Unbearables: Co-edited the anthology of adventurous Unbearable writings, Autonomedia with Peter lamborn Wilson, Mike golden, Ron Kolm. I contributed a experiment in comic book sci-fi called "2-B 38-C 3-D in Neuropolis" Included almost ALL of the Unbearables at the time & many allies including: Max Blagg, Lydia tomkiw, Lisa "Bikini Girl" Herskowitz, David Rattray, Bruce Benderson, Little Annie Anxiety, Dave Mandl, Jose Padua and all of the original members. And amazing collection of graphics by Yossarian, Chris Potash, J.D. King, among others ...
GG-1 Series of Model Poses
“Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals” • John Steinbeck GG-1 Series of Model Poses reveals the relationship between the White House & sensational images of dominance. Originally appeared as a chapbook in 1991 in Paris, was reprinted in NY. It was first excerpted in 1992 in Nomad edited by the Critical Art Ensemble. Appeared in Real Poetik. Multi-media performances of the work in NY, Miami, Paris. The chapbook is once again available for €15 or $17... |
Culture of Narcolepsy, ValBar, 1984, price €1250.69 EXTREMELY RARE: Produced by Valbar, employing the philosophy of “creative leisure combats work” and sponsored by the “New Jersey Zen Housewives” we get the collaborative romantic contentiousness of Valerie Haller & bart plantenga, taking on the world to “fight paralysis” and join a real “Marxist Computer Slimdown Kamp” read a “real” marriage announcement for the New York Times, the confessional “The Making of a Misanthrope” and celebrate as “5 New Countries Join the Capitalist Bloc” inc. Lacosterica and Playbowana.
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Personal / Dialectical / International: 3 Books, ValBar, 1982, price €8093.12 euros, produced by Valerie Haller & bart plantenga offering 3 views of the world. Very limited edition of 20±. Was featured in "Group Sculpture" at the Sculpture Center in NYC, 6.29 - 7.20 1982. The show also featured works by Blair Seagram, Kenny Scharf & 5 others. The books were housed in a unique wooden sculpture bookcase designed by Haller called "Nervous Crib / Veinous Shoe Rack." The books themselves were a unique visual-word collaboration between Haller & Plantenga. The books were at the forefront of the avant-DIY movement, which emphasized chance, imperfection, the human touch in bookmaking.
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Bardor Productions Was mainly a project that erupted spontaneously from the needs and minds of bart plantenga and Theo Dorian and, in the beginning, poet Su Byron, along with a cute and cuddly cadre of assistants-friends-lovers, in our HQ-cum-oversized-broom-closet at Bleecker and McDougal [back when rents did not go for 2 arms and 2 legs]. Among this cadre were some who worked in copyshops and were able to clandestinely slip our zine into gratis production – drastically cutting production costs. We sold our zines at various indie bookstores including Sohozat, Eastside Books, St. Marks, Gotham Bookmart and Printed Matter [But also in Amsterdam, London, Paris, San Francisco and Albany]. When some of these local outlets steadfastly "neglected" to pay us for actual sales, we turned to that age-old DIY trick of stealing back your own magazines to up sales and render some measure of revenge, the revenge of the powerless DIYer. As of today, I still have a receipt somewhere for issues sold at Gotham Bookmart and I always meant to go back and collect our $40+. Nice #4 was also sold in some record stores like 99 Records on McDougal Street in NY [best sales and Ed Bahlman always paid].

NICE #4, Bardor Prod., NYC 1980, price €7000.23, Highly conceptual 4-clear-flexi-disc art zine - the zine you could play on your turntable! the 1st & only ever! Audio-visual cornucopia. Underground treasure chest. Includes work by Standing Offer, John M. Bennett, The Party’s Over, Lou Horvath, Sartre’s Pupils, Peggy’s Draperies, Potential Propaganda, etc. Plus visual/literary work by Lydia Tomkiw, Joachim Frank, Ruggero Maggi, etc. Design and directed insanity by bart plantenga & Theo Dorian. Photo of Lizzy Mercier Descloux by Lisa Genet. One of the mostly highly coveted printed matter products of the 1980s. Form/format, however, overwhelmed content to some extent. Ed B. at 99 Records reported that he once sold 10 copies to Japanese businessmen. Presumably they were going to take them back to a lab to dismantle and discover NICE magic... A true object to behold. Unique binding allowed the entire mag to be folded open and placed flat on a turntable to the size of a standard 45 sleeve. The mag launch was at the inimitable and ill-fated Club 57 [on St. Marks Place] in late February 1982. The Nice Anarchy party included hostess Bikini Girl, noise-meisters Solomonoff & Vonhoffmanstahl [who make Sonic Youth sound like the Carpenters], Pop Decay, Dislokate Klammer, Scarlatina Lust and others. The place was so packed that it led to a spontaneous and kinder version of body-slamming. The post-hysteria gossip was that we had produced the single most successful night in the club’s history, so successful that it accelerated the demise of Club 57 [yes, the Catch-22 of quality of life legislation already existed back then]. The flexi-discs were also featured on WFMU, especially Irwin's show as well as the Vanilla Bean's and others. The hosts of "Stormy Monday" on WBAI devoted an entire show to Nice #4, if memory serves... Listen WFMU or Listen Blog.
Other Nice & Bardor Publications: Nice #3, NYC 1981, price €112.75: An obsessional, inexcusable, triple-view cut-n-paste magazine of nice fanaticism of "nice/niceness" in print. Design/idea/execution. Land of the Missing Girls: NYC 1983, price €269.69 Multi-media poetics going somewhere unexplained. Discourse with ambient violence of living area. Map of Glowing Toys, NYC 1982, price €240.02 Coupon size and style visual poetics. Includes original version of the infamous “Conspicuous Pig” sticker … Nice #2, NYC 1981, price €808.09. A sustained meditation on nice[ness] in literature from Mao to Salinger, from Joyce to Joe Strummer, from LBJ to Aram Saroyan with a broad collection of emerging local and international writers and poets such as mail-artist Lon Spiegelman, the Mechanical Servants, Lydia Tomkiw, Brad-Lay & other miscreants. Included a fold-out map of Nice. Book of Values, NYC 1981, price €1940.08, Includes “ludic” critique of consumerism as quasi-religion. Cut-n-paste terror to upset almost no one with its incisive look at the misuses of science and the preoccupation with the logic applied to the hypnotizing irrational that leads to the forlorn conclusions of venture capital and the almost accepted notion that all existence is somehow "naturally" determined by the workings of the marketplace. Nice #1, NYC 1980, price €2803.49 Semi-official meta-clinical pseudo-pharmaco-literary studies of the effects of collage and LSD on narrative structure. Produced under not-so-strict clinical conditions by poet Su Byron, producers Theo Dorian and bart plantenga. Resulted in verification of the phenomenon known as "zeitgeist absorption." Exuded niceness & in its own serendipitous way mirrored exquisite deliriousness, naive romanticism via maximized cut-n-paste strategies in the best [worst] post-surrealist tradition. Included surprise packet of found objects and recycled toys, info snippets, candy, and fortuitous surprises. Big hit at NYU Small Press Fair, 1981.
Pressed for Time Press, Body Heat, Ann Arbor 1978, price €586.22 Seminal legal-size limited edition mag of bart plantenga poetry including “9x9 Divine,” “never meaning much in salvation army store,” “deep in a breathless car” ... Many of these poems were free for the taking when I established a tearsheet poetry display that hung from the back seat of my cab so that riders could read some poetry as I took them to their destinations. Darkroom Techniques, Ann Arbor 1978, €1958.36, Homage to Patti Smith with photos by Jim Kruz and Andy Freeberg plus poetics, lit and visuals by bart plantenga, Hank Tepper, Hendrik Meijer, Nels Johnson, Diane Piepol, David Duer, Karen Reinheimer, Steve Balmer, among others. Carsick, Ann Arbor 1977, price €977.20, Travel, movement, cab driving, nocturnal wandering, vagabonds, aimlessness, zen... work by Ellen Zweig, Hank Tepper, Don Zirulnik, Simone Davis, James Prchlick, Elizabeth Crawford, Gail Offen, Hank Meijer… Sloth Arts, Ann Arbor 1977, price €384.40, Poetics and more mental stress: bart plantenga inc. “nite lites,” .... inc. work by Nels Johnson, Simone Davis, Connie Ennis, Sandra Schpoont, Debra Schwartz, Aida Luberto. Unreliable Sources, Ann Arbor 1976, price €1853.12, Poetry produced employing unique technique called calculated spontaneity, crumpled meter, insomnia and mnemonic devices.
Contributor to the following printed & online matter: Actuel, Alles Moet Kapot, Alley Tracts, Ambit, American Heritage, American Lawyer, American Music Center Journal, Amsterdam Quarterly, Angbase, Angry Old Man, Beet, Big Dick Review Bil Bo K, Black Flag, Bones, Brooklyn Rail, Carolina Quarterly, Chanticleer, Cross, Cups, The Curse, Daily Drunk, Detroit Metro Times, Disappointd Housewife, Downtown, Earshot Journal, East Village Eye, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International: Terrorism[s], The Frank, Frank Paris, Fringecore, The Guardian, Highlife , Journal of Irreproducible Results, Instant Classics, Issues, Jack, Joseph Hellman Gallery, Lowest Common Denominator, Lusty Mover, Massacre, Mennonite Historical Review, Michigan Today, Mississippi Review, Murtaugh, National Poetry Magazine of the LES, Nice Review of the Popular Arts, 1-4, Nomad, No Zone, Notable Notes, Nova Magazine, Otoliths, Paramour, Paris Free Voice, Paris Passion, Paris Purple Prose, Parisiana, Passages, Perfect Sound Forever, Pink Pages, Public Illumination, Real Poetik, Red Tape, Rough Night, Rx, Rundbrief, Sandbox, Sarasota Arts Review, Selah, Semiotext(e) SF, Semiotext(e) USA, Sensitive Skin, The Singer, Slipstream, Sloth Arts, Snake , 38 Under Par & 11 Holes-in-One, 3 AM, The Times of London, Tout Reste A Faire, Urban Graffiti, Vokno, West Coast Magazine, Yang, Zing, Anthology: ABC No Rio Dinero, Best American Erotica 1994, Best American Underground, Best of LCD, Cassette Mythos, Crimes of the Beats, Gargoyle, KGB Bar Nonfiction Reader, Kroniek 2000: Kroniek van het Land van de Zeemermin [in Dutch], Missing Persons, Noirotica #3, Nozone: Crime, Nozone: Extremism, Radiotext(e) , Reggae, Rasta, Revolution: Jamaican Music From Ska to Dub, Self-Help, Sensitive Skin Writings 2016-2018, Sonic Geography Imagined and Remembered, Unbearables.1-3, Up Is Up But So Is Down, Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language, Evguenie Sokolov: Preface to novel, TamTam. ...