The Thing Itself

Hampden Gallery 2021

An exploration of the gallery itself as a documentation of human endeavor, public spending priorities, and the activation of a space through observing and considering the act observation in the moment of observation itself.

Materials: cell phones repurposed for surveillance, a defunct cafeteria, periscopes, found set pieces from an abandoned and forbidden theater, a fountain of rainwater filtered through the gallery ceiling, a lecture, a participatory performance with wheat paste, and sunlight.

Dark Times 2020 Winter Solstice

A series of camera obscura timed with the first winter solstice of the coronavirus pandemic. A dark space for meditation where, as your eyes adjust, the external world becomes clear on the walls of the unfinished room, upside down and still except for the clouds. At sunset on the shortest day, the sun beams directly through a slit and scars a treated canvas, making a 40-foot-square cyanotype from direct light as it exits the season.

transit

transit, a time-and-place-specific installation, used the idea of a celestial transit as a metphor for how an external world becomes an internal world, for how knowledge and consciousness develop as a kind of light crosses into the mind. It was also an investigation of history and place and of the clash of knowledges that is part of the history of colonialism in Hadley, Massachusetts.

each light: time lapse

This was the first phrase to appear in the mornings at the Goodwin Memorial Library during the spring equinox of 2018.

The phrase was completed throughout the morning as other portions appeared in reflected light and shadow using the light on the east side of the Library:

“each light is a motion / of its own shadow”

word moves inside

As solar noon approached, these words became legible, using the idea and motion of celestial transit (one planet or star moving across another) as a metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge, for the movement of a physical/ external world into a mental/ internal one.

"settled" v2 time lapse from *transit*

The Everlasting Gobstopper

Episode: 2

A video/film installation about political radicalization. The second in a series.

The Syllabus

A conceptual classroom meant to trouble the understanding of ethics and beauty. The work moves between both social sculpture and classroom experiment and sometimes encourages contemplation, sometimes dialog, and sometimes action.

a shelter at a border

Series 1:

this endless arrival of form is a shadow of this endless arrival of

Event 1: ~8 - 830 am: South Shelter. Shadow, shelter roof and road.

this endless arrival emerging in shadow as the sun reaches the shelter.

Shadows continue till sunset, excepting sun obscuration; partially visible at night.

Event 2: When and wherever buses on routes 34 and 35 pass: On the buses.

Decals, rear bus windows. of is created by the passing busses.

Event 3: ~2 - 230 pm: North Shelter. Reflection, shelter roof.

form is a shadow emerging in reflection as the sun’s rays align.

Reflection otherwise sporadically available; slightly visible at night.

Event 4: When and wherever buses on routes 34 and 35 pass: On the buses.

Decals, rear bus windows. of is created by the passing busses.

Series 2:

our BORDERS pro t/j ect our FICTIONS

~11am - 2pm: North Shelter. Shifting shadows, shelter floor.

Installation: How the world wears its words

Installation 1: Large words across the front

For information about the process and concept behind this installation, please check out the project blog: http://christopherjanke.blogspot.com/

The poem: of the of of the of - Miner Street

Sculptural Book: of the of of the of #'s 1-9 handmade acrylic edition

(cloud) from the Placeholder series

psalterium-blepharism

psalterium / blepharism

From H_NGM_N Books a double-volume of poetry. Purchase directly from publisher:

http://www.h-ngm-n.com/psalterium-blepharism

One book, psalterium, is made of short, zen-like, wry, wisps that operate like psalms.

The other title in the book, blepharism, is a single meditative poem that circles around a sense of absence and provides brief glimpses into a narrative of loss – wondering what remains within and around and after loss.

Poems from the books have been in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, A Public Space, Forklift Ohio, and many other journals.

Here are links to some of the poems in the book:

https://aprweb.org/poems/death-psalm5

(ignore the strange “A” characters in this web version. They’re not in the print poem!)

https://bostonreview.net/poetry/christopher-janke-sweeping-psalm

Structure of the Embryonic Rat Brain

"Janke is one of a very small handful of younger poets whose work manages to be both technically striking and humanly moving--there is always something miraculous about this combination, but these days it's especially heartening. I've been wishing his work would receive more attention, and am glad to see that happening now." –Franz Wright

Structure of the Embryonic Rat Brain

Fence Books 2007. 80 pages. 10 poems.

P urchase Here

" ...a startling approach to the prose poem and a book that must be read to appreciate the possibilities of the genre." –Bloomsbury Review March/April 2008

"In his driving and driven debut... Christopher Janke offers a breakneck vision of strained consciousness in rolling verse and prose paragraphs... " –Publisher’s Weekly online September 2007

"Christopher Janke has published a pretty book of poems. That's obvious from the cover of Structure of the Embryonic Rat Brain alone: a mauve and purple tangle of presumable neuronal matter brushed with green. Fence Books, always pleasing with its designs, has cut Janke's book wider than it is long and interspersed his poems with eye-catching doodles. If you flip the pages fast while staring at the lower right-hand corner you'll see a rat put through its paces. This book makes it clear from the beginning that it intends on giving tactile pleasure while stimulating your mind. Like those famous lab rats pressing levers for cocaine, this book wants to keep you turning its pages. Pretty continues into the poems themselves. I suspect Janke wouldn't like this word - he'd probably prefer "complex," "multi-noded," "myelin-coated," or "meiotically bold." As someone delighted by grammatical skewering, intriguing page-jumps, and the abolishment of articles though, I call them pretty. Strikingly beautiful even, if you will, as in Janke's opening words: What kind of knife? What kind of throat? What steel? Who cuts the warp? Who scissors through? Who pins the paws? What kind of pins? What color? What creature? Who slices a head? What gory miracle? What unanimated gelatinous - dead-pink & fatty. What kind slices? What kind peers? What kind slices?" –Cyan James, www.newpages.com

New Gallery

Suzee's Third St. Laundry's Lost-and-Found Fashion Show is a collaborative project that ran yearly from 2004 through 2013 and then ran again in 2014 and 2016.

Currently on hiatus, there are many vibrant fashionistas doing great work in Turners Falls. Check them out.

When we do run a show again, we will be looking for lots of collaborators!

In 2016, we underwent a revisioning process, collaborated with Cosa Rara, RiverCulture, and others, and we held the show at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls, MA.

Contact for more information: turnersfallsfashionshow at gma1l . CoM

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The Thing Itself

Dark Times 2020 Winter Solstice