“Tan Lin’s new work sparkles with unoriginality and falsification. He … is trying to critique a number of the underlying assumptions of ‘innovative’ poetry, exploring ways to make poetry more readable and, as he puts it, more relaxing.” —Charles Bernstein
What does a language of abstraction sound like? Find out as Tan Lin, acclaimed for his works of “ambient literature,” dazzles the intellect and the senses with a reading and screening of video works. The author of more than 10 genre-bending books, including Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe and Heath Course Pak, New York–based Lin takes cues from social media, yoga, disco, television, electronica, and other forms of pop culture. At the same time, he deliberately works against traditional notions of avant-garde “difficulty” and rigid categorizations such as poetry, fiction, and literary criticism.
Among Lin’s numerous awards, grants, and fellowships is a 2012 award for poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and a 2004 Getty Visiting Scholar Fellowship. He is currently at work on a “sampled novel,” Our Feelings Were Made by Hand—and, fittingly, a book about Andy Warhol’s writing. Lin is also a video and performance artist whose work has been shown at the Yale Art Gallery, MOMA/P.S. 1, and elsewhere. With his sister, Maya Lin, he created the 2004 earthwork installation Input at Ohio University.
Free Verse is copresented by Rain Taxi Review of Books.
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Painter Painter.
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