The rise of digital music has resulted in a rise in vinyl sales.
http://mashable.com/2010/01/07/the-rise-of-digital-music-the-return-of-the-record/
Derrida discussed the fetishization of supposedly dying technologies (ie paper) in the face of recent innovation (digital text) in his collection Paper Machine. On RealityStudio a couple years back, I mentioned how this trend played into the renewed interest in the publications of the mimeo revolution on the collectible market. Digital media is also jumpstarting interest in printing one's own publications be they broadside, chapbook, or postcard. In some cases, this has meant dusting off the mimeo machines and letterpresses sitting in garages and basements.
Of course this phenomenon occurred in the decade after WWII as well. The technological shift was the availability of cheaper offset presses, which replaced letterpresses in professional print shops. Printing costs fell in the US and abroad, aided by a strong dollar. The letterpresses depended on by the printshops became disposable and available for sale. In addition, mimeographs and other duplicators became widely available on the commerical market at cheap prices. To say nothing of those machines demobilized from military services.
What is different is the economic climate. The first mimeo revolution occurred in an economic boom and a time of surplus resources and capital. Today, self-publishing is rising in a time of depression and a resource crisis. I have yet to get my head around why this is exactly. Unlike the 1950s and 1960s, printing on mimeo or letterpress is not cheaper than going to your local Kinkos. So it must be an intellectual and aesthetic decision. Is this merely a rarified market of connoisseurs and aesthetes who are fiddling while Rome burns or it is an underground of samizdat revolutionaries working against a crumbling regime? Or is it both? Neither?
MIMEO MIMEO #8
MIMEO MIMEO #8: CURATORS' CHOICE features 16 bibliophiles on 6 highlights from their personal or institutional collections. Contributors include Steve Clay, Wendy Burk, Tony White, Brian Cassidy, Thurston Moore, J.A. Lee, Michelle Strizever, Adam Davis, Michael Basinski, Joseph Newland, Alastair Johnston, Tate Shaw, Michael Kasper, Steve Woodall, Molly Schwartzberg, Nancy Kuhl, James Maynard, and the Utah posse (Becky Thomas, Marnie Powers-Torrey, Craig Dworkin, Emily Tipps, Luise Poulton, & David Wolske)MIMEO MIMEO #7
MIMEO MIMEO #7: THE LEWIS WARSH ISSUE is the first magazine ever devoted in its entirety to poet, novelist, publisher, teacher, and collage artist Lewis Warsh. Warsh was born in 1944 in the Bronx, co-founded Angel Hair Magazine and Books with Anne Waldman in 1966, and went on to co-found United Artists Magazine and Books with Bernadette Mayer in 1977. He is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction and autobiography, the Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Long Island University in Brooklyn, and as you’ll soon discover, so much more. Includes an introduction by Daniel Kane, an interview conducted by Steve Clay, 10 new stories, 5 new poems, dozens of photographs and collages, and an anecdotal bibliography.
OUT OF PRINT
MIMEO MIMEO #6
MIMEO MIMEO #6: THE POETRY ISSUE is devoted to new work by eight poets who have consistently composed quality writing that has influenced and inspired generations since the golden era of the mimeo revolution. Contributors include Bill Berkson, John Godfrey, Ted Greenwald, Joanne Kyger, Kit Robinson, Rosmarie Waldrop, Lewis Warsh, and Geoffrey Young. Cover art by George Schneeman.
OUT OF PRINT
MIMEO MIMEO #5
MIMEO MIMEO #5: includes a lost and found essay by Paul Blackburn on the mimeo revolution, Steve Clay on Robert Creeley’s copy of Presences, Michael Klausman on the art of poetry LPs, interviews with Lyn Hejinian and Larry Fagin, Stephanie Anderson on Alice Notley’s CHICAGO, Abel Debritto on Charles Bukowski’s rise to fame, and more. Cover art by Buzz Spector.
OUT OF PRINT
MIMEO MIMEO #4
MIMEO MIMEO #4: focuses on the poets, artists, printers, and publications of the British Poetry Revival, a particularly rich period of activity that ran roughly parallel to the New American Poetry of the post-WWII era. On both sides of the Atlantic, the dominant modes of poetics, publishing, and media were being thought anew. Featuring: wide-ranging interviews with Tom Raworth, David Meltzer, and Trevor Winkfield; insightful essays by Richard Price, Ken Edwards, and Alan Halsey; a selection of letters from Eric Mottram to Jeff Nuttall providing a British perspective on the Lower East Side Scene; and a long out-of-print statement by Asa Benveniste, poet and publisher of London’s legendary Trigram Press.
OUT OF PRINT
MIMEO MIMEO #3
MIMEO MIMEO #3: THE DANNY SNELSON ISSUE examines the relationship between structuralism and the poetries of the mimeo era by presenting a detailed analysis of Form (a Cambridge-UK magazine published in 1966) and Alcheringa (a journal published by Boston University in 1975), two exemplary gatherings that illuminate the historical, material and social circumstances under which theory informed art (and vice versa) in the early works of some of today's most celebrated experimental writers. Also includes a special insert, The Infernal Method, written, designed and printed by Aaron Cohick (NewLights Press).
OUT OF PRINT
MIMEO MIMEO #2
MIMEO MIMEO #2: features Emily McVarish on her artist's book Flicker; James Maynard on poet Robert Duncan's early experiences as an editor and typesetter; Derek Beaulieu on the relationship between the influential Canadian poetry journal Tish and Black Mountain College; and an extensive interview with Australian poet and typographer Alan Loney conducted by Kyle Schlesinger. Cover is by Emily McVarish.
OUT OF PRINT
Threads, a series of talks curated by Steve Clay and Kyle Schlesinger, is devoted to the art of the book featuring poets, scholars, artists, and publishers.
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