Artists Space

I See Words:
The Life and Work of Hannah Weiner

Reading
June 18, 2022, 1pm

11 Cortlandt Alley and Online

In conjunction with the exhibition Attention Line, Artists Space and Zoeglossia present an afternoon celebration of Hannah Weiner's work and life. The event will include a multi-voice reading of Weiner's Clairvoyant Journal as well as a panel of thinkers and artists who were close to Weiner's visionary poetry practice. The event is free to the public in-person at Artists Space and will also be broadcast live on Zoom here.

A black and white image of a person with dark hair looking to the left with their arms outstretched. In the distance is a dish rack with dishes and a window flanked by cabinets.
Hannah Weiner circa 1969. Photo by Ira Joel Haber. [A black and white image of a person with dark hair looking to the left with their arms outstretched. In the distance is a dish rack with dishes and a window flanked by cabinets.]

Hannah Weiner (1928 - 1997) was born in Providence, Rhode Island and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1950. She started writing poetry in 1963 and by the late 1960s was deeply enmeshed in the Downtown New York poetry and art community. Her vehement synthesis of formal innovation and intensely personal content saw her highly experimental writing become central to many poetry and artist groups across New York City. Weiner is perhaps best known for her Clairvoyant Journal, a multivalent book documenting her life enmeshed within the New York and art music community in 1974, that is consistently interrupted by her own visions of words and colors in space.

Introduction by Jennifer Bartlett

A screening of Hannah Weiner: A Film by Phill Niblock, 1974

Reading of Clairvoyant Journal by Darcie Dennigan, Farnoosh Fathi, and James Sherry

Panel discussion with Susan Bee, Judith Goldman, Declan Gould, and Phill Niblock, moderated by Lee Ann Brown

Closing remarks by Charles Bernstein

For live in-person performances at Artists Space, proof of vaccination and masks are required. This show will be filmed and accessible by livestream during performance times for audience members who are unable to attend in-person.

Access:
Both the in-person event and the livestream broadcast will include CART captioning.

Artists Space is located on the corner of Cortlandt Alley and White Street, between Broadway and Lafayette Street. The closest wheelchair accessible stop is the 6 stop at the corner of Canal & Lafayette Street.

Artists Space is fully accessible via a wheelchair lift and automated door in front of the entrance on 80 White Street. The cellar gallery can be accessed via the ground floor elevator. If you use the elevator, the distance from the entrance of the building to the elevator is 50 feet. The distance from the elevator to the performance space is 30 feet. If you are using the stairs to access the performance, the entrance to the building is roughly 40 feet from the performance space, accessed by 20 7-inch stairs. Artists Space welcomes assistance dogs, and has wheelchair accessible non-gender-segregated toilet facilities. For access inquiries please contact Artists Space at info@artistsspace.org or 212 226 3970.

Jennifer Bartlett is co-founder of Zoeglossia and author of Limits/ are what any of us are/ inside of: The Life of Larry Eigner.

Susan Bee is an artist living in Brooklyn. Bee is represented by A.I.R. Gallery, where she has had nine solo shows. She has published eighteen artist’s books including many collaborations with poets. Bee was the co-editor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G from 1986-2016.

Charles Bernstein is the executor of Hannah Weiner’s literary estate and the author of Topsy-Turvy (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Lee Ann Brown is a poet, singer, teacher, curator and publisher of poetry based in New York City, and she had the wild pleasure of knowing Hannah Weiner circa 1987-1997 and worked with her to produce the double book silent teachers remembered through Tender Buttons Press in 1993.

Darcie Dennigan is the author of five books, including Madame X (Canarium) and Slater Orchard: An Etymology (FC2), and the recipient of an Anna Rabinowitz Award from the Poetry Society of America for “venturesome, interdisciplinary work.” She directs the Spatulate Church Emergency Shift, a shadowy poets theatre entity in Providence.

Farnoosh Fathi is the author of Great Guns (Canarium, 2013), editor of Joan Murray: Drafts, Fragments, and Poems (NYRB Poets, 2018), and founder of the Young Artists Language and Devotion Alliance (YALDA).

Judith Goldman is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Agon (Operating System, 2017). She is core faculty in and director of the Poetics Program at SUNY, Buffalo.

Declan Gould is Assistant Professor of Teaching Instruction in the Intellectual Heritage Program at Temple University. Her current book project focuses on recovering an intersectional lineage of experimental disability poetry from 1960 to the present.

Phill Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He makes thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres which generate many other tones in the performance space. Simultaneously, he presents films and videos which look at the movement of people working, or computer-driven black and white abstract images floating through time.

James Sherry is the author of 14 books of poetry and prose, most recently Selfie, coming this fall from Palgrave. He looks after Roof Books and the Segue Reading Series.

Zoeglossia is a new literary organization seeking to pioneer a new, inclusive space for poets with disabilities. Much like its forbearers CantoMundo, Kundiman, Cave Canem, and Lambda Literary, Zoeglossia strives to create an open and supportive community that welcomes and fosters creativity.

Program support is provided by Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Cy Twombly Foundation, The David Teiger Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, Imperfect Family Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Willem de Kooning Foundation, The Fox Aarons Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, The Destina Foundation, The Luce Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Arison Arts Foundation, The David Rockefeller Fund, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, The Jill and Peter Kraus Foundation, The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation.