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Scott Esposito

Scott Esposito is the co-author of The End of Oulipo? (with Lauren Elkin; Zero Books, 2013). His writing has appeared recently in Music & Literature, Drunken Boat, and The Point. His criticism appears frequently in the Times Literary Supplement, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post.



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The Last Redoubt

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November 2014

Scott Esposito

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November 2014

As they say of politics, I have found essay-writing to be the art of the possible. Certain work can only be done in those...

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February 2014

Another Way of Thinking

Scott Esposito

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February 2014

I. There is no substitute for that moment when a book places into our mind thoughts we recognise as our...

TWO DAYS BEFORE WE WERE SCHEDULED TO MEET, Yvonne Rainer walked into the gallery I was looking after for a friend and caught me leafing through her autobiography When I met the great dancer, choreographer and film-maker in her Manhattan apartment I was too shy to ask whether or not she had noticed what I was reading I hesitated to ask because Feelings Are Facts is so sincere that it makes you feel you know Rainer intimately Her writing is as direct as her dance In the introduction to the first chapter, she approaches the reader: ‘If you’re interested in Plato, you’re reading the wrong book If you’re interested in difficult childhoods, sexual misadventures, aesthetics, cultural history, and the reasons that a club sandwich and other meals – including breakfast – have remained in the memory of the present writer, keep reading’   That straightforward approach is evident in the way Rainer speaks When we meet she says, ‘My syntax when I speak is not to my liking I don’t finish sentences or I interrupt them’ As I transcribed the recording of our conversation, I marvelled not only at Rainer’s honesty, but also at how exacting she is: she remembers every detail, and has a penchant for storytelling As she describes her relationships, work, ambitions and memories, I am struck by how appreciative she is of her contemporaries: Rainer studied with Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham, lived with Robert Morris, danced with Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton That history comes alive whenever Rainer talks: widely credited as one of the central figures of contemporary dance, she complements accounts of her own practice by delineating that of her contemporaries We talk a lot about her early work, the focus of her recent solo exhibition at London’s Raven Row, and many of those accounts go back to the flurry of activity of the Judson Dance Theater at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s     2012 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the first dance performances at Judson It was celebrated with a burst of conferences, screenings of the

Contributor

August 2014

Scott Esposito

Contributor

August 2014

Scott Esposito is the co-author of The End of Oulipo? (with Lauren Elkin; Zero Books, 2013). His writing has...

Negation: A Response to Lars Iyer's 'Nude in Your Hot Tub'

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September 2012

Scott Esposito

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September 2012

I do not know whether I have anything to say, I know that I am saying nothing; I do not know if what I...
Art's Fading Sway: Russian Ark by Aleksandr Sokurov

Art

May 2012

Scott Esposito

Art

May 2012

I have often fallen asleep in small theatres. It is an embarrassing thing to have happen during one-man shows, and I am certain that...

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poetry

February 2016

Maurice Echegaray

Lina Wolff

TR. Frank Perry

poetry

February 2016

It was when we were living near the southbound exit. Maurice Echegaray had his company office on our staircase...

poetry

Issue No. 2

Portraits of Pierre Reverdy and Three Poems

Sam Gordon

poetry

Issue No. 2

ANDRÉ BRETON The most memorable thing about our meetings [around 1919-1920] was the almost complete bareness of the room in...

Art

February 2012

Awst & Walther: A Lexicon of Questions

Francesca Gavin

Art

February 2012

Awst & Walther are a husband and wife team who create multi-disciplinary art works which range from building a...

 

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