best
M
May
pieces from "Sound Noise" in Aufgabe #10
"Silver Lake Jubilee Les Figues Reading" Silver Lake Jubilee, Los Angeles (May 2011) listen to the Full Reading or listen to just the Finale and be sure to listen closely for the heckler from the third floor apartment.
"Silver Lake Jubilee Arts" curatorial work for Silver Lake Jubilee, Los Angeles (May 2011) including Jubilee Dérives with Adam Overton and Lailye Weidman, as well as a large scale installation by Janne Larsen
"The Procession of Figues" by Kate Durbin for Les Figues Garden Party, Los Angeles (May 2011). Kate Durbin made hats for three Les Figues writers to match their books and each of us participated in a procession as Kate read from our work. The New Poetics hat Kate made for me was bright and wonderfully garish. I also blew bubbles, which I was very not good at, while attempting to keep the hat balanced on my head.
“Les Figues: Place, Timmons & Wertheim” Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Los Angeles (May 2011) This was billed as a Sound Poetry Reading. There was a man sitting in the audience with huge headphones on for safety, he clearly got the sound poetry memo. It was a wonderfully loud reading, or as one reviewer said, "Closing the fest with the audacious, high energy, experimental sound poets of Les Figues Press... Their performance was the most fun I had all day, as there’s nothing quite like watching a complacent audience’s skin crawl."
PARROT 7 On the Substance of Disorder by Will Alexander is out from Insert Press. Buy a copy before they're gone. SOLD OUT!
April
"A Convocation" Library of Sacred Technologies (2011)
"Gnos: A Vocal Liturgy" Signify Sanctify Believe at Public Fiction, Los Angeles (April 2011) A collaboration with Geneva Skeen and the performers Ariana Petrovijc, Joseph Tepperman and Yecenia Torres. A small group vocal convocation exploring microtonal scores with elements of chanting and improvisation - examining the traditional religious service of the liturgy as a way of structuring and engaging group participation in a collective space - an hour long durational performance lacking logical sense - an immersive meditative experience.
"Gadji Beri Bimba: A Chanting Meditation" Signify Sanctify Believe at Public Fiction, Los Angeles (April 2011) - Listen to a group of 8 of us chanting Gadji Beri Bimba for half an hour.
mentioned in (though my name was misspelled - yeah I'm used to it) “The Digital Flood: You'd Better Start Swimmin' or You'll Sink Like a Stone” by Kenneth Goldsmith, Harriett, The Poetry Foundation (April 24, 2011) "an impoverished writer, Matthew Timmons [sic], who has taken every credit card application sent to him and bound them into an eight-hundred-page print-on-demand book so costly that even he can’t afford a copy" - "These new writers are language hoarders; their projects are epic, mirroring the gargantuan scale of textuality on the Internet. While the works often take an electronic form, there is often a paper version that is circulated in journals and zines, purchased by libraries, and received by, written about, and studied by readers of poetry. While this new writing has an electronic gleam in its eyes, its results are distinctly analog, taking inspiration from radical modernist ideas and juicing them with twenty-first century technology. This ain’t E-poetry or Net Art: this is all about a basic change in the ways in which we use language. We will never write the same way again."
March
“Poetry Reading: Mathew Timmons & Harold Abramowitz” Kristi Engle Gallery, Los Angeles (March 2011)
"The Arc of Noise" (sound poetry choral composition) A Cappella Speaking Choirs, compilation cd, WFMU-FM 91.1 Listen to the early mix here. A Compilation cd with some great stuff including Yesterduh by Brian Joseph Davis, pieces by Alan Licht and work from a number of other sound artists I'm excited to discover.
"A Safe Dinner" with Galadriel Mattei, Janne Larsen and [name], at Hi-Lite Gallery Los Angeles (March 2011) A wonderfully gargantuan effort at putting together an "art" dinner for over 30 guests, no catering, Holly Myers cooked everything, many wonderful people helped serve drinks and food, almost everyone from [name] was there helping in some way, Eric Lindley regaled the diners with song, Kari Rae Seekins DJ'd, this was a beautiful event, this was an amazing time, we're all sad you missed it, and for those of you who made it, you know what I'm talking about... [name] is a curatorial collective dedicated to the optimal channeling of auspicious energies in any and all available circumstances. Its members include Spencer Douglass, Holly Myers, Paul Pescador, Catherine Taft, Mathew Timmons, Matt Wardell, and Kate Wolf.
February
"Cop Kisser by Steven Zultanski" The Poetry Project Newsletter (February/March 2011) A review of a brilliant book by The Great Zultanski.
“The Safe Show by Janne Larsen” at Hi-Lite Gallery, Los Angeles (February-March 2011) This show collected a few different bodies of work Larsen has worked on over the past few years including the Gum Drop Mountain series, another group of paintings Larsen worked on while at a residency in Austrailia, and of course the Safe Series. The Safe Series was based around an unopened safe that Larsen inherited some three years previous. Meditating on the possible contents hidden within, Larsen's painting reveal the darker side of desire and even obsession as the safe, or what might possibly be resting safely inside, becomes a fetish object for the subjects in her paintings as the subjects of her paintings, all men, become objects of their own fetishistic desires.
January
“The New Interview” by David Shook, molossus (January 11, 2011) An interview with David Shook of molossus about my recent book, The New Poetics from Les Figues Press
"The New Craft" from The New Poetics, molasses (2011) A piece finished after the book was released and written for David Shook and molossus.
"Self-Reliance" as part of [name], Collective Show Los Angeles 2011 (January 2011) A high energy construct of a show that brought together a wide variety of collectives and alternative spaces operating in the Los Angeles art world. The piece that [name] included in the exhibition was mainly thought out by Holly Myers and Kate Wolf. The idea was deceptively simple, there was a copy of the text Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, an old wooden soap box and the instructions that the viewer should take the text and the soap box and go somewhere outside and stand on the soap box and read the text Self-Reliance to any passersby that might listen. I myself took the opportunity to rely upon myself to enact the piece and drew quite and audience, it was also interesting to reflect upon the text in this seemingly new context.
“MLA Off-Site Reading” ArtShare, Los Angeles (January 2011) A reading with over 70 poets, the standard MLA off-site reading as we in LA were lucky enough to host the MLA convention. I helped Brian Kim Stefans and the gentlemen from the PRB put together a solid 4 hour reading and we had a stocked audience throughout the entire evening. I think for many of us in LA it was wonderful to see an audience of nearly 200 people spilling out into the wings of the theater, and all for poetry!
“Featherless #7” Wordspace, Los Angeles (January 2011) A wonderful reading at a great space in Atwater Village, wordspace, hosted by Brenda Varda, Andrea Lambert and Katie Jacobson, lovely ladies, all three.
December
"Text in Art: Barbara Krueger, Peter Tunney, Mathew Timmons, Young-Hae Chang, and Tony Thoong" online exhibition curated by Paula Daenze (December 2010) A virtual exhibition and a nice surprise for me to be found among such great company
“Telephone” François Ghebaly Gallery, Culver City, CA (December 2010) A One-Night Exhibition of Experimental Poetry, Sound Art, and Performance. This one-night show offered me the opportunity to take a project from script to real live choir, The Arc of Noise, which was previously realized by participants of (323)Projects over the phone as part of the telephone gallery (see more about this project below). I also asked members of [name] collective to help find perfumers that would be willing to act out found texts we had amassed for You've Got Problems? We've Got Solutions. a telephone gallery show we did with (323)Projects. Performers included Jon Rutzmoser (who also helped video the event), Tucker Neel and Nancy Popp. Spencer Douglas also made a movie based on Marilyn Monroe's eulogy. Please enjoy the videos below…
“Variety Variety Variety” the Lounge at REDCAT, Los Angeles (December 2010) Miranda July actually showed up in the audience for this reading in the Lounge at REDCAT, one of my favorite places to read in LA and on a Sunday afternoon too, my favorite time for a reading all curated by the highly skilled curator, Harold Abramowitz.
November
The New Poetics. Los Angeles: Les Figues Press, 2010. My book! Have you read it? Rodrigo Toscano did the intro and he has also said “The New Poetics helped deepen my thoughts about the paradoxical relations between temporality and culture-making. It is paradoxical and committed in a most excellent way.” Marie Buck has said, "In making newness old, The New Poetics begins to chart a way to think futurity differently. And as a work of poetics, Timmons’s book both operates through and points up a contradiction inherent to flarf and conceptual writing: the valorization of non-newness as simultaneous valorization of the (new) gesture away from the new. These poems are great at the individual level, and you should read this book for that reason. But also, you should read this book because doing so will upset a slew of old poetics questions you thought you had worked out.”
"the Past I, Present I, New I" The Encyclopedia Project Vol. 2 F-K
“You've Got Problems? We've Got Solutions.” as part of [name], (323) Projects, Los Angeles (November 2010)
Guest Lecture & Performance, Bruna Mori's Forms and Formulas class (LIT435) UCSD, San Diego & Mori's Poetry class, Woodbury School of Architecture, San Diego, CA (November 2010)
“Les Figues Pacific Northwest Readings” Spare Room Series at The Waypost, Portland, OR (November 2010)
“Les Figues Pacific Northwest Readings” Pilot Books, Seattle, WA (November 2010)
“Open Door: 323 Projects” by David Shook, Harriett, The Poetry Foundation, November, 2010. A write up on (323)Projects in general and it's historical precedent, John Giorno's Dial-a-Poem project as well as The Archanoids show in particular, including audio from The Archanoids cd as well as sample audio from The Arc of Noise. Also for this project Shook asked me to recreate the famous Dial-a-Poem photograph of John Giorno and I couldn't help but oblige.
October
"Man on Pink Corner, Purveyor of Iniquities" an Afterword for Christopher Russell's solo exhibition catalog, Runaway, Luis de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles (October 2010)
“Futility of Making Salad: Artists and Community” MATERIAL Studio Visit #2 (October 2010)
"Community or Group Formation: A Basic Sketch" The Futility of Making Salad: Artists and Community, MATERIAL (October 2010)
“From Bohemia to Conceptual Writing: Books, presses, and publishing” UCLA Department of Information Studies at the Clark Library, Los Angeles (October 9, 2010)
September
Sound Noise. Texas: Little Red Leaves, 2010. An ebook available for free from LRL and also available through Lulu.com as a paperback book. A kind of sequel to my chapbook, Lip Service, from Slack Buddha a year previous. I purposefully made this book the cheapest book available through Lulu so that alongside my previous book CREDIT I would have both the most and least expensive books available through Lulu.
"The Archanoids" (sound poetry cd) joint project Pleonasm Music, (323) Projects, Insert Press (2010) Listen to tracks at Pleonasm Music and at Harriett
“The Archanoids” solo show inaugurating the opening of a new phone gallery in Los Angeles (323) Projects, Los Angeles (September 2010) For this show I played a different track from the cd The Archanoids every other day throughout the month long run of the show. (323) Projects, a project of Tucker Neel, is a phone gallery that guests "visit" by calling in. For this show callers were able to leave a message that followed an online video score for a new sound poem, The Arc of Noise. As I've worked with Aaron Drake to mix the roughly 140 different messages left we've come up with a preliminary mix which is the track that was released by WFMU. Listen to the early mix here.
“The Arc of Noise Score” for 323Projects, text animation video score (September 2010)
The Arc of Noise from Mathew Timmons on Vimeo.
“Mathew Timmons: The Archanoids @ 323projects” tryharder LA art blog (September 13, 2010)
“Fine Arts LA Exclusive: Mathew Timmons” by Joshua Morrison (September 2, 2010)
“Mathew Timmons: The Archanoids” flavorpill Los Angeles Pick of the Week by Shana Nys Dambrot (September 1, 2010)
“The New Poetics Book Trailer” for Les Figues Press, with camera and sound by Ben Rodkin and assistance from Theo Carlson (September 2010) A "book trailer" made for my then forthcoming book The New Poetics
The New Poetics Trailer from Mathew Timmons on Vimeo.
August
“CREDIT: Installation” Not Content, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) (August 2010) Two 8' x 11' murals painted pointed in three days with the assistance of Sarah Krainin. Each painting is taken from the two main sections of the book CREDIT, those being Credit (on the left) and Debit (on the right in pink).
“CREDIT: Talk & Performance” Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) (August 2010) Images from the artist talk and performance after three days of painting the pieces. On the fourth day I took a break and talked about it.
