Alison Knowles' Loose Pages. CUNY Segal Theater. 11/09

Plah Plah Pli Plah. Alison Knowles book launch at Printed Matter

Geoff Hendricks, Sara Seagull, Simon Anderson & Alison Knowles

Simon Anderson, Alison Knowles and Picasso Gaglione

http://www.sararanchouse.com/plahtext.html

Plah Plah Pli Plah
By Alison Knowles

Book Launch and Performance Friday, November 6, 2009, 5-7 PM

Printed Matter is pleased to announce a book launch and performance for Alison Knowles’ new book, Plah Plah Pli Plah. Please join us along with the artist and her Bean Turner Ensemble on Friday, November 6, 2009 from 5:00 – 7:00 PM. Printed Matter is located at 195 Tenth Avenue, between 21st and 22nd Street.

Published by Sara Ranchouse Publishing, Plah Plah Pli Plah documents the sounds, performance and material of Knowles’ handmade paper and dried bean instrument “Bean Turners.” It includes scores transcriptions of the instruments’ sounds, and images of Knowles performing. The book also includes the special insert of a “bean page instrument,” fabricated especially for this project at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, Chicago.

Knowles and members of her Bean Turner Ensemble will perform her instruments throughout the evening.

Plah Plah Pli Plah is 84 pages and is printed in both black and 4-color with a special instrument insert. The book is being offered for an introductory price of $40 and is available in store and online. Please contact us to arrange signed copies if you are unable to attend the launch.

Alison Knowles is a visual artist known for her soundworks, installations, performances, publications and association with Fluxus, the experimental avant-garde group formally founded in 1962. Since the early 1960s, she has traveled and performed throughout Europe, Asia and United States. Artists’ books have formed an integral part of Knowles’ artistic output for many years and numerous titles are still available through Printed Matter: by Alison Knowles(1965), More (1979), Natural Assemblages and The True Crow (1980), A Bean Concordance (1983), Spoken Text (1993), Bread and Water (1995), and by Alison Knowles (1965 / 2007).

Sara Ranchouse Publishing was founded in 1993 to promote printed matter, especially the book, as a space in which to make and read visual art and unconventional texts. The press demonstrates an interest in found, rearranged and recontextualized texts, images and materials; in the significance of the physical make-up and production requirements of a publication in relation both to its content and to its subsequent functional and economic life; and in the pursuit of collaborative projects, especially those that resuscitate material that has been under acknowledged.

For more information, please contact Catherine Krudy, ckrudy @ printedmatter.org

Printed Matter Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the mission to foster the appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of artists'' books and other artists'' publications.

Printed Matter, Inc. has received support, in part, through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Erste Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Gesso Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Tekserve, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and individuals worldwide.

VendorBar E/AB'09

MoMA benefit in which Alison Knowles and I invited people to draw on some of Alison's prints. Beans in a bag, blind chosen. Colours from a group on the table.

info:

VENDORBAR
VendorBar is part of an ongoing series of itinerant exhibitions and interventions, organized by Kirby Gookin and Robin Kahn, in which art is presented to the public that is either free, with no copyright, or sold inexpensively. The goal is to open up direct lines of communication between artists and the public in order to make ideas and artwork more accessible. Past projects include Free Show, Disappearing Act, Holiday Shopping, Copiacabana, Copilandia and To Market to Market. For E/AB'09 VendorBar is inviting artists to directly engage the public by presenting actions, exchanges and services that result in the production and distribution of artists editions made specifically for the event. Participating artists will include ARTifariti-Western Sahara Collective, Mike Bidlo, Gaye Chan & Nandita Sharma, Kirby Gookin, Geoffrey Hendricks, Nancy Hwang, Robin Kahn, Amanda Keeley, Alison Knowles & Alan Bowman, Cary Leibowitz, Larry Miller, Ken Montgomery, Peter Nadin, Yoko Ono, Tom Otterness, Sal Randolph, Showpaper, and Elaine Tin Nyo.

Alison at work.

Robin Khan with a finished drawing. AB bottom left, AK bottom right two really nice guys top L & R - if anyone knows who they were, let me know the should have credit here as they helped produce perhaps the best drawing.