Fact: October 28 1970: Avalanche 1 Out on Newsstands

Fact: On October 28, 1970, the first issue of Avalanche Magazine was out on the newsstands. Eastern News. Inc. was the US distributor; Miller Printing, then on West 19th Street, was the printer, The print run was 5000 of which Eastern News took 3000 copies. There is an Avalanche online index created by Amy Ballmer at http://wp.lehman.edu/avalanche. Thank you Amy! Amy did this on her own initiative, in the tradition of Avalanche which was also done on our initiative with sweat equity in lieu of kickstarter funds, which didn't exist then.

Technology was minimal.. A Smith Corona electric portable typewriter seemed quite adequate for typing manuscripts and a Sony TR 40 for recording interviews. At Gramercy Park where we edited the first few issues we had no TV until Van Schley gave us his wooden Setchell Carlson black & white monitor, which sat proudly on the floor and functioned as a light source with the sound off when we moved to 93 Grand Street. You could also patch in a Sony half-inch camera into the back which was how I started making videos. Willoughby had a Super 8 camera which he took when we went upstate but I don't think he used it in New York City.

The start-up and first few years of Avalanche are well-documented in a booklet by LB & WS dowmloadable as a PDF from the index website; for researchers, there'are also quite a few historical specifics in the reminiscence of Willoughby I wrote for Artforum in March 2009 on a sadder occasion.

October 28, 1970 was a happy occasion. Willoughby took a stack of copies to the Cologne Book Fair in Germany. The first issue was nearly two years in production, but this is not unusual for new magazines, Willoughby was so happy with the first issue, in fact, that he said we didn't need to publish any more. I said, a magazine is a serial creature that is published at intervals, regular or irregular. Besides, we had already foreshadowed the second issue with an article on body works, as they were called then, in the first issue. We called it a "pre-critical" survey because of course Avalanche was founded as an alternative in apposition to criticism. To provide source material by artists themselves. So the survey , like the Rumbles news section, was very detailed and informationally descriptive. it was the only such survey in the thirteen issues.The second issue could very well have been our last issue because
it expanded so much that it was about to explode.

Avalanche Magazine Index |

Avalanche was an artist journal published in New York City from 1970-1976 by Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar. This website is an index to the contents of Avalanche. It is designed to help you identify articles, interviews, and other content within the magazine, which you can then seek out in print at…

WP.LEHMAN.EDU

Revised draft

FACT: On October 28, 1970, the first issue of Avalanche Magazine was out on the newsstands. from Key West Florida to Juneau Alaska. How do I know? Because we got subscription cards back from those places. Eastern News. Inc. was the US distributor; Miller Printing, then on West 19th Street, was the printer, The print run was 5000 of which Eastern News took 3000 copies. There is an Avalanche online index created by Amy Ballmer athttp://wp.lehman.edu/avalanche. Thank you Amy! Amy did this on her own initiative, in the tradition of Avalanche which was also done on our initiative with sweat equity in lieu of kickstarter funds, which didn't exist then.

Thank you all the artists for participating with zest in such a risky first venture/adventure and thank you Richard Hogle, Preston McClanahan, John Van Saun and high school harp player Antonia Tims (who studied with Ornette Coleman) Linda Lawton, Christopher Lethbridge, Beth Ellor, Barry Ledoux and others. [If you're a researcher reading this note you should doublecheck which of those names appeared on the masthead of the first issue].

Technology was minimal.. A Smith Corona electric portable typewriter seemed quite adequate for typing manuscripts and a Sony TR 40 for recording interviews. At Gramercy Park where we edited the first few issues we had no TV until Van Schley gave us his wooden Setchell Carlson black & white monitor, which sat proudly on the floor and functioned as a light source with the sound off when we moved to 93 Grand Street. You could also patch in a Sony half-inch camera into the back which was how I started making videos. Willoughby had a Super 8 camera which he took when we went upstate but I don't think he used it in New York City.

The start-up and first few years of Avalanche are well-documented in a booklet that WS and i wrote dowmloadable as a PDF from the index website; for researchers, there'are also quite a few historical specifics in the reminiscence of Willoughby I wrote for Artforum in March 2009 on a sadder occasion.

October 28, 1970 was a happy occasion. Willoughby took a stack of copies to the Cologne Book Fair in Germany, with whose art scene he had been very familiar before we met. (in 19680 [Disclosure: I'm more out of the London sixties subculture.] The first issue was nearly two years in the making, but this is not unusual for new magazines, Even though Miller Printing told Willoughby that he never did anything right, probably because we always made last minute CXes , in this case Miller was wrong. Willoughby was so happy with the first issue, in fact, that he said we didn't need to publish any more. I said, a magazine is a serial creature that is published at intervals, regular or, in our case, irregular, having already mollycoddled quite a few such creatures. Besides, we had foreshadowed the second issue with an article on body works, as they were called then, made as sculpture, in the first issue. [Foreshadowing or set-up and pay-offs are screenwriting concepts normally associated with film rather than magazines, but there were other aspects of Avalanche which were filmic too] We go into that a bit in the section in The Early History of A called "Having Fun with the Turning Page". The section headings might seem a bit whimsical to those with more scholarly heft, but If I can't dance you can have your revolution}]

[For collectors there's a signed and numbered limited edition of The Early History of Avalanche 1968-1972 and maybe Printed Matter has copies at their new bookstore on 11th Avenue].

We called it a "pre-critical" survey because of course Avalanche's editorial stance precluded opinion-based criticism--but not investigation or analysis of the creative process which we did plenty of in dialogue format. I like to say the Avalanche photo essays and texts by artists, as well as the interviews are in apposition, rather than in opposition to criticism since they have provided source material for legions of PhD students and scholars over the decades... So the survey , like the Rumbles news section, was very detailed and informationally descriptive. it was the only such survey in the thirteen issues.The second issue could very well have been our last issue because it expanded so much that I feared it would explode, in a manner of speaking, and break the bank it did. ( (TO BE CONTINUED] October 28 2015, forty-five years later. (c) copyright Liza Bear 2015 All rights reserved.

2 10:31 pm, same day
Given that there were thirteen issues of AValanche, the stylistic range of interviews surprises me still. [I didn't say "only" 13 issues BTW] Thirteen was just the right number to publish not for some perverse superstitious reason but because the art world was changing fast, print was being superceded by electronic media and by 1976 Willoughby was well into his video performances and I had been making documentary videos and sound recordings for a couple of years. Moving on ....as well as individual interviews, the first second and third issues included discussions with several artists at once (Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim in the first; Vito Acconci, Terry Fox and Oppenheim in the second. Also in Avalanche 2, a discussion with Alan Saret and Jeffrey Lew on the founding of 112 Greene Street, which opened roughly at the same time as the publication of Avalanche 1, the date that got me writing all this today, [Break because I have to finish watching a DVD]

Avalanche Magazine Index |

Avalanche was an artist journal published in New York City from 1970-1976 by Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar. This website is an index to the contents of Avalanche. It is designed to help you identify articles, interviews, and other content within the magazine, which you can then seek out in print at…

WP.LEHMAN.EDU

Douglas Dunn & Dancers: Two Step

DOUGLAS DUNN & DANCERS
Alexandra Berger and Paul Singh perform Two Step to François Couperin's Les Barricades Mysterieuses at 537 Broadway, as part of the concert hosted by Sundays with Cathy Weis on October 25, 2015. This is a new work by Dunn composed this year. NB Music starts at 4:49; the first part is in silence. Filmed by Liza Bear
See also Douglas Dunn solo and VAIN COMBAT from same program in separate video:https://www.facebook.com/liza.bear.56/videos/10153614126081291/?l=72238014719054484 [Douglas Dunn Solo & Vain Combat]

Reflections on Jeanne Dielman

53NYFF October 9 Special Screening of Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, in honor of Chantal Akerman, whose latest and final film No Home Movie is in the Main Slate..

Disclosure: Seeing Jeanne Dielman now, in 2015, is nothing remotely like the experience of seeing it in 1975 at the Bleecker St Cinema, though the color palette of the film was instantly recognizable, as was the 50s-style decor. The 50s ambiance is reinforced by continual turning off of light switches when leaving a room, very much a post WWII habit.

Nor does the experience of story remotely correspond to the way the film has been referred to this past week in the media, as though it boils down to Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) having paid sex while the potatoes are boiling on the stove.

No, the experience of watching the film is cinematically far richer & more complex--and more humorous--than the boiled potatoes reference would imply. And although Akerman eschews so-called traditional coverage and shoots in master shots, the film is by no means all shot in real time. The selection of scenes that are, of course, gives them an added kind of soothing emphasis.

Here are a few observations: With regard to the mise-en-scene and brilliantly crisp and precise cinematography by Babette Mangolte, with whom Akerman had mad several short films during her 1971-1972 stay in New York, the variety of camera positions used within what seemed like very small spaces, especially the kitchen, is truly amazing. No conceivable camera position seems to have been left unexplored.

The address in the film’s title, Quai du Commerce, is well-chosen, since in the afternoons Dielman is herself engaged in a commercial activity. But in the mornings she also she spends quite a bit of time on the street, not soliciting (we're not told how she secures her clients in a pre-digital age) but in normal shopping for groceries/ After her thankless teenage son points out there's a button missing on his winter coat, she hunts for a replacement. In those days there was clearly an ample choice, at least in Bruxelles, of notions stores. This is also a thankless task because the coat was sent from Canada by a relative, and the buttons prove impossible to match.

Ps Kudos to NYFF for the free, and well-attended, screening yesterday, especially in the Elinor Bunin Monroe Theater, which has seats far more suited for warching a 3 !/3 hour movie than Walter Reade across the street

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Les Mots Justes

Les Mots Justes:

 
Isabelle Regnier's opening sentence in her news report about Chantal Akerman in Le Monde on October 6 was as follows: "Chantal Akerman s’est donné la mort, lundi 5 octobre au soir." I have no first-hand or even second-hand knowledge of the particulars. I'm just speculating on the choice of words here. It strikes me that Regnier's formulation is gentler, might suggest that in some instances death could be more like a gift, a relief ie something that you give yourself, Keats' easeful death. The possible English translations have different implications: "took her own life" (more aggressive) "died at her own hand" (kind of neutral but a bit too specific).The Englsih language reports I've seen referred to "suicide" or "suspected suicide". The Latinate -cide suffix is both more abstract and more violent with its affinities to homicide, patricide, fratricide and so on." We don't know the circumstances, and at this point it would seem inappropriate and indiscreet to ask. But to me, the natural corollary to "s'est donné la mort", which actually both Isabelle Regnier and most other writers in the press seem to have embraced, is immediately to segue to an appreciation of "les filmes qu'elle nous a donné" 
the works that she has given us, her stellar cinematic legacy. LB

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Chantal Akerman on JEANNE DIELMAN