Poetry and Architecture: Vito Acconci, Benjamin Aranda and Robert Kocik

The Segue Series Presents: Poetry and Architecture Featuring Vito Acconci, Benjamin Aranda, and Robert Kocik Saturday, April 25, 2009 ** 4PM SHARP** at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, just north of Houston) $6 admission goes to support the readers hosted by Kristen Gallagher & Tim Peterson What is the nature of the conversation between poetry and architecture today? In this event for the Segue Reading Series, poets and architects will present works exploring a dialogue between these two disciplines. Vito Acconci will show an image-stream of built & unbuilt spaces & instruments as he reads: 1) about furniture & houses (80’s), cities & landscape (90’s); 2) from rules for assemblage & incursion (00’s); 3) architecture in words only (00’s). Benjamin Aranda will present images and talk around the issue of self-assembly, where top-down methods for determining form and making decisions are complicated and sometimes replaced by bottom-up rules of formation. As in natural systems, the architectural structures up for discussion are not carved or composed in a traditional sense; they are grown through simple interactions to produce complex patterns that are both useful and buildable. Robert Kocik will present a plan for the Prosody Building, a note on mercenary poetry (without which business is biocide), Missing Civic Services, and a few architectural plans made entirely of words. PARTICIPANTS: Vito Acconci’s design & architecture comes from another direction, from backgrounds of writing & art. By the late 80’s he crossed over & joined with architects to form Acconci Studio. They mix poetry & math, computer-scripting & sentence-structure, narrative & biology as they range from plazas & parks to buildings & interiors to furniture & products to clothing &vehicles;. They are currently working on a street through a building in Indianapolis, a building that twists from a courtyard in Milan, a makeover of a former strip-mall in Athens, Georgia. Benjamin Aranda is architect and principal of ArandaLasch, New York, NY. Robert Kocik, poet, essayist, artist, design/builder, lives in Brooklyn where he directs the Bureau of Material Behaviors. His architectural works are committed to the realization of 'missing' functions, services, organizations, or agencies. He is currently developing a building based on 'prosody' and poets' imagined importance to our society. With the choreographer Daria Faïn, he has initiated a field of research called The Prosodic Body. His publications include: Overcoming Fitness (Autonomedia, 2001), and Rhrurbarb (Field Books, 2007). http://segueseries.blogspot.com/ Segue Series, Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (just north of Houston), New York City