Prattler Loves You (2009)

THE PRATTLER

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 9 11 15 17 21 22 24 26 29 30

Editor’s Letter Sustainable Pratt Library Findings A Trip to Boston Kenneth Goldsmith The Rivalry Sam Hill Stop the Show NYPIRG Caracas Arepas Envirolution

PRATTLER STAFF Harry Cheadle, editor Monica Nelson, art direction Inva Cota, design Julie Hagenbuch, editorial Adrian Shirk, editorial Colin Matsui, art director in training Jaci Kessler, illustration Anthony Cudahy, illustration Natalie Apuzzo, proofreader

poster/cover by Beth Meluch illustration, this page, by Colin Matsui. printed by Lenny Koch at Conceptual Litho.

2

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 9 11 15 17 21 22 24 26 29 30

Editor’s Letter Sustainable Pratt Library Findings A Trip to Boston Kenneth Goldsmith The Rivalry Sam Hill Stop the Show NYPIRG Caracas Arepas Envirolution

PRATTLER STAFF Harry Cheadle, editor Monica Nelson, art direction Inva Cota, design Julie Hagenbuch, editorial Adrian Shirk, editorial Colin Matsui, art director in training Jaci Kessler, illustration Anthony Cudahy, illustration Natalie Apuzzo, proofreader

poster/cover by Beth Meluch illustration, this page, by Colin Matsui. printed by Lenny Koch at Conceptual Litho.

2

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

3

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

A RANT AGAINST THE VOTERS

by Harry Cheadle

There’s been something in the air lately, something that has put a smile on my face and a bounce in my step.

No, it isn’t spring in the air, or magic marker fumes – it’s the delicious smell of politics.

I know some people don’t enjoy following politics, especially these presidential campaigns that feel like they last for centuries. Some people get sick of hearing about poll numbers that rise and fall arbitrarily, or a potentially race-baiting comment the Clinton campaign made, or the price of John Edwards’ haircut, or the latest attack ad, or Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, or Hillary’s cleavage, or Rudy Giuliani’s sex life. Not me. I eat that stuff up with a spoon. Especially now that football season is over, I need something to occupy me when I’m procrastinating and compulsively surfing the web. (For instance, I just did a Google image search for Barack Obama smoking a cigarette.

He looks really cool.)

I have only one real beef with the way campaigns are conducted in the twenty-first century. It’s not the campaign-finance laws which pretty much guarantee all the candidates are owned by special interests, nor is it the bloated twenty-four-hour-aday media coverage of insignificant issues, or the bizarre hold the Iowa Caucuses have on the whole process.

My problem is with the voters.

Yeah, the voters. You guys suck.

Now, some people read tons of articles on the differences in policies among the candidates from a variety of publications. These people think about who they would vote for months in advance, weighing their options carefully, and cast their votes for the candidate they hate the least.

That’s the ideal voter. Unfortunately, most people decide to vote for the guy who looks like he could kick some ass, or not vote for someone because his name sounds foreign.

Take the 2004 election, for instance.

America was at a crucial juncture: we were in a war that increasingly resembled something rhyming with “Bietnam,” most of the world was treating us like a drunken uncle 4

THE PRATTLER

with an anger management problem, partisanship was at an all-time high, and the national deficit was growing faster than the weight of the average American.

So naturally, most Americans voted for the guy they wanted to have a beer with, and against the nambypamby, lily-livered guy who changed his mind about a few things, which meant he lacked convictions.

I honestly don’t care who you vote for, just have a good reason for it. Many women in New Hampshire supported Hillary because of that time she got choked up on TV. They realized she was just like them, a person with fears and insecurities, so they voted for her out of sympathy. Well, I felt close to Dennis Kucinich after he admitted he once saw a UFO, but I still think he’d be a pretty awful president (plus, his wife is much taller than him, and that seems weird).

Another bad reason people vote for someone, alluded to above, is the strength of his convictions.

Politicians will pretty much say anything to get elected, and change their positions as soon as they become unpopular, so when someone comes along and seems to actually be a genuine person with real beliefs, everyone acts like that person is a revolutionary for not being a complete scumbag. For instance, Mike Huckabee’s surprising success started way back in Iowa when everyone, even some on the left, started saying, “This guy isn’t so bad. He’s the real deal. He’s got convictions.” Unfortunately, those convictions are – pardon my antiChristianity for a second – a little batshit crazy for someone who wants to be president, and might possibly become vice-president.

It’s nice that he’s such a devoted Baptist, but it’s not so nice he’s called American a “Christian nation” and wants laws to be based on the Ten Commandments. I would rather elect Romney – who doesn’t seem to have any convictions other than really, really wanting to be president – than a guy who might try to get the Book of Leviticus amended into the Constitution. Some of the worst ideas in history were backed by

people with fiery conviction – ideas like, “We must drive the heathens from the holy land!” or, “It’s all the Jews’ fault!”

People have been complaining for years that campaigns tend to lack substance and political ads are unbelievably smarmy (the candidate, his family, and a rented dog in front of a fireplace) or full of paranoid fearmongering (like Tom Tancredo’s ad that linked illegal immigration to a bomb exploding in an airport).

But that shit works. We don’t want to hear long, complex speeches about policy and how, specifically, the candidates would govern. We want to hear words like “Change” and “Courage.” John Edwards got that 400-dollar haircut because he knew that it would be worth a lot more than that to look good on TV. Unfortunately, once everyone found out, he got attacked as a shallow millionaire out of touch with the common man. Of course, every presidential candidate is a shallow millionaire out of touch with the common man – Edwards only got in trouble because he called attention to his wealth.

Voters aren’t going to change, I know. People are stupid, and there isn’t a solution. We could make IQ tests a requirement for voting, to weed out the folks who vote for someone because they remember hearing his name on TV, but that system would rapidly turn racist, anti-poor, or into a tool for party politics because people--as well as being stupid--also happen to be corrupt. All I’m saying is you don’t have to be stupid. Just read the paper every now and then, think about what the candidate will actually do as president, and be as cynical as possible (that last one you don’t have to do, but it helps when you are following politics).

Who am I going to vote for, you ask?

Well, when the general election rolls around, I hope I have the chance to vote for Obama. Why? Because out of all the candidates, he’s the one most likely to roll back all the goddamn taxes on cigarettes.

THE PRATTLER

5

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

A RANT AGAINST THE VOTERS

by Harry Cheadle

There’s been something in the air lately, something that has put a smile on my face and a bounce in my step.

No, it isn’t spring in the air, or magic marker fumes – it’s the delicious smell of politics.

I know some people don’t enjoy following politics, especially these presidential campaigns that feel like they last for centuries. Some people get sick of hearing about poll numbers that rise and fall arbitrarily, or a potentially race-baiting comment the Clinton campaign made, or the price of John Edwards’ haircut, or the latest attack ad, or Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, or Hillary’s cleavage, or Rudy Giuliani’s sex life. Not me. I eat that stuff up with a spoon. Especially now that football season is over, I need something to occupy me when I’m procrastinating and compulsively surfing the web. (For instance, I just did a Google image search for Barack Obama smoking a cigarette.

He looks really cool.)

I have only one real beef with the way campaigns are conducted in the twenty-first century. It’s not the campaign-finance laws which pretty much guarantee all the candidates are owned by special interests, nor is it the bloated twenty-four-hour-aday media coverage of insignificant issues, or the bizarre hold the Iowa Caucuses have on the whole process.

My problem is with the voters.

Yeah, the voters. You guys suck.

Now, some people read tons of articles on the differences in policies among the candidates from a variety of publications. These people think about who they would vote for months in advance, weighing their options carefully, and cast their votes for the candidate they hate the least.

That’s the ideal voter. Unfortunately, most people decide to vote for the guy who looks like he could kick some ass, or not vote for someone because his name sounds foreign.

Take the 2004 election, for instance.

America was at a crucial juncture: we were in a war that increasingly resembled something rhyming with “Bietnam,” most of the world was treating us like a drunken uncle 4

THE PRATTLER

with an anger management problem, partisanship was at an all-time high, and the national deficit was growing faster than the weight of the average American.

So naturally, most Americans voted for the guy they wanted to have a beer with, and against the nambypamby, lily-livered guy who changed his mind about a few things, which meant he lacked convictions.

I honestly don’t care who you vote for, just have a good reason for it. Many women in New Hampshire supported Hillary because of that time she got choked up on TV. They realized she was just like them, a person with fears and insecurities, so they voted for her out of sympathy. Well, I felt close to Dennis Kucinich after he admitted he once saw a UFO, but I still think he’d be a pretty awful president (plus, his wife is much taller than him, and that seems weird).

Another bad reason people vote for someone, alluded to above, is the strength of his convictions.

Politicians will pretty much say anything to get elected, and change their positions as soon as they become unpopular, so when someone comes along and seems to actually be a genuine person with real beliefs, everyone acts like that person is a revolutionary for not being a complete scumbag. For instance, Mike Huckabee’s surprising success started way back in Iowa when everyone, even some on the left, started saying, “This guy isn’t so bad. He’s the real deal. He’s got convictions.” Unfortunately, those convictions are – pardon my antiChristianity for a second – a little batshit crazy for someone who wants to be president, and might possibly become vice-president.

It’s nice that he’s such a devoted Baptist, but it’s not so nice he’s called American a “Christian nation” and wants laws to be based on the Ten Commandments. I would rather elect Romney – who doesn’t seem to have any convictions other than really, really wanting to be president – than a guy who might try to get the Book of Leviticus amended into the Constitution. Some of the worst ideas in history were backed by

people with fiery conviction – ideas like, “We must drive the heathens from the holy land!” or, “It’s all the Jews’ fault!”

People have been complaining for years that campaigns tend to lack substance and political ads are unbelievably smarmy (the candidate, his family, and a rented dog in front of a fireplace) or full of paranoid fearmongering (like Tom Tancredo’s ad that linked illegal immigration to a bomb exploding in an airport).

But that shit works. We don’t want to hear long, complex speeches about policy and how, specifically, the candidates would govern. We want to hear words like “Change” and “Courage.” John Edwards got that 400-dollar haircut because he knew that it would be worth a lot more than that to look good on TV. Unfortunately, once everyone found out, he got attacked as a shallow millionaire out of touch with the common man. Of course, every presidential candidate is a shallow millionaire out of touch with the common man – Edwards only got in trouble because he called attention to his wealth.

Voters aren’t going to change, I know. People are stupid, and there isn’t a solution. We could make IQ tests a requirement for voting, to weed out the folks who vote for someone because they remember hearing his name on TV, but that system would rapidly turn racist, anti-poor, or into a tool for party politics because people--as well as being stupid--also happen to be corrupt. All I’m saying is you don’t have to be stupid. Just read the paper every now and then, think about what the candidate will actually do as president, and be as cynical as possible (that last one you don’t have to do, but it helps when you are following politics).

Who am I going to vote for, you ask?

Well, when the general election rolls around, I hope I have the chance to vote for Obama. Why? Because out of all the candidates, he’s the one most likely to roll back all the goddamn taxes on cigarettes.

THE PRATTLER

5

THE PRATTLER STAFF SPOONS WITH A GIRL IN A TALL BED IN STUBEN FOR HER THESIS. Except for Monica and Inva, who had ‘Zine Class, and Anthony, who probably had something equally as important, and Brian, who probably didn’t know about it.

6

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

7

THE PRATTLER STAFF SPOONS WITH A GIRL IN A TALL BED IN STUBEN FOR HER THESIS. Except for Monica and Inva, who had ‘Zine Class, and Anthony, who probably had something equally as important, and Brian, who probably didn’t know about it.

6

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

7

GREENBACKS

PRATT GETS ON THE WHOLE “SUSTAINABLE” THING

by Gillian Walters

On January 30 and 31, Pratt played host to a variety of events ranging from discussions and films to body painting, all stressed the importance of living a lifestyle that would benefit the environment and put the needs of the Earth first. The occasion was a “teach-in” organized to educate students about environmental sustainability called “Focus The Nation.”

Things kicked off with the body painting on Wednesday night.

While a DJ played music and students painted each other, a webcast on global warming was shown which gave effective solutions for young activists.

On Thursday night, after a number of classes attended the workshops and discussions broadcasted nationwide in a large number of universities, there was a discussion in Higgins Hall that summed up the major points of the two-day event. President Tom Schutte introduced the panel by stressing that Pratt is working towards becoming a more “sustainable” college, and that he supports all the efforts of the community in the fight to become a more sustainable society. Schutte pointed to a planned 6 million dollar “green” building on Myrtle Avenue as one of Pratt’s contribution to the fight.

illustration by Wadih Sader.

8

THE PRATTLER

After Schutte’s speech, the panelists began to talk about their plans for stopping the ice caps from melting and drowning us all. City Council member Letitia James, who represents Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, described downtown Brooklyn as the “carbon belt” of the city, and how right now Brooklyn doesn’t have it’s sustainable act together. To remedy this, Jones proposed renovating every park and having recycling centers recycle electronic waste. She also believes that by giving tax credits to businesses who use solar panels, and incorporating simple habits like

riding bikes into our lives, we can greatly reduce toxic carbon emissions.

The next to speak was Sean Meehan, the owner of Habana Outpost, a Fulton Street restaurant. Meehan has built his life around living sustainably, and he wanted to bring a restaurant that was completely environmentally friendly and waste free. The restaurant was the first in New York to have solar panels, and the eating utensils are made of corn and potato starch. Meehan said his biggest concern was to make the environment fun so others would join the cause. He said that his restaurant holds a place for all different types of people, and he believes that through cooperation, minimizing the effects of global warming is possible.

After the panel, Chris Jordan presented his work. Jordan is an innovative digital photographer who portrays the effects of wasting and abusing our natural resources. One picture was of a paper bag that was multiplied into millions of paper bags, which represented how many paper bags Americans go through in seconds. At the bottom of the photo, there were two people that represented America. Over time, the people became buried by a mountain of paper bags.

Can a bunch of discussions and webcasts change the environment for better? No. But if we become aware of our mistakes, we can just maybe stop our skies from raining acid and Manhattan becoming a lake. By doing simple things like using bags repeatedly and driving less, we can help ourselves a lot, and it’s possible that the teach-ins did some good. “Focus the Nation” will only work if, for once, the nation really does get focused.

THE PRATTLER

9

GREENBACKS

PRATT GETS ON THE WHOLE “SUSTAINABLE” THING

by Gillian Walters

On January 30 and 31, Pratt played host to a variety of events ranging from discussions and films to body painting, all stressed the importance of living a lifestyle that would benefit the environment and put the needs of the Earth first. The occasion was a “teach-in” organized to educate students about environmental sustainability called “Focus The Nation.”

Things kicked off with the body painting on Wednesday night.

While a DJ played music and students painted each other, a webcast on global warming was shown which gave effective solutions for young activists.

On Thursday night, after a number of classes attended the workshops and discussions broadcasted nationwide in a large number of universities, there was a discussion in Higgins Hall that summed up the major points of the two-day event. President Tom Schutte introduced the panel by stressing that Pratt is working towards becoming a more “sustainable” college, and that he supports all the efforts of the community in the fight to become a more sustainable society. Schutte pointed to a planned 6 million dollar “green” building on Myrtle Avenue as one of Pratt’s contribution to the fight.

illustration by Wadih Sader.

8

THE PRATTLER

After Schutte’s speech, the panelists began to talk about their plans for stopping the ice caps from melting and drowning us all. City Council member Letitia James, who represents Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, described downtown Brooklyn as the “carbon belt” of the city, and how right now Brooklyn doesn’t have it’s sustainable act together. To remedy this, Jones proposed renovating every park and having recycling centers recycle electronic waste. She also believes that by giving tax credits to businesses who use solar panels, and incorporating simple habits like

riding bikes into our lives, we can greatly reduce toxic carbon emissions.

The next to speak was Sean Meehan, the owner of Habana Outpost, a Fulton Street restaurant. Meehan has built his life around living sustainably, and he wanted to bring a restaurant that was completely environmentally friendly and waste free. The restaurant was the first in New York to have solar panels, and the eating utensils are made of corn and potato starch. Meehan said his biggest concern was to make the environment fun so others would join the cause. He said that his restaurant holds a place for all different types of people, and he believes that through cooperation, minimizing the effects of global warming is possible.

After the panel, Chris Jordan presented his work. Jordan is an innovative digital photographer who portrays the effects of wasting and abusing our natural resources. One picture was of a paper bag that was multiplied into millions of paper bags, which represented how many paper bags Americans go through in seconds. At the bottom of the photo, there were two people that represented America. Over time, the people became buried by a mountain of paper bags.

Can a bunch of discussions and webcasts change the environment for better? No. But if we become aware of our mistakes, we can just maybe stop our skies from raining acid and Manhattan becoming a lake. By doing simple things like using bags repeatedly and driving less, we can help ourselves a lot, and it’s possible that the teach-ins did some good. “Focus the Nation” will only work if, for once, the nation really does get focused.

THE PRATTLER

9

TIPS ON CHILD-REARING

FROM THE PRATT INSTITUTE LIBRARY compiled by Julie Hagenbuch

NURSING If a mother makes a point of leading a quiet life, if she keeps to the right diet, and if she does not attempt to do too many things outside the home, she is much more likely to nurse her baby successfully, and thus enjoy the relationship this brings about.

The more essential and fundamental characteristics of womanhood, the capacity for serenity and repose which are all too seldom cultivated nowadays, are those which are conducive to successful nursing.

GENITAL AND RELATED QUESTIONS As with the younger child, interest of this sort should be ignored by the parents. If the child is occupied and busy and is not left alone too much of the time during the day, and if he is always allowed to take a toy or two to bed with him both at naptime and at night, his occasional play with his genitals will not harm him in the slightest.

RELATION OF THE ADOLESCENT TO HIS FAMILY As the tomboy realizes that she is really on the way to becoming a woman and the boy has a dim feeling of the life and responsibilities ahead of him, the need for guidance, the innumerable questionings and doubts, expressed or not, assert themselves. The girl is once more quite dependent on her mother and the boy looks to his father for help.

From Children in the Family: A Psychological Guide for Parents.

Copyright, 1940, by Florence Powdermaker, M.D. and Louise Ireland Grimes.

Dewey Decimal Number: 136.7 P881C

OUTLETS FOR ADOLESCENT EMOTION Crushes and ‘puppy love,’ the unending giggling and secrets, the interest in poetry, sentimental novels, and movies, are all part of the age-expressed earlier and more openly by girls than boys.

The creative impulse also manifests itself in artistic and constructive work and because of its value as self-expression at this time, and perhaps also as a permanent hobby, it should be encouraged.

Writing, painting, photography, wood carving, nature study, building model airplanes, and other constructive efforts are of real value. photos by Wadih Sader.

10

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

11

TIPS ON CHILD-REARING

FROM THE PRATT INSTITUTE LIBRARY compiled by Julie Hagenbuch

NURSING If a mother makes a point of leading a quiet life, if she keeps to the right diet, and if she does not attempt to do too many things outside the home, she is much more likely to nurse her baby successfully, and thus enjoy the relationship this brings about.

The more essential and fundamental characteristics of womanhood, the capacity for serenity and repose which are all too seldom cultivated nowadays, are those which are conducive to successful nursing.

GENITAL AND RELATED QUESTIONS As with the younger child, interest of this sort should be ignored by the parents. If the child is occupied and busy and is not left alone too much of the time during the day, and if he is always allowed to take a toy or two to bed with him both at naptime and at night, his occasional play with his genitals will not harm him in the slightest.

RELATION OF THE ADOLESCENT TO HIS FAMILY As the tomboy realizes that she is really on the way to becoming a woman and the boy has a dim feeling of the life and responsibilities ahead of him, the need for guidance, the innumerable questionings and doubts, expressed or not, assert themselves. The girl is once more quite dependent on her mother and the boy looks to his father for help.

From Children in the Family: A Psychological Guide for Parents.

Copyright, 1940, by Florence Powdermaker, M.D. and Louise Ireland Grimes.

Dewey Decimal Number: 136.7 P881C

OUTLETS FOR ADOLESCENT EMOTION Crushes and ‘puppy love,’ the unending giggling and secrets, the interest in poetry, sentimental novels, and movies, are all part of the age-expressed earlier and more openly by girls than boys.

The creative impulse also manifests itself in artistic and constructive work and because of its value as self-expression at this time, and perhaps also as a permanent hobby, it should be encouraged.

Writing, painting, photography, wood carving, nature study, building model airplanes, and other constructive efforts are of real value. photos by Wadih Sader.

10

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

11

illustration by Jaci Kessler.

12

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

13

illustration by Jaci Kessler.

12

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

13

BEER, CHEESE, AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY: A TRIP TO BOSTON

By Anthony Cudahy and Jaci Kessler photo by Jaci Kessler.

A few weeks ago, some friends and I decided to take a weekend trip to Boston. We agreed that the best way to go to a city that we weren’t familiar with was blindly, without any planning.

First we’d need nicknames: Jetpack, Rocco, and Old Prospector, along with me, Burnside. It was a pleasant Fung Wah bus ride, with both the indifference of the swerving driver and the wet hand of a saliva-drenched child grabbing at my face. A few hours later I was welcomed to the downtown area by a homeless woman who promised to “blow my fuckin’ brains out” if I didn’t give her some change. After traveling down several dark alleys, we found ourselves at our first stop, the apartment of Jetpack’s former boyfriend, a MassArt student, who may or may not have known how many of us were staying for a period that may or may not have been longer than a night.

After waiting in the cold until the early hours of the morning and knocking on the door of his house, an attentive student opened the door.

His eyes took a few minutes to find their way to us and he exclaimed, “Oh, there you guys are!” We walked into the parlor that was decorated with piles of old paper and garbage in a very hip, edgy way. A family of opossums growled in a corner.

Bypassing them, we walked into the kitchen where all eight of the house’s residents gave us an excited, seated greeting. Too captivated to say hello, they stared at the blank far wall, holding their forties with both hands. We attempted conversation with them, but they were prone to stopping in mid-sentence, made quiet by horrific thoughts passing through their brains.

In the place of a refrigerator were dumpster finds. A sign on the cupboard read, “Nothing really expires,” underneath which lay piles of bread speckled with shades of blue and green mold. Venturing out of the kitchen, we made our way to the living room where we would sleep.

Beside a breathalyzer-shaped bong, I placed my belongings, praying they would be there in the morning. A roommate was sitting the dumpsterfound couch that smelled of cheese and wet cardboard mixed with wet dog and essence of elderliness. His girlfriend was seemingly attached to his stomach as if she simply fell that way and couldn’t get up. During pauses in conversation she laughed 14

THE PRATTLER

for no apparent reason and looked around with half-closed eyes. Her boyfriend stammered, “I took some DayQuil with a little NyQuil too,” and, after thirty seconds of silence, the girl laughed. A senior painting student in the corner droned about mortality. Jetpack, Rocco, Old Prospector, and I sat around trying to get a few sentences out of our lively hosts when I noticed a large tapestry hanging on the wall. It featured three deer, drinking water, with a foreboding black sky behind them. The blank stares of the animals reminded me of the students’ own facial expressions. Finally, they all went to their respective areas to pass out, and we went to sleep.

I woke up many times during the night from frightful dreams and took note of the fact that the heat had turned off at some point.

Old Prospector was mumbling incoherently about cheese.

Finally day came and we left as soon as we woke to visit some of the museums of the area. Returning to the apartment later that day, the MassArt students were in the same places they’d been when we left (with the exception of Dayquil/ Nightquil boy who’d gotten up to fetch the alcohol they’d brewed in the upstairs shower). Feeling nature’s call, I decided to risk it and take a visit to the bathroom.

The toilet was covered in pubic hair that, for the sake of pattern, was found all over the bar of soap in the shower. The culmination of their bathroom aesthetic was the PBR can resting on the edge of the tub, used to store conditioner. As I peed, I remembered fondly the story Jetpack’s ex-boyfriend told us of a neighbor who was so drunk that she fell asleep shitting on this very toilet. When I left the lavatory and walked back to the group, I felt the sensation of coming up for air.

After a few more minutes of inactivity, we couldn’t handle it anymore and decided to ask Rocco’s friend at Harvard if we could stay with him that night. He agreed and we threw our luggage together and ran for the door, just as Jetpack’s ex-boyfriend mumbled, “We can give you a ride if you want, we’re going to head out to get some beer.”

Accepting his offer, we waited for him to get ready. The student with a girl attached to his stomach attempted to stand and say goodbye, but immediately stumbled down. He turned to the girl and said, “I almost made two steps.” They giggled for roughly three minutes. Giving up,

he called out Jetpack’s name, and was done.

The eight-seater van looked like it belonged to a jailed heroin dealer who’d abandoned his vehicle on the street. All ten of us went in, Rocco sitting on the floor and leaning comfortably on my legs. The rank smell of cheesy vomit made its way to my nose and remained for days afterward. The student driving said, “Oh, that.” Another, “Maybe something died in the car.” Another, “That’s probably what happened.”

Another, “Maybe it’s just all those sandwiches.” The girl to Jetpack’s left was chugging vodka, attempting to conceal it by turning her face toward the window. Everyone sat in silence while the driver varied the music by flipping between country and techno songs.

When we reached Harvard Square, none of our MassArt friends moved or said goodbyes, but instead attempted to drive off with our bags in the trunk. While the car was still moving, we grabbed our luggage and sighed, unclear what life had to offer anymore. Luckily, Rocco’s friend found us and took us to tour Harvard.

Protectively gated, young intellectuals walked with purpose.

Their main dining hall resembled Hogwarts, and we toured the pristine lab-work area. Rocco’s friend was a biochemistry major with well-trimmed hair who also enjoyed extreme mountain climbing. His roommate studied earth and space science while also participating in multiple symphonic bands and practicing professional juggling. When we made it to their room, I took note of the differences between this living situation and the last. There was organized space, nice computers, a fireplace, and a bathroom roughly the size of a Pratt dorm room. There was no tapestry.

Conversation was nonstop and featured everyday discussions about black hole implications and the morality of psychological testing.

I went to bed that night confident that I would not be shanked.

The next morning, we left for our last day in Boston and at night, I appreciated the comparative cleanliness of the Fung Wah bus to the MassArt students’ house.

I don’t know where our Harvard friends will be in five years (The Supreme Court? NASA? A Nigerian Hospital?) but I’m pretty sure the MassArt students will be exactly where we left them.

THE PRATTLER

15

BEER, CHEESE, AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY: A TRIP TO BOSTON

By Anthony Cudahy and Jaci Kessler photo by Jaci Kessler.

A few weeks ago, some friends and I decided to take a weekend trip to Boston. We agreed that the best way to go to a city that we weren’t familiar with was blindly, without any planning.

First we’d need nicknames: Jetpack, Rocco, and Old Prospector, along with me, Burnside. It was a pleasant Fung Wah bus ride, with both the indifference of the swerving driver and the wet hand of a saliva-drenched child grabbing at my face. A few hours later I was welcomed to the downtown area by a homeless woman who promised to “blow my fuckin’ brains out” if I didn’t give her some change. After traveling down several dark alleys, we found ourselves at our first stop, the apartment of Jetpack’s former boyfriend, a MassArt student, who may or may not have known how many of us were staying for a period that may or may not have been longer than a night.

After waiting in the cold until the early hours of the morning and knocking on the door of his house, an attentive student opened the door.

His eyes took a few minutes to find their way to us and he exclaimed, “Oh, there you guys are!” We walked into the parlor that was decorated with piles of old paper and garbage in a very hip, edgy way. A family of opossums growled in a corner.

Bypassing them, we walked into the kitchen where all eight of the house’s residents gave us an excited, seated greeting. Too captivated to say hello, they stared at the blank far wall, holding their forties with both hands. We attempted conversation with them, but they were prone to stopping in mid-sentence, made quiet by horrific thoughts passing through their brains.

In the place of a refrigerator were dumpster finds. A sign on the cupboard read, “Nothing really expires,” underneath which lay piles of bread speckled with shades of blue and green mold. Venturing out of the kitchen, we made our way to the living room where we would sleep.

Beside a breathalyzer-shaped bong, I placed my belongings, praying they would be there in the morning. A roommate was sitting the dumpsterfound couch that smelled of cheese and wet cardboard mixed with wet dog and essence of elderliness. His girlfriend was seemingly attached to his stomach as if she simply fell that way and couldn’t get up. During pauses in conversation she laughed 14

THE PRATTLER

for no apparent reason and looked around with half-closed eyes. Her boyfriend stammered, “I took some DayQuil with a little NyQuil too,” and, after thirty seconds of silence, the girl laughed. A senior painting student in the corner droned about mortality. Jetpack, Rocco, Old Prospector, and I sat around trying to get a few sentences out of our lively hosts when I noticed a large tapestry hanging on the wall. It featured three deer, drinking water, with a foreboding black sky behind them. The blank stares of the animals reminded me of the students’ own facial expressions. Finally, they all went to their respective areas to pass out, and we went to sleep.

I woke up many times during the night from frightful dreams and took note of the fact that the heat had turned off at some point.

Old Prospector was mumbling incoherently about cheese.

Finally day came and we left as soon as we woke to visit some of the museums of the area. Returning to the apartment later that day, the MassArt students were in the same places they’d been when we left (with the exception of Dayquil/ Nightquil boy who’d gotten up to fetch the alcohol they’d brewed in the upstairs shower). Feeling nature’s call, I decided to risk it and take a visit to the bathroom.

The toilet was covered in pubic hair that, for the sake of pattern, was found all over the bar of soap in the shower. The culmination of their bathroom aesthetic was the PBR can resting on the edge of the tub, used to store conditioner. As I peed, I remembered fondly the story Jetpack’s ex-boyfriend told us of a neighbor who was so drunk that she fell asleep shitting on this very toilet. When I left the lavatory and walked back to the group, I felt the sensation of coming up for air.

After a few more minutes of inactivity, we couldn’t handle it anymore and decided to ask Rocco’s friend at Harvard if we could stay with him that night. He agreed and we threw our luggage together and ran for the door, just as Jetpack’s ex-boyfriend mumbled, “We can give you a ride if you want, we’re going to head out to get some beer.”

Accepting his offer, we waited for him to get ready. The student with a girl attached to his stomach attempted to stand and say goodbye, but immediately stumbled down. He turned to the girl and said, “I almost made two steps.” They giggled for roughly three minutes. Giving up,

he called out Jetpack’s name, and was done.

The eight-seater van looked like it belonged to a jailed heroin dealer who’d abandoned his vehicle on the street. All ten of us went in, Rocco sitting on the floor and leaning comfortably on my legs. The rank smell of cheesy vomit made its way to my nose and remained for days afterward. The student driving said, “Oh, that.” Another, “Maybe something died in the car.” Another, “That’s probably what happened.”

Another, “Maybe it’s just all those sandwiches.” The girl to Jetpack’s left was chugging vodka, attempting to conceal it by turning her face toward the window. Everyone sat in silence while the driver varied the music by flipping between country and techno songs.

When we reached Harvard Square, none of our MassArt friends moved or said goodbyes, but instead attempted to drive off with our bags in the trunk. While the car was still moving, we grabbed our luggage and sighed, unclear what life had to offer anymore. Luckily, Rocco’s friend found us and took us to tour Harvard.

Protectively gated, young intellectuals walked with purpose.

Their main dining hall resembled Hogwarts, and we toured the pristine lab-work area. Rocco’s friend was a biochemistry major with well-trimmed hair who also enjoyed extreme mountain climbing. His roommate studied earth and space science while also participating in multiple symphonic bands and practicing professional juggling. When we made it to their room, I took note of the differences between this living situation and the last. There was organized space, nice computers, a fireplace, and a bathroom roughly the size of a Pratt dorm room. There was no tapestry.

Conversation was nonstop and featured everyday discussions about black hole implications and the morality of psychological testing.

I went to bed that night confident that I would not be shanked.

The next morning, we left for our last day in Boston and at night, I appreciated the comparative cleanliness of the Fung Wah bus to the MassArt students’ house.

I don’t know where our Harvard friends will be in five years (The Supreme Court? NASA? A Nigerian Hospital?) but I’m pretty sure the MassArt students will be exactly where we left them.

THE PRATTLER

15

The young writer and Pratt student Lonely Christopher is the author of the chapbook Satan and the forthcoming text Vocabulary.

Kenneth Goldsmith is one of the most important conceptual artists around. Formerly a sculptor with a degree from RISD, he is now a poet based in New York City, and the founder of one of the most invaluable archives on the Internet, Ubu Web (ubu.com). His books are expressions of what he calls “uncreative writing”: renegotiations of the value systems upon which literature rests. For example, there is Soliloquy, a transcription of every word he said over the course of a week, Day, a collection of every single word that appeared in one issue of The New York Times, The Weather, a record of a year’s worth of New York City weather reports, and Traffic, a transcription of a day’s worth of radio traffic reports.

Although he frequently suggests these texts don’t need to be read, if one is inclined to make the effort one is bound to confront a vacuum in which, paradoxically, everything is breathing with meaning.

He is the subject of the 2007 documentary Sucking on Words, and the implications of his work have been addressed extensively by poets and academicians (Ron Silliman recalls, “I knew people were taking him seriously when, over five years ago, the MacArthur Foundation called to ask me if I thought he was a genius”). Goldsmith is also the host of a radio program on WFMU and he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, in addition to being the editor of I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, which was the basis for an opera that premiered last March. Lonely Christopher sat down with him in his Manhattan home to discuss the Internet, penalizing students’ creativity, and bagging groceries by color.

Lonely Christopher: You have said you no longer think of yourself as a poet or writer but as a word processor. You have also said that creativity is bankrupt. I can’t really decide whether those are pessimistic or optimistic statements, or both, but they sort of scare and excite me.

Yet maybe there’s also something restrictive or tyrannical in declaring the death of creativity. What do you think about these reactions?

photo from google image search of “Kenneth Goldsmith.”

16

THE PRATTLER

Kenneth Goldsmith: It’s not really meant to be a provocation; it’s simply an explanation of where

we happen to be at this particular time. We spend our time processing language these days. We spend our time processing everything these days. Writing needs to respond to the new environment of the web, which is all about information management. If it’s not responding to that particular situation it cannot be called contemporary.

LC: So do you think that responding to the situation presented by the Internet is one of the main concerns of your work?

KG: Very much so, yeah. It’s changed the whole game, hasn’t it? Most writers, of course, don’t want to deal with it. They pretend the Internet never happened.

LC: You’ve talked about the Internet in relation to how writing is presented and you’ve mentioned that when video art was just starting up a lot of the work was really concerned with what the new form could do technically instead of using it as a mode of presenting information and that’s sort of the problem with hypertext work or attempts to be creative with the technical capabilities of the Internet when it could be used more successfully without novelty. But doesn’t that put us in a situation where there’s not that much of a difference between words on a printed page and something published on the Internet?

KG: What happens when a medium comes along that does something better than what another medium has done up to that point? That’s what happens when painting meets photography. Photography does what painting did better than it could possibly ever do it. So painting then is forced to respond and change to that new situation. So it goes into abstraction. If photography is working on capturing an image then painting makes a hard turn and goes into abstraction (what the camera can’t do). You see this is the same situation that writers face right now with the Internet.

LC: Why do you think writing is such a conservative form?

KG: Because language is the means through which we communicate with each other. If we disrupt that communication flow then chances are, according to the conservative idea, we can never understand each other. And if we can never understand each other, in the type of way we’re speaking right now, we can’t get anywhere. Most likely we can’t do anything. We can’t make

business together, for example, if we don’t have a common language. It’s very sacred to a lot of people so they get very threatened by rupture in language.

LC: How do you address the materiality of the word?

KG: Words are really great. They can take any form you pour them into. If you want to make it material you can output it in a thousand different ways. You could make those words into cast iron, you could paint them, you could make dresses out of them... it never ends. On the web you can realize it materially in all other ways, the ways we were talking about with Flash or with programming. That’s the beauty of language. You can’t do that with paint. It’s much more malleable than paint. It’s a great medium.

LC: What does sculpture mean to you and why did you quit it?

KG: I’m not sure how to answer the first part of that question.

LC: That’s the part of the question I’m more interested in.

KG: Oh, is it? Okay. In a city like this, sculpture is impractical. I came to New York as a sculptor. In a city where space and transport is at a premium I couldn’t function the way I could when I was in school when I had unlimited studio space and I could make these enormous things and show them in these big spaces and store them in another place. You come to New York and everything has to change. I think writing is the perfect solution. A sculptural approach to writing is really great. You can actually carve words, be very physical with words, and you can do it all on a laptop in a studio apartment. I think the best way to be a sculptor is to work on the computer.

LC: What is it about Andy Warhol that you admire?

KG: There’s nothing about Andy Warhol that I don’t admire. I think in terms of a writer the thing that struck me the most was Warhol’s sense of the contemporary; he really embraced the contemporary. And it wasn’t always pretty, but he knew he had to be of his moment. As a result, because of being such a part of his moment, he became a part of the culture and now he’s as relevant or maybe even more relevant than he was when he was alive. So I must admire his contemporariness.

LC: How does that work? When I first started thinking about Warhol THE PRATTLER

17

The young writer and Pratt student Lonely Christopher is the author of the chapbook Satan and the forthcoming text Vocabulary.

Kenneth Goldsmith is one of the most important conceptual artists around. Formerly a sculptor with a degree from RISD, he is now a poet based in New York City, and the founder of one of the most invaluable archives on the Internet, Ubu Web (ubu.com). His books are expressions of what he calls “uncreative writing”: renegotiations of the value systems upon which literature rests. For example, there is Soliloquy, a transcription of every word he said over the course of a week, Day, a collection of every single word that appeared in one issue of The New York Times, The Weather, a record of a year’s worth of New York City weather reports, and Traffic, a transcription of a day’s worth of radio traffic reports.

Although he frequently suggests these texts don’t need to be read, if one is inclined to make the effort one is bound to confront a vacuum in which, paradoxically, everything is breathing with meaning.

He is the subject of the 2007 documentary Sucking on Words, and the implications of his work have been addressed extensively by poets and academicians (Ron Silliman recalls, “I knew people were taking him seriously when, over five years ago, the MacArthur Foundation called to ask me if I thought he was a genius”). Goldsmith is also the host of a radio program on WFMU and he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, in addition to being the editor of I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, which was the basis for an opera that premiered last March. Lonely Christopher sat down with him in his Manhattan home to discuss the Internet, penalizing students’ creativity, and bagging groceries by color.

Lonely Christopher: You have said you no longer think of yourself as a poet or writer but as a word processor. You have also said that creativity is bankrupt. I can’t really decide whether those are pessimistic or optimistic statements, or both, but they sort of scare and excite me.

Yet maybe there’s also something restrictive or tyrannical in declaring the death of creativity. What do you think about these reactions?

photo from google image search of “Kenneth Goldsmith.”

16

THE PRATTLER

Kenneth Goldsmith: It’s not really meant to be a provocation; it’s simply an explanation of where

we happen to be at this particular time. We spend our time processing language these days. We spend our time processing everything these days. Writing needs to respond to the new environment of the web, which is all about information management. If it’s not responding to that particular situation it cannot be called contemporary.

LC: So do you think that responding to the situation presented by the Internet is one of the main concerns of your work?

KG: Very much so, yeah. It’s changed the whole game, hasn’t it? Most writers, of course, don’t want to deal with it. They pretend the Internet never happened.

LC: You’ve talked about the Internet in relation to how writing is presented and you’ve mentioned that when video art was just starting up a lot of the work was really concerned with what the new form could do technically instead of using it as a mode of presenting information and that’s sort of the problem with hypertext work or attempts to be creative with the technical capabilities of the Internet when it could be used more successfully without novelty. But doesn’t that put us in a situation where there’s not that much of a difference between words on a printed page and something published on the Internet?

KG: What happens when a medium comes along that does something better than what another medium has done up to that point? That’s what happens when painting meets photography. Photography does what painting did better than it could possibly ever do it. So painting then is forced to respond and change to that new situation. So it goes into abstraction. If photography is working on capturing an image then painting makes a hard turn and goes into abstraction (what the camera can’t do). You see this is the same situation that writers face right now with the Internet.

LC: Why do you think writing is such a conservative form?

KG: Because language is the means through which we communicate with each other. If we disrupt that communication flow then chances are, according to the conservative idea, we can never understand each other. And if we can never understand each other, in the type of way we’re speaking right now, we can’t get anywhere. Most likely we can’t do anything. We can’t make

business together, for example, if we don’t have a common language. It’s very sacred to a lot of people so they get very threatened by rupture in language.

LC: How do you address the materiality of the word?

KG: Words are really great. They can take any form you pour them into. If you want to make it material you can output it in a thousand different ways. You could make those words into cast iron, you could paint them, you could make dresses out of them... it never ends. On the web you can realize it materially in all other ways, the ways we were talking about with Flash or with programming. That’s the beauty of language. You can’t do that with paint. It’s much more malleable than paint. It’s a great medium.

LC: What does sculpture mean to you and why did you quit it?

KG: I’m not sure how to answer the first part of that question.

LC: That’s the part of the question I’m more interested in.

KG: Oh, is it? Okay. In a city like this, sculpture is impractical. I came to New York as a sculptor. In a city where space and transport is at a premium I couldn’t function the way I could when I was in school when I had unlimited studio space and I could make these enormous things and show them in these big spaces and store them in another place. You come to New York and everything has to change. I think writing is the perfect solution. A sculptural approach to writing is really great. You can actually carve words, be very physical with words, and you can do it all on a laptop in a studio apartment. I think the best way to be a sculptor is to work on the computer.

LC: What is it about Andy Warhol that you admire?

KG: There’s nothing about Andy Warhol that I don’t admire. I think in terms of a writer the thing that struck me the most was Warhol’s sense of the contemporary; he really embraced the contemporary. And it wasn’t always pretty, but he knew he had to be of his moment. As a result, because of being such a part of his moment, he became a part of the culture and now he’s as relevant or maybe even more relevant than he was when he was alive. So I must admire his contemporariness.

LC: How does that work? When I first started thinking about Warhol THE PRATTLER

17

I was thinking about him actually in relation to the Situationists because I was studying the Situationists and I saw that they wanted to affect change but they designed their movement in a way where all their ideas were easily colonized and they really quickly failed. That failure made me think of Warhol because he seemed to have designed his work and life in a way where whatever the position it was put in it still retained its integrity.

KG: You’re very astute, that’s a great point. But the real thing is that the secret of Warhol was that he never intended resistance and therefore something that could never offer resistance could never be co-opted.

That’s fucking brilliant. He was completely complicit and by being complicit he was subversive. It was a very brilliant strategy of his. He took a lot of shit for it, too. People didn’t understand.

LC: Can you tell me about the Warhol opera? I know very little about it.

KG: I did an opera based on the book of Andy Warhol interviews I edited that was performed in Geneva by a troupe of six dancers, a dozen musicians, and a bunch of opera singers. It was all chopped up text from the words of Andy Warhol.

LC: What’s the purpose of turning Warhol’s interviews into a libretto?

That seems like a “creative” act in contradistinction to both your own ideas about writing and maybe even certain perceptions about the intentions of Warhol’s work.

KG: But this book was a very different type of a book. It was an art historical book; it had a lot to do with my own writing. It was a different type of a project.

Had this been my project I would have gathered the Andy Warhol interviews and put my name on them (simply retype them and not attribute them to Andy Warhol).

LC: What do you think about the interview as a form?

KG: That’s why that interview book with Warhol was so interesting.

Because, like everything Warhol touched, it became a new way of making art for him. Warhol would do a completely untraditional interview and he would end up asking the interviewer more questions than the interviewer could ask him so by the end of the interview you found out nothing about Warhol but you found everything out about the guy who 18

THE PRATTLER

was interviewing him. He was a mirror: you just see yourself in it. He would never show you what he was.

LC: What does plagiarism mean to you?

KG: It’s a fabulous way to write. It’s a writing technique to me.

LC: What do you teach your students?

KG: I teach them plagiarism. I teach them uncreative writing. I teach them how to steal, how to appropriate, how to falsify papers, how to buy papers and call them their own. Anything that’s not allowed. We explore in the classroom and my students are penalized for showing creativity or originality.

LC: What do you think of creative writing workshops and of formalism?

KG: I think they are shit. I mean they’re bullshit. It’s fine for another time but it’s not contemporary. It has absolutely nothing to do with the world we live in right now. It’s high school stuff.

LC: Why do you think creative writing programs have become so popular?

KG: I have no idea. I have no idea why anybody would be interested in that approach. Maybe they want to go to Hollywood and write screenplays, but if you write screenplays all you’re doing is plagiarizing other screenplays and other stories anyway. They’re doing what I’m saying writing should be doing, but they’re not admitting it.

Nothing’s original in Hollywood.

If you made something original in Hollywood it would never get made.

You have to remake the same story over and over again. But of course they can’t admit it.

LC: Can you talk about your ideas of process in relation to art and writing?

KG: Unlike painting (where the artist has to stretch a canvas, prime it, make the thing stand up) writing is a different process but I think it’s an equally intense and important process. Like you were talking about with your work: sort of building a structure, hanging the language onto it, and then letting the structure fall away. I’m a bit of a Structuralist. I’m interested in Oulipian constraints, but then in the end kind of kicking the thing away and letting it stand, just like what you did in “Vocabulary.” Very interesting.

LC: You say that people don’t have to read your books as long as they understand the ideas but to me, thinking about a concept of one of your books and engaging with one of them in practice (by actually

reading it) are different experiences.

To me the effort of reading your books, which are boring texts in a way, provides a fuller experience and a sharper understanding of what it is you are accomplishing. Why do you often suggest that reading your books is unnecessary?

KG: We let them off the hook. Text works on so many levels. There’s the level of language that we’re speaking right now, which is transparent: the language doesn’t exist; only the ideas are jumping from my mouth to your mind and from your mouth to my mind. Or else we could have a you know we could start eh blep ek app wh what am I try um ep uh ahh you juh ah start to uh hhhheh wait, you know, then suddenly we begin to think of language not as transparent but actually as physical matter. That’s the beauty of language: there’s no one way to understand it, there’s no one way to engage with it. I say you don’t have to engage with it, but I don’t say you’re not permitted to either. I think there’s another experience to be had; it’s not one many people are going to want to do, and that’s okay, that doesn’t really bother me. But I like the multitonality of these books. They provide a different experience to think about it and a difference experience to read it. Most books, if you don’t read it you don’t get it.

LC: I’ve heard you sometimes use languages you are not familiar with.

Can you talk about that?

KG: When I first started writing I was extremely formal and I realized that by inventing a formal system you could subvert the normative uses of your native language. I was at Whole Foods yesterday and I was talking to the bagger and I had all these groceries and I said, “I’d like you to bag everything by shape or color this time, so put everything that’s red in one bag and everything that’s round in another bag.” So you have an extremely different interaction with what’s most familiar if you begin to apply a different type of structural system to it. So in that way I was able to de-familiarize my own language. I was able to actually work with English in a way where I didn’t understand English even though I understood every word.

It was really interesting, organizing things by shape and color instead of by what goes in a bag together naturally. And so I figured if I could do that with my own language then I could do it with any language.

And so I began using languages that weren’t mine and organizing them

formally, creating a formal device by which the language would fall into place. And I was able to write in any language I wanted.

LC: How do you see groups of artists being configured now compared to earlier when New York had seemingly more vital communities predicated on geography? I feel like, to some extent, student communities that form around schools are incidental and the artistic environment of the city thirty or forty years ago that I tend to idealize has basically been erased and mostly paved over. What does the Internet have to do with this paradigmatic change?

KG: The Internet has rendered geography basically obsolete.

Everybody’s scattered everywhere.

Thank god there’s the Internet; without it then we’d really have a problem finding each other.

I think communities are really, really thriving all over the web and all over the world, but it’s a very different configuration from being in SoHo and going out at night and everybody having a beer together. It’s completely different, but very strong.

My best peers are scattered around Europe and all over Canada. And I go there, I’m invited to read and to teach there, and we see each other, and it’s great to meet these people and be in touch, and then they come through New York, and we do see each other, there’s a lot of physical contact, but oftentimes some of the closest people I’m involved with I’ve never ever met. I think that the whole thing has been completely realigned. I think it’s better, though.

I think we have tighter communities now than we did before when it was geographically based.

illustration by Eric Wiley.

THE PRATTLER

19

I was thinking about him actually in relation to the Situationists because I was studying the Situationists and I saw that they wanted to affect change but they designed their movement in a way where all their ideas were easily colonized and they really quickly failed. That failure made me think of Warhol because he seemed to have designed his work and life in a way where whatever the position it was put in it still retained its integrity.

KG: You’re very astute, that’s a great point. But the real thing is that the secret of Warhol was that he never intended resistance and therefore something that could never offer resistance could never be co-opted.

That’s fucking brilliant. He was completely complicit and by being complicit he was subversive. It was a very brilliant strategy of his. He took a lot of shit for it, too. People didn’t understand.

LC: Can you tell me about the Warhol opera? I know very little about it.

KG: I did an opera based on the book of Andy Warhol interviews I edited that was performed in Geneva by a troupe of six dancers, a dozen musicians, and a bunch of opera singers. It was all chopped up text from the words of Andy Warhol.

LC: What’s the purpose of turning Warhol’s interviews into a libretto?

That seems like a “creative” act in contradistinction to both your own ideas about writing and maybe even certain perceptions about the intentions of Warhol’s work.

KG: But this book was a very different type of a book. It was an art historical book; it had a lot to do with my own writing. It was a different type of a project.

Had this been my project I would have gathered the Andy Warhol interviews and put my name on them (simply retype them and not attribute them to Andy Warhol).

LC: What do you think about the interview as a form?

KG: That’s why that interview book with Warhol was so interesting.

Because, like everything Warhol touched, it became a new way of making art for him. Warhol would do a completely untraditional interview and he would end up asking the interviewer more questions than the interviewer could ask him so by the end of the interview you found out nothing about Warhol but you found everything out about the guy who 18

THE PRATTLER

was interviewing him. He was a mirror: you just see yourself in it. He would never show you what he was.

LC: What does plagiarism mean to you?

KG: It’s a fabulous way to write. It’s a writing technique to me.

LC: What do you teach your students?

KG: I teach them plagiarism. I teach them uncreative writing. I teach them how to steal, how to appropriate, how to falsify papers, how to buy papers and call them their own. Anything that’s not allowed. We explore in the classroom and my students are penalized for showing creativity or originality.

LC: What do you think of creative writing workshops and of formalism?

KG: I think they are shit. I mean they’re bullshit. It’s fine for another time but it’s not contemporary. It has absolutely nothing to do with the world we live in right now. It’s high school stuff.

LC: Why do you think creative writing programs have become so popular?

KG: I have no idea. I have no idea why anybody would be interested in that approach. Maybe they want to go to Hollywood and write screenplays, but if you write screenplays all you’re doing is plagiarizing other screenplays and other stories anyway. They’re doing what I’m saying writing should be doing, but they’re not admitting it.

Nothing’s original in Hollywood.

If you made something original in Hollywood it would never get made.

You have to remake the same story over and over again. But of course they can’t admit it.

LC: Can you talk about your ideas of process in relation to art and writing?

KG: Unlike painting (where the artist has to stretch a canvas, prime it, make the thing stand up) writing is a different process but I think it’s an equally intense and important process. Like you were talking about with your work: sort of building a structure, hanging the language onto it, and then letting the structure fall away. I’m a bit of a Structuralist. I’m interested in Oulipian constraints, but then in the end kind of kicking the thing away and letting it stand, just like what you did in “Vocabulary.” Very interesting.

LC: You say that people don’t have to read your books as long as they understand the ideas but to me, thinking about a concept of one of your books and engaging with one of them in practice (by actually

reading it) are different experiences.

To me the effort of reading your books, which are boring texts in a way, provides a fuller experience and a sharper understanding of what it is you are accomplishing. Why do you often suggest that reading your books is unnecessary?

KG: We let them off the hook. Text works on so many levels. There’s the level of language that we’re speaking right now, which is transparent: the language doesn’t exist; only the ideas are jumping from my mouth to your mind and from your mouth to my mind. Or else we could have a you know we could start eh blep ek app wh what am I try um ep uh ahh you juh ah start to uh hhhheh wait, you know, then suddenly we begin to think of language not as transparent but actually as physical matter. That’s the beauty of language: there’s no one way to understand it, there’s no one way to engage with it. I say you don’t have to engage with it, but I don’t say you’re not permitted to either. I think there’s another experience to be had; it’s not one many people are going to want to do, and that’s okay, that doesn’t really bother me. But I like the multitonality of these books. They provide a different experience to think about it and a difference experience to read it. Most books, if you don’t read it you don’t get it.

LC: I’ve heard you sometimes use languages you are not familiar with.

Can you talk about that?

KG: When I first started writing I was extremely formal and I realized that by inventing a formal system you could subvert the normative uses of your native language. I was at Whole Foods yesterday and I was talking to the bagger and I had all these groceries and I said, “I’d like you to bag everything by shape or color this time, so put everything that’s red in one bag and everything that’s round in another bag.” So you have an extremely different interaction with what’s most familiar if you begin to apply a different type of structural system to it. So in that way I was able to de-familiarize my own language. I was able to actually work with English in a way where I didn’t understand English even though I understood every word.

It was really interesting, organizing things by shape and color instead of by what goes in a bag together naturally. And so I figured if I could do that with my own language then I could do it with any language.

And so I began using languages that weren’t mine and organizing them

formally, creating a formal device by which the language would fall into place. And I was able to write in any language I wanted.

LC: How do you see groups of artists being configured now compared to earlier when New York had seemingly more vital communities predicated on geography? I feel like, to some extent, student communities that form around schools are incidental and the artistic environment of the city thirty or forty years ago that I tend to idealize has basically been erased and mostly paved over. What does the Internet have to do with this paradigmatic change?

KG: The Internet has rendered geography basically obsolete.

Everybody’s scattered everywhere.

Thank god there’s the Internet; without it then we’d really have a problem finding each other.

I think communities are really, really thriving all over the web and all over the world, but it’s a very different configuration from being in SoHo and going out at night and everybody having a beer together. It’s completely different, but very strong.

My best peers are scattered around Europe and all over Canada. And I go there, I’m invited to read and to teach there, and we see each other, and it’s great to meet these people and be in touch, and then they come through New York, and we do see each other, there’s a lot of physical contact, but oftentimes some of the closest people I’m involved with I’ve never ever met. I think that the whole thing has been completely realigned. I think it’s better, though.

I think we have tighter communities now than we did before when it was geographically based.

illustration by Eric Wiley.

THE PRATTLER

19

THE “RIVALRY” THAT NOBODY SAW

by Harry Cheadle

The efforts of Prattler editor Harry Cheadle to foster a basketball rivalry between Pratt and Cooper Union on February 2 more or less failed entirely, as only a few members of the student body showed up for the big game in the ARC- but the home team triumphed nonetheless, 48-39.

The game itself was physical and hard-fought, with plenty of fouls and the occasional scramble for the ball. Since this was the Hudson Valley Athletic Conference, there were also plenty of turnovers, errant passes, and times when both teams looked...well, they didn’t look good.

For instance, the Cannoneers made a 3-pointer with 11:00 left in the first half that made the score 8-10 – the first time in about seven minutes they had put the ball in the hoop.

Lakers-Celtics this was not.

The quality of the play wasn’t the point, Cheadle argued.

“You can turn on the TV if you want to see good basketball,” he said. “I came to the game to experience the unbeatable energy and passion of a college sports rivalry.” He thought about this for a moment, then added, “Of course, energy and passion weren’t exactly present either.”

Cheadle first announced the rivalry in The Prattler, and went on to create a Facebook group touting the rivalry.

Initially, people responded to the idea of having a rival, posting “Fuck Cooper” messages on the group’s page and generally getting into the spirit of things, but as time went on, the concept lost momentum.

Cheadle admits he got “lazy” as the game date approached and told people the game was on January 22 instead of February 2. Indicative of his sloppiness was the group’s name, which misspelled “Cooper” as “Coopet.” photos by Jaci Kessler.

20

THE PRATTLER

As a result, hardly any fans showed up. Though the bleachers were relatively full, it was mostly Pratt graduates waiting to play in the alumni game. There was some clapping and cheering, but the players on the teams’ benches made more noise than the crowd.

“My hope was to turn the ARC into a D-III version of ‘The Pit’ [Oregon’s basketball court] or another one of those places where opposing players fear to play because of the loud noise from the cheering section,” Cheadle said. “This did not happen. Actually, I’ve seen middle-school basketball games with better fans.”

The fans would have been disappointed in the first half, if there had been any. Cooper Union has only 1,000 students enrolled, but it was the Cannoneers who felt like underdogs. The Cooper players were taller and more athletic, dominating the boards and threatening to open an insurmountable lead when the score was 17-10 late in the first.

Pratt had no answer for Evan Canfield, a big-bodied redhead who played like the HVAC version of Shaq, scoring 23 points and generally throwing his weight around. Cooper might have won if he hadn’t shot free throws like Shaq as well, missing more than half his attempts. The Pioneers stunk from the line, which allowed the good guys to claw their way back into the game and narrow the lead to 20-18 at the end of the half.

Pratt turned on the heat defensively in the second half, pressuring the ball handlers in the backcourt and forcing turnover after turnover. They started off the second half with a 9-0 scoring run, and after Canfield made four straight buckets, the Cannoneers went off on another big run and taking the lead for good, led by Mike St. John, who scored 19

points and made a key 3-point play with about nine minutes left in the game.

Mike Clark contributed as well, scoring 12 and defending Canfield for much of the game, several times snatching the ball away from him.

Alex Kramer made three 3-pointers, two of them in the second half.

That added up to a 40-34 lead with three minutes to go. Cooper mounted one last comeback attempt, but Pratt made baskets and stepped up defensively when it counted, and Cooper was forced to start fouling with about a minute to go, the score 44-39.

After the game, fans failed to storm the court, even though it was only the Cannoneers’ second win of the season.

Cheadle, delusional as ever, still thinks of the game as a “rivalry,” and came up with a boatload of excuses for the low turnout.

“For one thing, the game was on Saturday at noon, which is the worst time to do anything if you’re a Pratt student,” he said. “I mean, I could barely drag myself out of bed, and I’m the one who started this whole thing. Plus, everyone has so much work. If it had been later in the day, maybe I could have organized a pregame tailgating party and gotten a bunch of drunks to show up. They would have made some noise.

“You know, I did this originally because this old alumni was saying we had no school pride at Pratt anymore. I wanted to prove him wrong by getting people to come to one freakin’ basketball game, but I think I proved him right. Pratt students don’t get together for any reason other than to get fucked up or go to Animal Collective concerts.”

THE PRATTLER

21

THE “RIVALRY” THAT NOBODY SAW

by Harry Cheadle

The efforts of Prattler editor Harry Cheadle to foster a basketball rivalry between Pratt and Cooper Union on February 2 more or less failed entirely, as only a few members of the student body showed up for the big game in the ARC- but the home team triumphed nonetheless, 48-39.

The game itself was physical and hard-fought, with plenty of fouls and the occasional scramble for the ball. Since this was the Hudson Valley Athletic Conference, there were also plenty of turnovers, errant passes, and times when both teams looked...well, they didn’t look good.

For instance, the Cannoneers made a 3-pointer with 11:00 left in the first half that made the score 8-10 – the first time in about seven minutes they had put the ball in the hoop.

Lakers-Celtics this was not.

The quality of the play wasn’t the point, Cheadle argued.

“You can turn on the TV if you want to see good basketball,” he said. “I came to the game to experience the unbeatable energy and passion of a college sports rivalry.” He thought about this for a moment, then added, “Of course, energy and passion weren’t exactly present either.”

Cheadle first announced the rivalry in The Prattler, and went on to create a Facebook group touting the rivalry.

Initially, people responded to the idea of having a rival, posting “Fuck Cooper” messages on the group’s page and generally getting into the spirit of things, but as time went on, the concept lost momentum.

Cheadle admits he got “lazy” as the game date approached and told people the game was on January 22 instead of February 2. Indicative of his sloppiness was the group’s name, which misspelled “Cooper” as “Coopet.” photos by Jaci Kessler.

20

THE PRATTLER

As a result, hardly any fans showed up. Though the bleachers were relatively full, it was mostly Pratt graduates waiting to play in the alumni game. There was some clapping and cheering, but the players on the teams’ benches made more noise than the crowd.

“My hope was to turn the ARC into a D-III version of ‘The Pit’ [Oregon’s basketball court] or another one of those places where opposing players fear to play because of the loud noise from the cheering section,” Cheadle said. “This did not happen. Actually, I’ve seen middle-school basketball games with better fans.”

The fans would have been disappointed in the first half, if there had been any. Cooper Union has only 1,000 students enrolled, but it was the Cannoneers who felt like underdogs. The Cooper players were taller and more athletic, dominating the boards and threatening to open an insurmountable lead when the score was 17-10 late in the first.

Pratt had no answer for Evan Canfield, a big-bodied redhead who played like the HVAC version of Shaq, scoring 23 points and generally throwing his weight around. Cooper might have won if he hadn’t shot free throws like Shaq as well, missing more than half his attempts. The Pioneers stunk from the line, which allowed the good guys to claw their way back into the game and narrow the lead to 20-18 at the end of the half.

Pratt turned on the heat defensively in the second half, pressuring the ball handlers in the backcourt and forcing turnover after turnover. They started off the second half with a 9-0 scoring run, and after Canfield made four straight buckets, the Cannoneers went off on another big run and taking the lead for good, led by Mike St. John, who scored 19

points and made a key 3-point play with about nine minutes left in the game.

Mike Clark contributed as well, scoring 12 and defending Canfield for much of the game, several times snatching the ball away from him.

Alex Kramer made three 3-pointers, two of them in the second half.

That added up to a 40-34 lead with three minutes to go. Cooper mounted one last comeback attempt, but Pratt made baskets and stepped up defensively when it counted, and Cooper was forced to start fouling with about a minute to go, the score 44-39.

After the game, fans failed to storm the court, even though it was only the Cannoneers’ second win of the season.

Cheadle, delusional as ever, still thinks of the game as a “rivalry,” and came up with a boatload of excuses for the low turnout.

“For one thing, the game was on Saturday at noon, which is the worst time to do anything if you’re a Pratt student,” he said. “I mean, I could barely drag myself out of bed, and I’m the one who started this whole thing. Plus, everyone has so much work. If it had been later in the day, maybe I could have organized a pregame tailgating party and gotten a bunch of drunks to show up. They would have made some noise.

“You know, I did this originally because this old alumni was saying we had no school pride at Pratt anymore. I wanted to prove him wrong by getting people to come to one freakin’ basketball game, but I think I proved him right. Pratt students don’t get together for any reason other than to get fucked up or go to Animal Collective concerts.”

THE PRATTLER

21

What in Sam Hill?

by Adrian Shirk

My bike tires had gone flat. I went to security to see if they had a pump.

They said, no, they did not, but that I should go see Sam Hill in The Engine Room. I went, but Sam Hill was out to lunch. I went later that afternoon, but his office was empty.

I went the following morning, but Conrad with the mutton-chops told me that Sam was on sick leave, and should be back tomorrow.

In a corridor between Chapel Hall and North Hall, therein lies The Engine Room. It was built in 1887, the same year the school opened, so that in the event that the whole higher education thing didn’t pan out, they could use the energy from these huge engines to power a shoe factory. Now, based on that, who can deny that post-secondary academia is a consumer product?

I went to The Engine Room two more days in a row, poking my head quietly into offices and over railings.

No sign, and my bike tires were still squashed. I began to think the whole “Sam Hill” thing was a big joke. I went back to security and said, “Listen, I was told to go find Sam, and I’ve checked everyday this week, and he hasn’t shown.”

The security guard raised his eyebrow at me and said, “Go in there and yell for him. He’s in there.”

22

THE PRATTLER

So I went back, went through the doorway, and stepped onto the balmy mezzanine that overlooks the massive, cast-iron red engine, and I yelled for Sam Hill.

“Come on down, come on down,” he said.

I took a staircase into the belly of the generators and there he was.

Round-face, brown-eyed, brownskinned, smiling, looked like he’d been wandering around the pipes for five-and-a-half decades. I told him my situation over the rumbling and steam of the machines, and he found a foot-pedal air compressor, and I brought him to my bike.

“I ride my bike everyday to work, I always have,” he said. “Come from the top of Williamsburg, all the way here. And I used to ride even when I lived in Queens and worked in Manhattan. I’m a bike man.”

He started to work on my tires.

“Sam Hill is a pretty legendary name,” I said. “I almost thought they were yanking my chain. You know, right? The old Sam Hill was this crazy rich guy in the twenties who built a railroad in Oregon, where I’m from. And he built this giant mansion and this replica of stonehenge in the middle of nowhere.”

“What in Sam Hill are you talking about?” Sam Hill said.

I laughed.

“What exactly goes on in The Engine Room,” I said.

“Why, we heat the whole campus,” he said.

My heart sank for a moment. How had I not known? How privileged am I? All this time I thought they were simply preserving it for novelty, as a relic, did not know this was where the action happened. Did not think about Sam Hill keeping us warm all winter long.

One of the maintenance guys strolled up to see what we were doing. He stood to the side, his arms folded over his barrel chest.

“Cute bike,” he said. When Sam had finished, I extended my hand in gratitude, but his arms were full so we knocked elbows instead, and he said, “Anytime, Adrian. Anytime.”

Something I am learning: There are an infinite number of people out there to help you, at any given moment. You just have to ask. There is someone very close by who has what you need, be it cooking oil, Band-Aids or compressed air. You just have to do like the bemused security guard instructed: “Go in there and yell for him.”

illustration by Zoe Langer.

THE PRATTLER

23

What in Sam Hill?

by Adrian Shirk

My bike tires had gone flat. I went to security to see if they had a pump.

They said, no, they did not, but that I should go see Sam Hill in The Engine Room. I went, but Sam Hill was out to lunch. I went later that afternoon, but his office was empty.

I went the following morning, but Conrad with the mutton-chops told me that Sam was on sick leave, and should be back tomorrow.

In a corridor between Chapel Hall and North Hall, therein lies The Engine Room. It was built in 1887, the same year the school opened, so that in the event that the whole higher education thing didn’t pan out, they could use the energy from these huge engines to power a shoe factory. Now, based on that, who can deny that post-secondary academia is a consumer product?

I went to The Engine Room two more days in a row, poking my head quietly into offices and over railings.

No sign, and my bike tires were still squashed. I began to think the whole “Sam Hill” thing was a big joke. I went back to security and said, “Listen, I was told to go find Sam, and I’ve checked everyday this week, and he hasn’t shown.”

The security guard raised his eyebrow at me and said, “Go in there and yell for him. He’s in there.”

22

THE PRATTLER

So I went back, went through the doorway, and stepped onto the balmy mezzanine that overlooks the massive, cast-iron red engine, and I yelled for Sam Hill.

“Come on down, come on down,” he said.

I took a staircase into the belly of the generators and there he was.

Round-face, brown-eyed, brownskinned, smiling, looked like he’d been wandering around the pipes for five-and-a-half decades. I told him my situation over the rumbling and steam of the machines, and he found a foot-pedal air compressor, and I brought him to my bike.

“I ride my bike everyday to work, I always have,” he said. “Come from the top of Williamsburg, all the way here. And I used to ride even when I lived in Queens and worked in Manhattan. I’m a bike man.”

He started to work on my tires.

“Sam Hill is a pretty legendary name,” I said. “I almost thought they were yanking my chain. You know, right? The old Sam Hill was this crazy rich guy in the twenties who built a railroad in Oregon, where I’m from. And he built this giant mansion and this replica of stonehenge in the middle of nowhere.”

“What in Sam Hill are you talking about?” Sam Hill said.

I laughed.

“What exactly goes on in The Engine Room,” I said.

“Why, we heat the whole campus,” he said.

My heart sank for a moment. How had I not known? How privileged am I? All this time I thought they were simply preserving it for novelty, as a relic, did not know this was where the action happened. Did not think about Sam Hill keeping us warm all winter long.

One of the maintenance guys strolled up to see what we were doing. He stood to the side, his arms folded over his barrel chest.

“Cute bike,” he said. When Sam had finished, I extended my hand in gratitude, but his arms were full so we knocked elbows instead, and he said, “Anytime, Adrian. Anytime.”

Something I am learning: There are an infinite number of people out there to help you, at any given moment. You just have to ask. There is someone very close by who has what you need, be it cooking oil, Band-Aids or compressed air. You just have to do like the bemused security guard instructed: “Go in there and yell for him.”

illustration by Zoe Langer.

THE PRATTLER

23

STOP THE SHOW!

The trials and tribulations of a new theater club

by Harry Cheadle

was a plot about a family suggested, something about a drowned mother and a brutal father, but that was lost in the spectacle. Oh, there was also screeching violin music and a strange spoken-word tape being played over the speakers. Things got intense – at one point, Richichi threw the flashlight against the wall, whereupon it broke into pieces.

The play ended, abruptly, when the sound cut off and the lights turned on. The participants scurried back behind the curtain, and for a few moments, the audience wasn’t sure whether the actors were going to come back for a curtain call or what.

“I wasn’t sure if Robi’s play had been cut short or if this was the way it had been meant to end,” said Joshua Furst, the group’s faculty advisor, who was watching the play. “This, I thought, was an interesting position for an audience member to be placed in.”

The group itself was placed in their own interesting position at that moment. Snyderman’s play was supposed to go on for another twenty minutes – although due to its chaotic nature, almost no one but the playwright knew this – and had been cut short by the stage manager, Rae McIntyre, because after the flashlight shattered, she apparently became concerned that things were getting unsafe. Worse still, after the performance, Pratt employees saw empty bottles of champagne and whiskey backstage, and it looked like Pratt’s newly-founded theater club would disappear just as fast as it had been created.

illustration by Anthony Cudahy.

24

THE PRATTLER

The inaugural performance of Pratt Institutionalized Theater, a club founded last semester by a group of writing majors, took place on December 7 and was very nearly a rousing success. The first three one-act plays came on and off the stage without a hitch, if not without some serious weirdness. The opening play was a debate between a soldier and a tiger-woman about war, punctuated by the director stopping the scene and giving them tips; the second was a monologue about an ex-boyfriend delivered by an actress that was completely nude; the third was another monologue, this one a Gertrude Stein essay on the atomic bomb that was...read...very...slowly.

(That last one also featured an actor in a monster mask reading a newspaper in the background, which, compared to the other eccentricities of the plays, is barely worth mentioning.)

The last play, “Morning Morning,” written and directed by Robi Snyderman, is hard to describe, but here’s an attempt: it started out with Snyderman, an elfin young man with a large nest of black hair, kneeling at the center of the stage, moaning in pain. He then stood up, picked up an old rake, and began raking up the debris scattered on the stage – some wires, some paper, a boot – while actress, Katie Przybylski, sat on a bed in the background and talked about her lost brother. Other actors and actresses started wandering through the aisles, in various states of psychosis. One shirtless actor snapped a belt he was holding while yelling, “This belt is a snake!”

Another actress, Mandy Richichi (author of, “This Terrifying Blank,” the aforementioned nude-girl monologue), walked through the audience with a flashlight, apparently searching for her children. There

The group was founded at the beginning of last semester, when Snyderman, Christopher Martini, and Jody Buchman – all currently Junior writing majors – were looking for a venue to put on plays that they had written. They decided, as Buchman said, that “the school was the easiest way to get the resources we needed.” They proceeded to fill out the paperwork to create the club, recruiting Furst – whose Playwriting class they had all taken – as advisor.

They immediately began planning to put on a show in Memorial Hall at the end of the semester.

Assembling several original plays in three months isn’t easy, especially for students who were attending classes full-time, and especially if those students haven’t had a whole lot of experience putting on plays. Snyderman had a play of his performed at the Bowery Poetry Club last summer, but that was in

a much smaller space, and, not to mention, there was only one play.

In the beginning, the relationship between the club and the administration that had given them the use of the Hall was amiable.

Although there were restrictions placed on what could be done – for instance, they couldn’t have confetti, cigarettes, or fake guns on the stage – Buchman described the staff as “very lenient and very cooperative.”

In fact, they ignored the rule that said that everything on the stage had to be fire-retardant, allowing the group to use couches that didn’t meet specifications.

The problems arose due to the lack of time the group had to prepare the plays. There were three rehearsals planned, but because they were still trying to assemble sets and work out last-minute kinks, they never did a full walk-through of all four plays.

“We were so pressed for time, [the writers] had to get their own plays together themselves,” Martini said. “The performance was the first time they came together. It was a little chaotic.”

The planned elements of the evening, however, went evenly. Snyderman’s play didn’t have a script – most of the actions were to be improvised, based on individual conversations the playwright had with the actors.

There was never supposed to be an overarching plot; in an ironic twist, the play was scheduled to end abruptly, with the soundtrack suddenly going quiet and the actors hustling behind the curtain.

“The way it ended was the way it was going to end,” said Snyderman.

“It just happened a lot sooner than I thought.” The unplanned ending fit the play’s theme of unpredictability, he added: “I was really satisfied with the way things turned out, with the interruption.”

Even more surprisingly, Snyderman didn’t mind the flashlight toss, which directly led to the early curtain.

“I was really happy she did it,” he said. “She did it because she was moved by her role.”

Nevertheless, the Instituteemployees were surprised by not just the flashlight, but the whole play.

Martini said that their discomfort may have contributed to the decision to turn on the lights.

The flashlight did damage the wall, but to the group, the alcohol use could be the more damaging element. The group is still under judicial review, and Pratt staffers were not allowed to comment for that reason. Martini, who was in the audience during the performance, claims that the booze was brought by actors who do not attend Pratt, and expressed outrage that there was drinking going on. “That part of the evening,” Martini said mildly, “was a surprise.”

Furst, too, was aghast that drinking had been going on backstage. He no longer teaches at Pratt or advises the group, but he has communicated his opinions.

“I’ve, obviously, told them to be more adamant about the professionalism of the people they choose to work with, and to reinforce to them that selfish behavior on the part of one has negative repercussions for all,” Furst said in an email.

Despite their problems, the group is still planning future events, including a group of monologues to be performed at the end of February in the Main Building. They have replaced Furst with professor James Hannaham, and are planning to recruit students who are interested in costume design, set design, and lighting. Buchman wants to perform his senior thesis, and the group also wants to do a performance of Hamlet in the future – if Pratt ever gives them the keys to Memorial Hall again.

“I think we get so focused on our vision we forget the administrative side of it. And you have to talk to three different departments to get anything done,” Martini admitted.

“We’re just scatterbrained artists.”

Proof of their disorganization is evident in their Spring Semester budget – they don’t have one, due to a missed deadline. They want to keep the group afloat, and are as passionate as ever about getting their work onstage, but they need to figure out how to do that without pissing anybody off.

Martini remained optimistic.

“One of the important things that distinguish us is we’re not a bunch of dilettantes fucking around,” he said.

“For a lot of us, theater is a major part of our lives.”

“Not to criticize them, but they didn’t understand what was going on,” Martini said.

THE PRATTLER

25

STOP THE SHOW!

The trials and tribulations of a new theater club

by Harry Cheadle

was a plot about a family suggested, something about a drowned mother and a brutal father, but that was lost in the spectacle. Oh, there was also screeching violin music and a strange spoken-word tape being played over the speakers. Things got intense – at one point, Richichi threw the flashlight against the wall, whereupon it broke into pieces.

The play ended, abruptly, when the sound cut off and the lights turned on. The participants scurried back behind the curtain, and for a few moments, the audience wasn’t sure whether the actors were going to come back for a curtain call or what.

“I wasn’t sure if Robi’s play had been cut short or if this was the way it had been meant to end,” said Joshua Furst, the group’s faculty advisor, who was watching the play. “This, I thought, was an interesting position for an audience member to be placed in.”

The group itself was placed in their own interesting position at that moment. Snyderman’s play was supposed to go on for another twenty minutes – although due to its chaotic nature, almost no one but the playwright knew this – and had been cut short by the stage manager, Rae McIntyre, because after the flashlight shattered, she apparently became concerned that things were getting unsafe. Worse still, after the performance, Pratt employees saw empty bottles of champagne and whiskey backstage, and it looked like Pratt’s newly-founded theater club would disappear just as fast as it had been created.

illustration by Anthony Cudahy.

24

THE PRATTLER

The inaugural performance of Pratt Institutionalized Theater, a club founded last semester by a group of writing majors, took place on December 7 and was very nearly a rousing success. The first three one-act plays came on and off the stage without a hitch, if not without some serious weirdness. The opening play was a debate between a soldier and a tiger-woman about war, punctuated by the director stopping the scene and giving them tips; the second was a monologue about an ex-boyfriend delivered by an actress that was completely nude; the third was another monologue, this one a Gertrude Stein essay on the atomic bomb that was...read...very...slowly.

(That last one also featured an actor in a monster mask reading a newspaper in the background, which, compared to the other eccentricities of the plays, is barely worth mentioning.)

The last play, “Morning Morning,” written and directed by Robi Snyderman, is hard to describe, but here’s an attempt: it started out with Snyderman, an elfin young man with a large nest of black hair, kneeling at the center of the stage, moaning in pain. He then stood up, picked up an old rake, and began raking up the debris scattered on the stage – some wires, some paper, a boot – while actress, Katie Przybylski, sat on a bed in the background and talked about her lost brother. Other actors and actresses started wandering through the aisles, in various states of psychosis. One shirtless actor snapped a belt he was holding while yelling, “This belt is a snake!”

Another actress, Mandy Richichi (author of, “This Terrifying Blank,” the aforementioned nude-girl monologue), walked through the audience with a flashlight, apparently searching for her children. There

The group was founded at the beginning of last semester, when Snyderman, Christopher Martini, and Jody Buchman – all currently Junior writing majors – were looking for a venue to put on plays that they had written. They decided, as Buchman said, that “the school was the easiest way to get the resources we needed.” They proceeded to fill out the paperwork to create the club, recruiting Furst – whose Playwriting class they had all taken – as advisor.

They immediately began planning to put on a show in Memorial Hall at the end of the semester.

Assembling several original plays in three months isn’t easy, especially for students who were attending classes full-time, and especially if those students haven’t had a whole lot of experience putting on plays. Snyderman had a play of his performed at the Bowery Poetry Club last summer, but that was in

a much smaller space, and, not to mention, there was only one play.

In the beginning, the relationship between the club and the administration that had given them the use of the Hall was amiable.

Although there were restrictions placed on what could be done – for instance, they couldn’t have confetti, cigarettes, or fake guns on the stage – Buchman described the staff as “very lenient and very cooperative.”

In fact, they ignored the rule that said that everything on the stage had to be fire-retardant, allowing the group to use couches that didn’t meet specifications.

The problems arose due to the lack of time the group had to prepare the plays. There were three rehearsals planned, but because they were still trying to assemble sets and work out last-minute kinks, they never did a full walk-through of all four plays.

“We were so pressed for time, [the writers] had to get their own plays together themselves,” Martini said. “The performance was the first time they came together. It was a little chaotic.”

The planned elements of the evening, however, went evenly. Snyderman’s play didn’t have a script – most of the actions were to be improvised, based on individual conversations the playwright had with the actors.

There was never supposed to be an overarching plot; in an ironic twist, the play was scheduled to end abruptly, with the soundtrack suddenly going quiet and the actors hustling behind the curtain.

“The way it ended was the way it was going to end,” said Snyderman.

“It just happened a lot sooner than I thought.” The unplanned ending fit the play’s theme of unpredictability, he added: “I was really satisfied with the way things turned out, with the interruption.”

Even more surprisingly, Snyderman didn’t mind the flashlight toss, which directly led to the early curtain.

“I was really happy she did it,” he said. “She did it because she was moved by her role.”

Nevertheless, the Instituteemployees were surprised by not just the flashlight, but the whole play.

Martini said that their discomfort may have contributed to the decision to turn on the lights.

The flashlight did damage the wall, but to the group, the alcohol use could be the more damaging element. The group is still under judicial review, and Pratt staffers were not allowed to comment for that reason. Martini, who was in the audience during the performance, claims that the booze was brought by actors who do not attend Pratt, and expressed outrage that there was drinking going on. “That part of the evening,” Martini said mildly, “was a surprise.”

Furst, too, was aghast that drinking had been going on backstage. He no longer teaches at Pratt or advises the group, but he has communicated his opinions.

“I’ve, obviously, told them to be more adamant about the professionalism of the people they choose to work with, and to reinforce to them that selfish behavior on the part of one has negative repercussions for all,” Furst said in an email.

Despite their problems, the group is still planning future events, including a group of monologues to be performed at the end of February in the Main Building. They have replaced Furst with professor James Hannaham, and are planning to recruit students who are interested in costume design, set design, and lighting. Buchman wants to perform his senior thesis, and the group also wants to do a performance of Hamlet in the future – if Pratt ever gives them the keys to Memorial Hall again.

“I think we get so focused on our vision we forget the administrative side of it. And you have to talk to three different departments to get anything done,” Martini admitted.

“We’re just scatterbrained artists.”

Proof of their disorganization is evident in their Spring Semester budget – they don’t have one, due to a missed deadline. They want to keep the group afloat, and are as passionate as ever about getting their work onstage, but they need to figure out how to do that without pissing anybody off.

Martini remained optimistic.

“One of the important things that distinguish us is we’re not a bunch of dilettantes fucking around,” he said.

“For a lot of us, theater is a major part of our lives.”

“Not to criticize them, but they didn’t understand what was going on,” Martini said.

THE PRATTLER

25

A MESSAGE FROM NYPIRG:

WE CAN ALL USE (AND MAKE ) A LITTLE CHANGE

By Lauren Alpert

As the 2008 elections approach, there is much at stake in the United States and around the world, and students and young people will be making their voices hear on key issues such as the environment, the rising cost of higher education, the state of the economy and US foreign policy. Since 2000, people aged 18-25 have been coming out to the polls in increasing numbers. From the 2000 through 2006 the amount of young people voting nationally rose 13% and it seems to be rising even faster during this Presidential Primary season.

Students and young people have been at the heart of much of the evolutionary and often revolutionary change in American and abroad.

Whether it is the student protests in Iran, Venezuela, China or France, students find themselves in the middle of and often lead change in society.

Artists especially can have an intrinsic relationship with social justice and change, serving as both a commentator and a catalyst of change; the artist is the ultimate witness and the ultimate storyteller who can engage society with the problems that surround it, and give voice to innovative solutions.

The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) has been a force in the student rights movement for thirty-five years, playing a key role in over 150 public interest laws and executive orders. NYPIRG is a state-wide, student directed advocacy group, working on issues like hunger and homelessness, environmental protection, mass transit advocacy, and protecting affordable education. We have maintained a strong record of bringing about real, tangible changes.

This year NYPIRG at Pratt will be working not only on improving recycling on campus but also on expanding the Bottle Bill, which placed a 5 cent deposit on beer and soda bottles. To date, the Bottle Bill is New York’s most successful recycling and litter prevention program. The expanded Bottle Bill (also known as the Bigger Better Bottle Bill--try saying that five times fast!) would expand the current law to include noncarbonated beverages and generate new funding for expanded recycling and environmental programs in New York State.

NYPIRG will also continue to advocate for affordable education, with an extra focus this semester on combating the rising costs of text book. We’ll be talking to students and faculty who require text books about this issue. On campus we’ll be hosting a number of events to collect food, clothing and raise money for New York homeless shelters. By becoming involved in NYPIRG, you can be a part of achieving greater environmental and social justice.

Your small time commitment can make a profound difference of the lives of those around you and across New York State.

NYPIRG meets every Tuesday at 8:30PM in the NYPIRG office in Chapel Hall. For more information you can contact call 718-636-3749, Email LAlpert@nypirg.org or stop by the NYPIRG office in Chapel Hall.

photos by Julie Hagenbuch.

26

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

27

A MESSAGE FROM NYPIRG:

WE CAN ALL USE (AND MAKE ) A LITTLE CHANGE

By Lauren Alpert

As the 2008 elections approach, there is much at stake in the United States and around the world, and students and young people will be making their voices hear on key issues such as the environment, the rising cost of higher education, the state of the economy and US foreign policy. Since 2000, people aged 18-25 have been coming out to the polls in increasing numbers. From the 2000 through 2006 the amount of young people voting nationally rose 13% and it seems to be rising even faster during this Presidential Primary season.

Students and young people have been at the heart of much of the evolutionary and often revolutionary change in American and abroad.

Whether it is the student protests in Iran, Venezuela, China or France, students find themselves in the middle of and often lead change in society.

Artists especially can have an intrinsic relationship with social justice and change, serving as both a commentator and a catalyst of change; the artist is the ultimate witness and the ultimate storyteller who can engage society with the problems that surround it, and give voice to innovative solutions.

The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) has been a force in the student rights movement for thirty-five years, playing a key role in over 150 public interest laws and executive orders. NYPIRG is a state-wide, student directed advocacy group, working on issues like hunger and homelessness, environmental protection, mass transit advocacy, and protecting affordable education. We have maintained a strong record of bringing about real, tangible changes.

This year NYPIRG at Pratt will be working not only on improving recycling on campus but also on expanding the Bottle Bill, which placed a 5 cent deposit on beer and soda bottles. To date, the Bottle Bill is New York’s most successful recycling and litter prevention program. The expanded Bottle Bill (also known as the Bigger Better Bottle Bill--try saying that five times fast!) would expand the current law to include noncarbonated beverages and generate new funding for expanded recycling and environmental programs in New York State.

NYPIRG will also continue to advocate for affordable education, with an extra focus this semester on combating the rising costs of text book. We’ll be talking to students and faculty who require text books about this issue. On campus we’ll be hosting a number of events to collect food, clothing and raise money for New York homeless shelters. By becoming involved in NYPIRG, you can be a part of achieving greater environmental and social justice.

Your small time commitment can make a profound difference of the lives of those around you and across New York State.

NYPIRG meets every Tuesday at 8:30PM in the NYPIRG office in Chapel Hall. For more information you can contact call 718-636-3749, Email LAlpert@nypirg.org or stop by the NYPIRG office in Chapel Hall.

photos by Julie Hagenbuch.

26

THE PRATTLER

THE PRATTLER

27

CORN-CAKES FROM FARTHER SOUTH

CARACAS AREPA BAR

by Natalie M. Apuzzo Looking for cheap eats? Next time you’re near St. Mark’s Place, or just hungry, check out Caracas Arepa Bar. This tiny Venezuelan restaurant serves up arepas, empanadas, tequeños (similar to mozzarella sticks), juices, and a variety of other Venezuelan treats.

The Arepa Bar’s specialty is, of course, arepas (ah-RAY-pas), of which they serve at least fourteen different varieties. Arepas are, essentially, corn cakes stuffed—like you stuff a pita—with all sorts of fillings, like meat, black beans, guacamole and cheese. There are many options for both omnivores and vegans (you can replace any meat with tofu). The arepas are browned on a griddle and served in an adorable basket.

One of the best combos at the Arepa Bar is an arepa de Pabellón (filled with shredded beef, black beans, sweet plantains, and aged cheese) and a glass of passion fruit juice.

This satisfying meal will set you back only $10.50. Another favorite is the Reina Pepiada, which is stuffed with chicken and avocado salad. Arepas range from $5-$7. illustration by Taibi MastElse.

28

THE PRATTLER

photo from google image search of “Arepa.”

friendly staff that make the Caracas Arepa Bar so wonderful. There are actually two locations (though they’re practically next door to one another), at 91 E. 7th Street, and 93 ½ E. 7th Street. Both restaurants are tiny, and for the most part, serve the same fare. Though the first location (91), is mainly meant for takeout, there are a few tables and chairs. Here you have to order at the counter and wait for a table to open up. The second (93 ½), is a sit-down restaurant. If you try to go to the restaurant, and there is a long wait, just skip down the street to 91 and order your taste of Venezuela-to-go.

Check out Caracas Arepa Bar at www.caracasarepabar.com, and then hop on the L (to what station??) to try an arepa!

While the food is fabulous, and the prices cheap, it’s the cramped quarters, lively decoration, and

THE PRATTLER

29

CORN-CAKES FROM FARTHER SOUTH

CARACAS AREPA BAR

by Natalie M. Apuzzo Looking for cheap eats? Next time you’re near St. Mark’s Place, or just hungry, check out Caracas Arepa Bar. This tiny Venezuelan restaurant serves up arepas, empanadas, tequeños (similar to mozzarella sticks), juices, and a variety of other Venezuelan treats.

The Arepa Bar’s specialty is, of course, arepas (ah-RAY-pas), of which they serve at least fourteen different varieties. Arepas are, essentially, corn cakes stuffed—like you stuff a pita—with all sorts of fillings, like meat, black beans, guacamole and cheese. There are many options for both omnivores and vegans (you can replace any meat with tofu). The arepas are browned on a griddle and served in an adorable basket.

One of the best combos at the Arepa Bar is an arepa de Pabellón (filled with shredded beef, black beans, sweet plantains, and aged cheese) and a glass of passion fruit juice.

This satisfying meal will set you back only $10.50. Another favorite is the Reina Pepiada, which is stuffed with chicken and avocado salad. Arepas range from $5-$7. illustration by Taibi MastElse.

28

THE PRATTLER

photo from google image search of “Arepa.”

friendly staff that make the Caracas Arepa Bar so wonderful. There are actually two locations (though they’re practically next door to one another), at 91 E. 7th Street, and 93 ½ E. 7th Street. Both restaurants are tiny, and for the most part, serve the same fare. Though the first location (91), is mainly meant for takeout, there are a few tables and chairs. Here you have to order at the counter and wait for a table to open up. The second (93 ½), is a sit-down restaurant. If you try to go to the restaurant, and there is a long wait, just skip down the street to 91 and order your taste of Venezuela-to-go.

Check out Caracas Arepa Bar at www.caracasarepabar.com, and then hop on the L (to what station??) to try an arepa!

While the food is fabulous, and the prices cheap, it’s the cramped quarters, lively decoration, and

THE PRATTLER

29

GIVE ENVIROLUTION YOUR SOLUTION

by Adrian Shirk

Perhaps you’ve seen the “Listening Tables” in the cafeteria recently.

Those are the tables manned by two members of Envirolution, Pratt’s new non-profit social activist group, who sit around and wait for students to come by and voice concerns about Pratt’s environmental policies. The inaugural Listening Table’s staff spoke with fifty students in two hours, discussing such things as recycling protocol in the cafeteria, overuse of paper, and unnecessary energy consumption in dormitories.

This is only one of initiatives begun by Envirolution, which is not just another student-led organization- they can actually make substantial changes at Pratt, as they are backed and funded by Pratt Sustainability, a program recently started by the institute.

But they aren’t just about making sure bathroom paper towels get recycled. Noah King, part-time Industrial Design professor and co-founder of Envirolution, says it is imperative that the community acts as a whole in order for any real change to take place.

“First and foremost, I am a social activist, but that extends itself to sustainability and the environment.

They are not separate endeavors. One affects the other.”

At the moment, Envirolution is made up of only a handful of pioneers, including King and cofounder Tim Polmateer, but they can’t stress how important it is to convey that these changes ultimately will be student-powered. They have funding, but also “limitless positions to fill.” King says that students have a great opportunity to actually make a difference, and Envirolution open to any and all ideas.

30

THE PRATTLER

“We want to create contacts among the students, find out what they care about, let ideas formulate that wouldn’t otherwise be realized…take advantage. We’re not a club!”

Already the non-club started using compostable signage, begun working with CulinArt representative Ron Jones on examining the cafeteria’s recycling efficiency, assisted Professor Chris Jensen’s compost initiative, and designed an on-campus sculpture symbolizing student waste (using actual waste). But more is on the way: A wind-powered generator has been discussed. And Tony Gelber of Pratt Sustainability is working with Envirolution to put in watt-meters to quantify how much energy is used in dorms so students can be aware of how many resources they are consuming.

King is enthusiastic that progress will continue to be made.

“Maybe there are twenty individual steps to get there, but we can start making plans now,” he says. There are only so many resources—we need to make sub-committees. To do that, we need more people. And we can make sub-committees for any place your concern’s fall.”

King understands that part of the reason that there is little involvement or activism on campus is because students feel like their voices are inconsequential, that the issues are too big to face single-handedly, especially when they have so little time to spare. To combat this malaise, King is trying to create is a cohesive community where no one is working alone.

“Once we’re able to manage, we can help everyone else in the community.

We could create a model, share, host

completely unrelated to article, photos found by Jaci Kessler.

workshops on campus available to everyone in Clinton Hill/ Fort Greene.”

King graduated Pratt in 2002 from the ID department. He met Polmateer at an event held at Yale several years ago and their ideas about the environement meshed instantly. Polmateer, a Yale grad, was initially turned onto environmental activism when he started to study Green Building.

“We’ve both done the corporate thing—and we said, ‘this sucks,’” says King. “This is a project we felt compelled to do. All I can say is, give voice, be active, learn leadership, and develop a collective voice Help the people with power know what to represent.”

sure everyone is educated,” says Polmateer. He suggests that students spend their initial energy creating projects that spread information and knowledge to their audience.

“It’s all about including as many different perspectives into the solution building….Traditionally the movement has been limited to educated, middle class, white Americans interested in science.

However, that is not the majority of our country, so we want to make sure that there are new avenues available.”

For those interested in those new avenues, email greenpratt@gmail.com.

Another supporter of Envirolution is Deb Johnson, the director of Pratt Sustainability, who has helped both financially and when it comes to generating ideas. Johnson plans to help create “green” classes where departments merge, and make it a mandatory part of the curriculum and break down these “departmental silos” students get sucked into.

“It doesn’t do anyone any good for departments to congeal,” she says.

King agreed that the institute needed a way to unite youth who often acquire a kind of tunnel vision while focusing on their projects. “[Pratt] really needed one organization that could link everyone and give leadership to the youth,” he says. “It is their voice that is most important since they have the most at stake, i.e. it’s their future.”

Envirolutions philosophy is to Educate, Unite and Take Action, “so I guess the first step is to make

THE PRATTLER

31

GIVE ENVIROLUTION YOUR SOLUTION

by Adrian Shirk

Perhaps you’ve seen the “Listening Tables” in the cafeteria recently.

Those are the tables manned by two members of Envirolution, Pratt’s new non-profit social activist group, who sit around and wait for students to come by and voice concerns about Pratt’s environmental policies. The inaugural Listening Table’s staff spoke with fifty students in two hours, discussing such things as recycling protocol in the cafeteria, overuse of paper, and unnecessary energy consumption in dormitories.

This is only one of initiatives begun by Envirolution, which is not just another student-led organization- they can actually make substantial changes at Pratt, as they are backed and funded by Pratt Sustainability, a program recently started by the institute.

But they aren’t just about making sure bathroom paper towels get recycled. Noah King, part-time Industrial Design professor and co-founder of Envirolution, says it is imperative that the community acts as a whole in order for any real change to take place.

“First and foremost, I am a social activist, but that extends itself to sustainability and the environment.

They are not separate endeavors. One affects the other.”

At the moment, Envirolution is made up of only a handful of pioneers, including King and cofounder Tim Polmateer, but they can’t stress how important it is to convey that these changes ultimately will be student-powered. They have funding, but also “limitless positions to fill.” King says that students have a great opportunity to actually make a difference, and Envirolution open to any and all ideas.

30

THE PRATTLER

“We want to create contacts among the students, find out what they care about, let ideas formulate that wouldn’t otherwise be realized…take advantage. We’re not a club!”

Already the non-club started using compostable signage, begun working with CulinArt representative Ron Jones on examining the cafeteria’s recycling efficiency, assisted Professor Chris Jensen’s compost initiative, and designed an on-campus sculpture symbolizing student waste (using actual waste). But more is on the way: A wind-powered generator has been discussed. And Tony Gelber of Pratt Sustainability is working with Envirolution to put in watt-meters to quantify how much energy is used in dorms so students can be aware of how many resources they are consuming.

King is enthusiastic that progress will continue to be made.

“Maybe there are twenty individual steps to get there, but we can start making plans now,” he says. There are only so many resources—we need to make sub-committees. To do that, we need more people. And we can make sub-committees for any place your concern’s fall.”

King understands that part of the reason that there is little involvement or activism on campus is because students feel like their voices are inconsequential, that the issues are too big to face single-handedly, especially when they have so little time to spare. To combat this malaise, King is trying to create is a cohesive community where no one is working alone.

“Once we’re able to manage, we can help everyone else in the community.

We could create a model, share, host

completely unrelated to article, photos found by Jaci Kessler.

workshops on campus available to everyone in Clinton Hill/ Fort Greene.”

King graduated Pratt in 2002 from the ID department. He met Polmateer at an event held at Yale several years ago and their ideas about the environement meshed instantly. Polmateer, a Yale grad, was initially turned onto environmental activism when he started to study Green Building.

“We’ve both done the corporate thing—and we said, ‘this sucks,’” says King. “This is a project we felt compelled to do. All I can say is, give voice, be active, learn leadership, and develop a collective voice Help the people with power know what to represent.”

sure everyone is educated,” says Polmateer. He suggests that students spend their initial energy creating projects that spread information and knowledge to their audience.

“It’s all about including as many different perspectives into the solution building….Traditionally the movement has been limited to educated, middle class, white Americans interested in science.

However, that is not the majority of our country, so we want to make sure that there are new avenues available.”

For those interested in those new avenues, email greenpratt@gmail.com.

Another supporter of Envirolution is Deb Johnson, the director of Pratt Sustainability, who has helped both financially and when it comes to generating ideas. Johnson plans to help create “green” classes where departments merge, and make it a mandatory part of the curriculum and break down these “departmental silos” students get sucked into.

“It doesn’t do anyone any good for departments to congeal,” she says.

King agreed that the institute needed a way to unite youth who often acquire a kind of tunnel vision while focusing on their projects. “[Pratt] really needed one organization that could link everyone and give leadership to the youth,” he says. “It is their voice that is most important since they have the most at stake, i.e. it’s their future.”

Envirolutions philosophy is to Educate, Unite and Take Action, “so I guess the first step is to make

THE PRATTLER

31

32

THE PRATTLER