Overview

Opera on TV is a collection of experimental poetry/theory that examines the role of aesthetic practice in political subject formation, particularly for queer and trans subjects. The book addresses the role of state institutions and economic structures in making our lives intelligible -- from our interpersonal relationships to our political identities and artistic endeavors. Many of the poems blend explorations of queer feminist aesthetics and politics with musicality and lyricism, in a variety of forms, such as prose blocks, lists, and transcripts. Drawing connections among themes of beauty, nostalgia, ideology, and liberation, Opera on TV suggests ways to complicate the notion of art as a mode of political education.

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9781946031525

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Reviews

James Lowell Brunton's Opera on TV reminds us that the most compelling works of formal and conceptual experimentation and innovation emerge not because of a self-indulgent quest for the different but because the complexity, challenge and unorthodoxy of the thoughts and feelings being explored demand complex formal ways to articulate the difficult. In this sense Brunton is extending the metaphor and simile, the construction of the line, and the limits of language to offer a work of emotional, intellectual and urgent cultural importance. These poems are at once disarmingly personal and alarmingly alert to our political and historical moment. --Kwame Dawes James Lowell Brunton's Opera on TV shows the poet questioning the value of and need for every genre of art in the 21st century. It's a first book smart enough to be self-conscious about not knowing what the future holds for one who calls himself an artist: 'I begin to grow dimly aware of myself and my limitations.' In the midst of its conundrums the book turns to unashamed and philosophical love for the natural world: 'We are often to be found looking out of windows.' No matter the subject, the passion with which Brunton handles his obsessions makes each one of these poems a love poem. --Jericho Brown In Opera on TV, James Lowell Brunton builds us a world of light and ruin. His poems, relentlessly playful and remarkably exact, unearth every good thing we have loved, lost, and likely misunderstood. He asks us, What does it mean to love the light more than the message? And these poems know what that means--every line enacts a purposeful irreverence for constructed meaning and cultivates, instead, a stunning and radical desire for what is. --- Stacey Waite (author of 'Butch Geography' and 'the lake has no saint')

Author Information

James Lowell Brunton's poems and experimental writing appear in Denver Quarterly, Cincinnati Review, Hotel Amerika, and other journals. He is the author, with Russell Evatt, of The Future Is a Faint Song (Dream Horse Press, 2014). James teaches critical theory and poetry in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Juan Kasari has a MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Time and Space Arts study programme, and is a visual artist living and working in Helsinki.His works have recently been shown at Sinne gallery in Helsinki, Photographic gallery Hippolyte and MUU Gallery in Helsinki, Photographic center Peri in Turku, as well as several group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. The reality around us is composed of random events, probabilities and intentional events. They are all complex phenomena, whether visible or invisible.We as humans exist in a no man's land between things and meanings. New things and meanings emerge from the process of encounters and events around us. His installation works renders tangible states of isolation, transitoriness and ephemerality.The artworks are large abstract colour surfaces that avoid both the figurative idiom and narrativity. They are also in a constant state of change. The artificial and natural light, the layers of superimposed video projections and the viewer's presence all play upon the gallery space and the works, giving rise to new changeable meanings.Kasari's works are based on Mondrian's idea of pure beauty that is devoid of figurative or narrative content. The projections employ primary colours and their combinations.In his artistic work, Juan Kasari explores the internal tensions of humanity and microcosmoses. His previous major solo shows (Gated Community and Real White Panthers) were about real-life closed communities. In his more recent exhibitions, Kasari's visual vocabulary has become more abstract, yet addressing the same themes.

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