Queer Abstraction
by Travis Jeppesen on December 2, 2019
Or How to Be a Pervert with No Body. Some Notes Toward a Probability.
At Mousse.
On Haroon Mirza
by Travis Jeppesen on December 1, 2019
The new century has brought with it forms of colonialism wholly unimagined, and unimaginable, by generations prior. The obscenest of these is the accelerated colonization of the imagination itself, of thought and perception. In such a scenario, “politics” can serve as little more than a distraction, another form of clickbait.
On Haroon Mirza’s exhibition at Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, in the December 2019 issue of Artforum.
BAD
by Travis Jeppesen on November 15, 2019
Travis Jeppesen discusses Bad Writing with Drew Zeiba at the KGB Journal.
BAD WRITING Now Available in North America
by Travis Jeppesen on October 26, 2019
…From your favorite bookstore and/or online retailer:
BAD WRITING excerpted in Tank
by Travis Jeppesen on July 12, 2019
An excerpt from “Becoming Sobject,” one of the essays contained in BAD WRITING, has been published in Tank Magazine: read here.
The Suiciders in Latvian!
by Travis Jeppesen on May 26, 2019
Excerpts from the novel The Suiciders have been translated into Latvian and published in the online Latvian-language literary and philosophy revue, Punctum. Thanks to translator Laura Brokane for making this happen.
Coming Soon from Sternberg Press/MIT: BAD WRITING
by Travis Jeppesen on April 4, 2019
Travis Jeppesen’s Bad Writing is a collection of interconnected essays and “fictocriticisms,” many appearing in print for the first time, that etches a pathway for a truly radical “bad” modernism in art and literature. Erudite, witty, and occasionally controversial, Bad Writing reinvigorates the too-often staid medium of art criticism as an iconoclastic and inventive literary art form.
“Travis Jeppesen’s ‘willful defiance of the commodification of art criticism’ is not just necessary, it’s outrageous. Following leads from Gertrude Stein and Bjarne Melgaard, zombie formalism and flarf, tracing perceptions too peculiar to name or too confusing to process, he fails better than one could have possibly hoped for.” —Barry Schwabsky, art critic, The Nation
“It is crucial for me to explain the prime importance of this work, precisely because it slaps me in the face by attacking some of the aesthetic notions that I most treasured. Even conventional ‘clarity’ in literature has its moment at the guillotine, beheaded by tactics Jeppesen subsumes under the creative and critical shorthand of ‘Bad,’ also commonly referred to as wrong, unacceptable, or failed. Bad theory rejects art that consciously or unconsciously conforms to expectations at the cost of true vision, and the fact that Jeppesen’s blitzkrieg does not even spare the academically aped, socially respected, and frequently unfelt genre we now call art criticism shows the incredible breadth of his position, as novel and revolutionizing as the first stirrings of modernism. As a matter of fact, he has accomplished a miracle in forging a position of critical lawlessness at a time when the ‘avant-garde’ is only a mourned past and any worthwhile contrary opinion is engulfed, digested, and exploited by the mediatic monster we like to name our global economy.” —Bruce Benderson, author of The Romanian: Story of an Obsession
“While it’s super tempting to trot out that tired phraseology so bad it’s good, I’m not sure it covers how particularly bad Travis Jeppesen’s aims are: he wants to bankrupt what passes for most cultural critique, render it worthless, from the inside out, gastrointestinally, giving it food poisoning. (If you think that’s a mixed metaphor, bing Freud on excremental capital.) Which is to say, Jeppesen takes George Kuchar at his gloriously fetid word: ignoring all the societal encouragements to be a flash in the pan, dude’s set his slutty sights on becoming ‘a big soft plop-in-the-bowl … creat[ing] such a stink … that people cannot ignore it.’ Does this moment of ‘clusterfuck existentialism’ really deserve better? He’s the Weird Al Yankovic of art criticism, but gayer.” —Bruce Hainley, author of Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant’s Volte-Face
Pre-order/info links:
The 2019 Büro BDP Writing Prize
by Travis Jeppesen on March 17, 2019
Travis is on the jury for the 2019 Büro BDP Writing Prize.
Büro BDP is delighted to announce its inaugural Writing Prize, a prize dedicated to excellent new international writing that displays progressive and bold qualities in both form and content. Envisaged as a prize that takes its inspiration from the unique, cosmopolitan and open city of Berlin and its inhabitants the award will result in a book publication.
It is envisioned that this is a reward for the best contemporary (and for want of a better word) creative writing that is formally innovative, genre bending and which may point toward a 21st century supra-national tradition that is continually in the process of emerging. A familiarity with the BDP backlist may point toward the arena of literature and contemporary art in which the press is interested in producing.
The shortlist will be selected by the BDP team from which the jury shall choose a winner. The juries will judge these shortlisted entries anonymously.
Prize
1st Prize: 1000 euro cash prize
The winner will have an opportunity to publish a book with Broken Dimanche Press in 2020 and excerpts from the shortlisted entries will be collected together in a journal, which will be published at the time of the prize giving.
Judges
- Ida Benke, curator and senior editor of Broken Dimanche Press
- John Holten, novelist and editor-in-chief of Broken Dimanche Press
- Travis Jeppesen, artist and writer
- Quinn Latimer, poet and critic
Entry
The prize is open to anyone who who is resident in the EU and Associated Agreement countries
Entries should take the form of:
- A writing sample of up to 5000 words or up to 50 pages.
- A description of the overall book
- CV or biographical note with contact email
- Order Number as proof of payment of entry fee (https://www.brokendimanche.eu/shop-1/the-2019-bro-bdp-writing-prize)
Entry fee is 7 euros. This goes towards running costs of the prize and its viable continued existence in the future.
Email bdpwritingprize@gmail.com
Deadline: midnight May 31, 2019
Timeline
The deadline is May 31, 2019 at 19h.
The shortlist will be announced in June.
The winner will be announced at a party at Babes Bar in Berlin in July.
For more info, visit the Broken Dimanche website.
Write About Now
by Travis Jeppesen on December 24, 2018
Earlier this year, Travis discussed See You Again in Pyongyang with Jonathan Small for the Write About Now podcast. Listen here. Or on Apple podcasts, here.
