Anthony Cody – Everywhere I sleep, 9 of 15

Anthony Cody

Everywhere I sleep, I see Dust Bowl (9 of 15)

Multimedia collage: from Dorothea Lange’s photograph “Irrigation pump on edge of eld. Electric power typical of San Joaquin Valley farming. California.” (February 1939)

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Anthony Cody’s artist statement:

For 15 consecutive nights, in the summer of 2019, I would scour the public domain for images and sounds related to the Dust Bowl era. Very often, I would return to the imagery of Dorothea Lange in her efforts to document the Dust Bowl via the Farm Security Administration. My final waking moments of each day were centered on meditating upon my discoveries, and each morning I’d awaken, have a cup of coffee, and construct a poem. As an homage to the series, I decided I would create each poem on a 15 inch by 15 inch page. The series centers around my current work, which focuses upon the Dust Bowl, climate change, whiteness, capitalism, and technology.

Jeffrey Schultz – II. The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.

Jeffrey Schultz

II. The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.

 

By mid-winter the young are no longer
And the winter’s still yet-to-become.
We eat tacos in 90 degree heat
With our friend the anthropologist
From Massachusetts, where seven snows
Yesterday did disclose simultaneously themselves
And disappeared beneath them whole Massachusetts.
His work imagines beginnings:
Summers surveying settlements,
Chiseling bone from beneath the steppe,
Reconstructing, from its absence,
What begins to resemble life.
He likes the writing too, but of course
It’s specialist work and no one reads it.
The old are no longer either, mid-winter.
The cars pass bright and clean.
The old seasons have no hold here,
Nor their stupid fantasy of fertility
Bright-burning, and death rounded-out.
This is a new thing now, and though
All the words remain to describe it,
Though they swirl up from within us
As if they were our nature, sharp and soft,
Sounding from passing traffic, sounding
In their reverberations among the walls
And alleys and all the dead young’s skulls,
Sounding as if they were capable
Of the necessary sounds, none of it does.

 

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.

Anthony Cody – Everywhere I sleep, 8 of 15

Anthony Cody

Everywhere I sleep, I see Dust Bowl (8 of 15)

Multimedia collage, from Dorothea Lange’s photograph “Between Tulare and Fresno on U.S. 99. See general caption. Family inspect a house trailer with idea of purchase” (May 1939)

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Anthony Cody’s artist statement:

For 15 consecutive nights, in the summer of 2019, I would scour the public domain for images and sounds related to the Dust Bowl era. Very often, I would return to the imagery of Dorothea Lange in her efforts to document the Dust Bowl via the Farm Security Administration. My final waking moments of each day were centered on meditating upon my discoveries, and each morning I’d awaken, have a cup of coffee, and construct a poem. As an homage to the series, I decided I would create each poem on a 15 inch by 15 inch page. The series centers around my current work, which focuses upon the Dust Bowl, climate change, whiteness, capitalism, and technology.

Jeffrey Schultz – I. Western Man

Jeffrey Schultz

I. Western Man

 

Because his existence is doom,
At the end of it I will,
After I preside first
Over the solemn burials
Of my human
And animal beloved,
After we have
All of us beyond a doubt
Witnessed this
The end of this,
The frogs gone
And the bats
And more then
Than could ever be accounted,
More still so now:
A machine for the accounting
And the thin whine of hunger
Both in the land and thereupon it,
After all of this, at the end of it
I will, having years
Before used his wealth
To get us safe to this hiding hill,
Will, after life is over,
Fell these woods I call my own
And build myself
Of them a great pyre
And lying upon it
Set it alight, give over
To fire, give what
Of me might raze
The seas’ hypoxic remainder,
Make death of it, just like
His stupid heroes did.

 

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.

Anthony Cody – Everywhere I sleep, 7 of 15

Anthony Cody

Everywhere I sleep, I see Dust Bowl (7 of 15)

Multimedia collage, "from Dorothea Lange’s photograph “Highway City, California, near Fresno. See general caption. ... (May 1939)"

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Anthony Cody’s artist statement:

For 15 consecutive nights, in the summer of 2019, I would scour the public domain for images and sounds related to the Dust Bowl era. Very often, I would return to the imagery of Dorothea Lange in her efforts to document the Dust Bowl via the Farm Security Administration. My final waking moments of each day were centered on meditating upon my discoveries, and each morning I’d awaken, have a cup of coffee, and construct a poem. As an homage to the series, I decided I would create each poem on a 15 inch by 15 inch page. The series centers around my current work, which focuses upon the Dust Bowl, climate change, whiteness, capitalism, and technology.