Light Industry: Nathaniel Dorsky + Susan Howe
Tuesday, July 24,19:30h
155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn, NY

One of America’s preeminent contemporary poets, Susan Howe has published a series of writings, since the 1970s, that combine autobiography and historical research—on such topics as Emily Dickinson, Charles S. Peirce, and the 17th century utopian sect The Labadie Tract. In addition to their roles as scholarship and memoir, Howe's works are also notable for their highly idiosyncratic page design, frequently involving complex typography, line placement, and other visual patterning that point to the influence of her initial training as a painter. Identified with the Language poets early in her career, Howe has created a body of essays and poetry that invoke deep emotional resonance while operating at the highest levels of formal experimentation.

For this event at Light Industry, Howe will read selections from her writing, chosen with the work of filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky in mind, particularly Devotional Cinema, his series of lectures on the possibility of film as a meditative, curative and transcendent experience. The reading will be followed by a screening of Dorsky’s Alaya, a silent study of grains of sand, captured from a multitude of viewpoints, that transforms its relatively simple subject matter into a mesmerizing, ever-shifting landscape.

"Alaya manages a perfection of 'musical' light across a space of time greater in length than would seem possible (consider how brief most such perfected works are, such as Peter Kubelka, say)...and with minimal means of line and tone....After about three minutes I began to be aware of the subtlety of rhythm, within each shot and shot-to-shot, which carried each cut, causing each new image to sit in-the-light of those several previous...a little short of a miracle. Bravo!" - Stan Brakhage

- Alaya (Nathaniel Dorsky, 16mm, 1987, 28 mins)

Tickets - $7, available at door.

Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 7pm