few days thinking about what is to come. I am excited for it. I am more than a little scared by it. Most of all, I have been thinking about how to make the new year important—how to create a unique meaning for the course of this year. What directions do I most want to grow in? How... Read More
PRINT! Vol. 2 Launch Party Line-up Announced : HOLY COW
Please Choose One; Sara Shaoul, Woodblock on Rice Paper, 2012. hold on to your seats, boys and girls. we’ve got a stellar line up for you next friday. your resolution for 2013? go to truly awesome, staggeringly blessed events where people like THESE share their hard work and talents with you. every single one of them is an active member of this incredible community, and represent both our print and web publications. Exit Strata PRINT! vol. 2... Read More
AWESOME CREATORS :: 100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE :: TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
“It’s a new day and a new way…people are not waiting for approval.” – Trinidad and Tobago organizer Rachel Collymore Perhaps the most exciting thing about the 100,000 Poets for Change series — and, we hope, about the work we do here at Exit Strata — is the manifestation of publication as not ends but means. As a dynamic tool for growth. When I talk to people about what makes 100TPC different from other... Read More
EDITORIAL : THINKING ABOUT ART AT A TIME LIKE THIS
You who are on the road Must have a code that you can live by And so become yourself Because the past is just a good bye Despite the fact that I cannot think of a single person whose life has remained untouched by art — who has not been comforted, lifted, inspired, or empowered by music, poetry, dance, literature, theatre, or painting — in times of crisis I find myself in conversation with those who make an about face regarding creativity’s... Read More