Hello EBSN from Okayama, Japan,
I write today in request to contribute to the Cut-Ups 2023 conference by discussing the process of making a cut-up series as a practical method.
I would present remotely (from a well lit studio) and am comfortable with public speaking and presentation (2 keynotes at SxSW conference, 1 TEDx, 4 Pecha Kucha talks) more details at https://daveostory.com/dave-olson-dossier/speaking-presenting/
Briefly: I propose to explore the full lifecycle of a project from transcribing notebooks while traveling, to using a cut-up process to develop something unique, until the end result which became visual poems (cut-ups glued to mostly hotel letterhead and other ephemera) which were then reproduced in various means and spread all over the world – both analog and digital – as a series called “Items: Forgotten”.
Note: I’m not entirely sure what else I can share about this proposal to make it more clear so please feel free to ask me with any questions and I will reply promptly and/or investigate the resources provided.
Regards,
daveo
Background: I saw Bowie in Vancouver 1983 as my first concert, read Burroughs in 1987 at a community college in Utah, met Ginsberg at a coffee shop in Boulder in 1991, worked dozens of jobs in numerous countries, most recently advised and created a video about the “Kerouac in Kobe” event in Japan: https://daveostory.com/film-vids-docs/beat-sushi/kerouac-in-kobe-on-the-road-scroll-exhibit-in-japan-interview-video/ see also: https://simonwarner.substack.com/p/interview-12-dave-olson
Published in various poetry journals, B.A. in Inter-disciplinary Studies from Evergreen College, Olympia, WA, USA and attended University of Utah, University of Guam; was Vice President of a “prominent social media company” among other jobs (from submarine tour guide to mushroom farmer to grape harvester) many newspaper / periodical publications on various topics, wrote epistolary literature project, studied with Nick Bantock, member of Beat Studies Assoc. etc
More: https://daveostory.com/dave-
Proposal Overview
“Items: Forgotten, a project lifecycle”
Along a meandering world ramble (in the wake of personal life upheaval), I produced a series of visual freeverse poetry called “Items: Forgotten in Drawers“ – part zine/handbills, part diary, part treasure map, part meanderings and musings – all resulting in a series of visual poems distributed chapbooks, website series, and prints then “forgotten” at hotels, bulletin boards, buses, and trains.
+ Back Story
The poems started in an Ayurvedic clinic the Himalayas, continued on a ship in Arabia and ruins around Mediterranean, then attached to vintage hotel letterhead acquired from a tiny Greek Monastery store (in a Hasidic neighbourhood) Montreal neighbourhood, assembled in off-strip Las Vegas, shared in Utah canyons with further batches were assembled on Nusa Ceningan, Indonesia and Phitsanulok, Thailand with scraps printed here and there.
+ Process
When travelling, often don’t have a typewriter or printer, or even Internet or word processor, so I made do with what I could access and had on hand, i.e.: scissors, glue, paper & a collection of letterheads assembled along the way (contemporary, historic, fictional) and used occasional hotel printers, cheap sewing supplies, occasional dusty stationery stores in Malaysia and India, stamps from here and there to “let the works create themselves”
What I wrote, started as hasty riffs in notebooks and quickly transcribed into a digital form and printed when opportunity presented – in this case, the quick transcriptions left room for randomness and errors in typing and structure, so the end product cuts and pastes pieces were re-mixed and re-assembled in various ways (like Burroughs to Bowie might do).
+ Form
Each substrate (hotel letterhead, aerogramme, envelope) shown is uniquely augmented with stamps – both postal and ink – and other ephemera, carefully selected and then applied as though it wasn’t. Sometimes, lettraset letters, fuzzy Lomo photos and bits of typewriter come along.
+ Themes
Overall, the pieces explore themes of wandering lost, losing self and others, scraping beneath the crust of culture and myth, remixing identity, connecting the history to the present in all it’s vagaries, and considering what becomes of our story when we vanish… naturally made with affection.
+ Publishing
I crafted a short run of hand-sewn / hand-finished chapbooks, printed various versions which were then left in places one might find a handbill for a lost cat or a punk rock concert, plus left along the road in buses, trains, hotel rooms, and also compiled into multiple series and posted at my website (with minimal annotations): https://daveostory.com/category/writing-fiction-essays/poetry-prose/items-forgotten/