|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2000 |
|
|
|
December 2000 Book News This being the season to be jolly I would like to recommend Fred Hughes’ new history of Burslem, “Mother Town”, as a welcome addition to any budding Transformationalist’s stocking. Gazing wide-eyed in wonder at the window display of my local bookshop I also happened to spot a history of Leek which sports the following fine example of the classic Transformationalist postcard on its front cover. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Or, for those of more modest means, where the thought alone counts, the first volume of the Stump cycle is now available to download in a variety of formats, completely free of charge. In Stump II kicks off the saga and remains true to the code of the local historian by refraining from all mention of the Transformationalists. Which is more than can be said of Arnold Bennett. The following photographs from the Bennett collection in Hanley Museum offer another tantalising hint that Bennett was a closet Transformationalist. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
***** November 2000 Occasionally, when the world is not beating a path to my door to bring me transformationalist tidings, I take a look on Google to see what's happening out there. This month I did intend to just provide a link to an essay on Luigi Russolo, the Futurist musician, but that seemed a little sparse. So I went to Google and searched for Russolo to see if I could add a few more sites. I was also looking for pictures. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
It is amazing how many websites there are devoted to the Futurists. None seems to make the connection with Transformationalism, which is as it should be I suppose. As far as we know, Transformationalism did not inspire any of the great anarchic art movements of the twentieth century, despite its precedence. As Hammersley explained, "If you want get anywhere, go down London. If you want get nowhere, go up Tunstall." Depressed by the situation, I repaired to Google again and typed in `Transformationalist`. As I wandered through the different definitions of the word, the linguistic interpretations, the political meanings, the internet applications, I was intrigued to find the statement that "Jesus was a Transformationalist". Seeking further I became fascinated by a number of sites which involved attempts to see into the future. Futurism and Transformationalism thus became linked. It was not merely a question of hats (see picture), it was more a Borgesian process. I have recently re-read The Library of Babel. I suggest you do the same. ***** |
|
|
|
October 2000 After last month’s experiment I thought it might be safer to stick with postcards. A new book about the history of postcards has just been published: “The Postcard Century” by Tom Phillips (Thames & Hudson, £19.95, pp432). I presume this has a section on Transformationalist Postcards but it was not directly mentioned by Simon Callow, the noted thesp, who reviewed the book for The Observer (1/10/00). However the following extract does hint at a transformationalistic element in the book: “It is a monument, of sorts, an intimate portrait both of the last century, but also of Phillips himself. His affection for mankind in all its quirkiness extends to the collectors of cards themselves, the deltiologists, if they’re American, or, if they’re French, les cartophiles. The Goat Man (they are identified like Freudian case histories) has discovered a hidden caprine world in which the supposed main event of the postcard is, for him, subservient to the glimpse of goat it obscurely contains; inevitably, Phillips notes, he sports a little grey beard.” Unfortunately, no goats in this one, but nevertheless a fine example of humour in the Transformationalist Postcard. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
***** |
|
|
|
September 2000 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
***** |
|
|
|
August 2000
One of the most amusing sights of recent weeks has been that of the drummer of Metallica (a modern beat combo) ripping off his Tom Cruise mask to reveal the bloated face of the capitalist villain which lies beneath. Rock ‘n’ roll - the sound of the high streets. Turning aside from the vexed question of Napster, I would draw your attention to another story of greed, corruption and copyright - the case of the 19th century English poet, John Clare. Clare, considered to be one of the finest of the English rural poets, died in 1864 aged 70. For 23 years the inmate of a lunatic asylum, Clare was a prolific poet, his output estimated at 3000 poems. Of these only 300 were published during his lifetime. These are now out of copyright. However, due to a strange quirk in the law, the same rules do not apply to unpublished work and so the rest of Clare’s poems are now the sole property of Professor Eric Robinson of the University of Massachusetts. In 1965 Professor Robinson purchased the copyright to Clare’s unpublished work for the princely sum of £1. Since then Professor Robinson has jealousy guarded his acquisition, sending out battalions of lawyers to do his bidding. For the full story I direct you to the following article. If you want to find out more about John Clare and Simon Kovesi’s attempts to foil the evil Professor Robinson, then visit the John Clare website. For those who’ve never heard of John Clare - here’s one of his poems: |
|
|
|
|
|
I AM I AM: yet what I am none cares or knows, Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, I long for scenes where man has never trod,
*****
|
||||
July 2000
Apart from Frederick Hammersley’s solitary foray into the field, the Transformationalists did not concern themselves with poetry. To redress the balance I offer the following three poems. |
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||
That God cannot Emily Dickinson |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Except it’s not by Emily Dickinson. It was written by Mark Hofmann, a forger of historical documents. He tried to pass it off as an unknown poem of Emily Dickinson’s written in her own hand. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
That God cannot Mark Hofmann |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
If I then add that Mark Hofmann’s crimes strayed beyond mere forgery into murder (in an attempt to cover up his other crimes he killed two people with pipe-bombs) then I think you will agree that the poem is once again transformed. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
That God cannot Mark Hofmann |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Enough of poetry. There’s a new Albert Ayler site at www.ayler.supanet.com . |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
*****
June 2000
After the recent interment of Modern Art in an owd power station down London, I suggest the following from Jackie Chan’s “City Hunter” be inscribed on the tomb. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
***** May 2000
Transformationalists Strike At Sotheby`s I must thank Clive Buttle (erstwhile member of the Artists Action Group) for alerting me to this story. I managed to retrieve the following from the archives of The Guardian: Freudian slip destroys art Maev Kennedy, Arts and heritage correspondent Friday April 28, 2000 Two porters at Sotheby's auction house in central London were being blamed last night for the destruction of a painting by Lucian Freud, considered one of the most collectable of modern British artists. The picture, which was inside its wooden travelling packaging in a store room at Sotheby's Bond Street head quarters, was consigned to a crusher by workers who thought it was an empty crate. The contents have since probably found their way to a council tip or incinerator. This is a further embarrassment for one of the world's leading auction houses, which has been going through a rocky period with a US Justice Department inquiry over allegations of commission fixing and several senior resignations. A Sotheby's statement which claimed that the painting, a small early oil study of plants, was worth £100,000 raised eyebrows. Freud, now in his 70s, has become one of the most instantly recognisable and collectable of all living British artists, and many of his most startling prices have been achieved through Sotheby's sales. The record price was £3.5m for a large oil painting of an interior, paid in 1998 by a private collector at a Sotheby's auction in New York. "I think most people interested in Freud would regard £100,000 as a bit of a snip," David Barrie, director of the independent art charity, the National Art Collections Fund, said. The NACF has helped several British public collections to acquire Freuds, including the Tate, with grants to match the huge prices offered by private buyers. Collectors covet most the pitilessly bleak nude studies and his portraits, such as The Artist's Mother - one of 1,000 images which he made of his mother Lucie in the last decade of her life - sold for £2m last year. However Edward King, director of the Abbot Hall gallery in Kendal, Cumbria, which mounted a major Freud retrospective, said: "Collectors really want anything he did - even very small early sketches are cherished as rarities." The accident happened before Easter, when the painting had been delivered from the owner's home to the auction house store room in central London. It was securely packed in a wooden travelling crate, which was apparently placed in the wrong part of the store and mixed up with the piles of used packaging which are crushed before being taken away as rubbish. Sotheby's denied reports that the porters involved were sacked immediately. "That is not correct, but this is an internal matter and we are not commenting any further," a spokesman said. The picture,which is believed to date from the 1960s and to have been about two feet square, was owned by a private collector, and was to be auctioned at Sotheby's contemporary art sale in June. Experts from Sotheby's had given the picture an initial appraisal at his home, but it would have been studied in more detail and photographed for the catalogue at the auction house premises. The company spokesman blamed "human error" and described the incident as "most unfortunate". It was no surprise that there was no reaction yesterday from the notably reserved artist himself. His very aloofness swells his status: supermodel Naomi Campbell recently put him top of the list of people she wanted to meet in London "because he's so cool", and Jerry Hall posed nude for him while pregnant with her latest child. However Mr King, who came to know him well while working on the Abbot Hall exhibition, said his reaction might be surprising. "He might be terribly upset, but he might well think it hilarious; he might roar laughing," he said. "He is intensely engaged with his paintings while he is making them, and when they are shown in public he takes a very hands-on part in deciding where and how they should be hung. But once they are sold, he once told me, he feels they have moved out of his life. "He is not one of those artists who regards everything he has ever painted almost as his children." The artist had no direct financial interest in this sale, but could well have benefited if the painting had sold again in the next few years. His lawyer, Diana Rawstrom, of the London firm of Goodman Derrick, studied reports of the incident yesterday. A spokesman for the firm said: "Mr Freud never comments on newspaper stories."
News of the Site: Thanks to The Trench for sending me another MP3 of Fess Williams and His Royal Flush Orchestra. This track, “Goin’ To Getcha”, recorded in 1929, is a further example of Professor Williams’ stunning saxophone technique. Click the picture below and prepare to be amazed. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
*****
April 2000
Weirdness abounds! I checked out the Washington Art Gallery site and found that they`ve now put the fake Vermeers online, so you can download both images. However I found I could not honestly say which of the paintings made such an impression on me when I first saw it `in the flesh`, as it were. I felt I should amend the page on Malcolm Bingham to take account of this change but I decided to add this note here instead. The painting you can see on your computer screen is not the one I saw in Washington. Whether this is due to the painter`s skill, whether the painting needs to be seen `live` in order to play its trick, or whether there is yet another fake Vermeer which has been completely removed from the Gallery I cannot say. So, whatever it was I saw remains my favourite painting and I can still see it in my mind`s eye, but until I return to Washington I cannot state definitely which one it is. A truly transformationalistic state of affairs. Surfing on, I revisited the Susquehanna University site as promised. Surprisingly I could find no mention of their founding fathers - I applaud the subtlety of the webmeister. However I did come across a peculiar map of the campus. Visitors were invited to click on the buildings on the large map, but rather than take them to new pages involving virtual tours of the building selected or even photographs and text descriptions, the action merely resulted in their position being pointed out on a much smaller, badly drawn map. I have still not figured out the purpose of this. It is surely some comment on the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm but beyond that I remain, transformationalistically, in the dark. Some light was shed by an article by Dr. Gary Fincke in the Calendar of Events of the English Department which contained the following sentence: “Among those first graduates, Julie Danho received a full fellowship and a teaching assistantship from Ohio State, where she is pursuing a degree in creative nonfiction.” The idea of `creative nonfiction` naturally intrigued me and I scooted on over to Ohio State University to find out more. Ohio State`s English Department does indeed offer the following course: “768 Graduate Workshop in Creative Nonfiction. Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. An advanced course in the writing of non-fiction.” Presumably Ms. Danho had acquired permission from the instructor. Sauntering among the groves of academe I happened upon the English Department`s newsletter, which I have reproduced below. I cannot believe that every university website in America is the product of some graduate workshop in creative nonfiction, but when one sees such names as “Debra Moddelmog”, “Marlene Longenecker”and “Martha Lovely”, one wonders if there is some whimsical spirit at work in world. I am also intrigued by “Dr. Green, who promises mysterious transformations in his back room.” EnglishDepartment Newsletter March 17, 2000
PUBLICATIONS | PRESENTATIONS| EVENTS | ANNOUNCEMENTS PUBLICATIONS DAVID FRANTZ. Review of Bette Talvacchia, _Taking Positions on the Erotic in Renaissance Culture_. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997. in Italica 76.4 (1999), 529-31. PRESENTATIONS LINDA MIZEJEWSKI. "Picturing the Female Dick." Society for Cinema Studies, Chicago, March 10, 2000. ANNOUNCEMENTS MAUREEN BURGESS successfully defended her dissertation, "'Reforming' the Native: Frontier Activism and Women's Autobiography in the Progressive Era," on March 10, 2000. Maureen's dissertation director is Leigh Gilmore; readers were Debra Moddelmog, Louis Ullman and Chad Allen. EVENTS THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES READING GROUP will meet at 7:30 pm on Thursday, March 30 at Marlene Longenecker's house (75 Erie Rd. Call 261-8403 or e-mail Longenecker.2@osu.edu for directions). The reading will be three short chapters from Andrew Elfenbein's ROMANTIC GENIUS: THE PREHISTORY OF A HOMOSEXUAL ROLE. We will read the Introduction, Chapter 1 (an overview of the idea of "genius"), and his short chapter on Coleridge's "Christabel." Everyone is welcome, whether or not you specialize in nineteenth-century literature. WOMEN AT PLAY (members Katherine Burkman, Martha Lovely from English) offer their collaboratively written musical play, IMAGING IMOGENE for their spring production: place, the aerobics room at The Leo Yassenoff Community Jewish Center, 1125 College Ave. March 30, April 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, Thursdays and Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 2. Tickets $15--senior/students $8 Group rates for students available. A play about our obsession with our bodies and appearance in which three generations of women attend THE CLINIC, seeking help from the guru Dr. Green, who promises mysterious transformations in his back room. Original music composed by Daniel Rogers. Call 457-6580 for tickets/information.
Before leaving Ohio State I took a look at the student journal “spOke & aXle”. I once edited a literary magazine called “Spoke”, so call it serendipity or fate or coincidence or synchronicity or the roving spirit of Frederick Hammersley, whatever, something guided me to that webpage and therein I found a bona fide example of `creative nonfiction`. A short story by Thomas Chapman but listed in the contents as non-fiction. I expected some disquisition on the role of the Knights Templars in the fall of the Berlin Wall but with the odd lie scattered higgledy-piggledy here and there in creative fashion. However it was a gentler piece about the writer`s mother calling him up to ask whether she could throw away his toys. Now the same thing had happened to me in the non-fiction world and this piece of creation had made that connection. I wonder if it changes to fit whoever reads it. Perhaps you should click the link and see what the story holds for you. Anyway, I now understand why there is a prerequisite to have the permission of an instructor before one embarks upon the course. Creative nonfiction must be a very tricky business.
***** |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
March 2000
Transformationalists on film! Check out the new page. Also this month, I have started a webring for any site with a connection to the artistic life of Stoke-on-Trent. Click here to scoot on over to the Stoke Arts Webring page to add your site. I don`t know whether there are any great benefits in belonging to a webring but I thought I should carve out a niche in cyberspace for the artists of Stoke. So, if you are an artist (any denomination) who was born in Stoke, lives in Stoke, or whose site contains anything concerning the arts in Stoke, then why not join the ring? Don`t worry, no salesman will call.
****** |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
February 2000 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weird are the ways of Transformationalism. These are just three of the many transformationalist sites which the google search engine found: Rälnai so ailuram dy Alésia ilet amenne zhesán. (Lit.) I cooked the cat that Alésia brought it home. Now, dy is normally used to introduce a clause serving as a subject or object (that is, a clause without a head noun): Ashu dy Adh e isu buona, "I think that God is pretty cool." For this reason, some transformationalists argue that the deep structure of all subordinate clauses contains an introductory dy, and thus that what we're seeing here is a retention of dy rather than its replacement by the relative pronoun. 2. http://wizard.ucr.edu/polmeth/apsa95/apsa95_program.html Program for the American Political Science Association Conference Chicago, Illinois -- August 1995 THURSDAY, 6:30 PM 40-5 WHAT IS TRANSFORMATIONAL POLITICS? Chair: Stephen M. Sachs, Indiana University and Purdue University Papers: How Transformationalists Think About Transformationalism: Themes and Implications Richard S. Beth, Congressional Research Service TBA Robert Gilbert, University of South Carolina Transforming the American Political Landscape: Emerging Alliances Among Progressive and Green Parties in the USA Anthony DeSales Affigne, Providence College Transformational Politics: Beyond Critique Edward W. Schwerin, Florida Atlantic University Disc: Stephen Woolpert, St. Mary's University COURSES OFFERED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH DEPTH COURSES EN 300: English Grammar and the Writing Process. A descriptive study of American English grammar. Draws upon the theories of traditionalists, structuralists, and transformationalists. 4 SH.
Now, the first two items require no comment, except to say that I am not one of the transformationalists who argues that the deep structure of all subordinate clauses contains an introductory dy, and I`m sorry I missed the conference in 1995. However, the third item does merit further attention seeing as it brings to light one of the seminal works of Transformationalism and corrects a glaring oversight on my part. The English Department which offers this course drawing upon the theories of transformationalists belongs to the Susquehanna University. Once I had made the connection, frankly I was embarrassed to admit that I had not remembered to include Abbott & Costello in the `How To Spot A Transformationalist` page. Perhaps the vast body of their work did obscure the transformationalistic gem hidden in their 1944 film `In Society`. The Susquehanna Hat Company sketch is without doubt a classic example of transformationalist art and I am pleased that someone else has had the good sense to construct an entire website around it. For those of you unfamiliar with the film I have included a sound clip of the opening section of the sequence. If you would like to hear the whole thing, then I point you in the direction of the Abbott & Costello fan club. As yet I have not had chance to explore the Susquehanna University site but I am sure there are more transformationalist gems hidden behind its ivy-covered walls. I shall return! To hear the first part of the Susquehanna Hat Company click the picture below: |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
News of the site: I`ve added a few more things to the site, including Geoff Webster`s original artwork for `The Revenge of the Transformationalists`, a poster for the Amphribrach Enallage & The Catalectic Paragoge concert which featured Hammersley`s music, and the full version (in mp3 format) of `Playing My Saxophone` by Fess Williams and His Royal Flush Orchestra. I have also moved last year`s news to a separate archive section.
****** |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
January 2000 Well, that was exciting. A new year, a new century, a new millennium and bugger all to report on the Transformationalist front. Still, it was nice to see London greet the 21st century with those twin beacons of culture, the ferris wheel and the circus. For fans of Fess Williams, I`ve tracked down a few more of his recordings at www.redhotjazz.com/royalflush.html . There are 12 complete tracks on the site, though they`re in realaudio format, so if you don`t have a player you`ll have to download one from www.realaudio.com. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
