About this Event
Join us at e-flux on Thursday, May 28 at 7pm for an evening of conjuring art through words, inspired by Emily LaBarge’s new book, Dog Days (Transit Books), featuring LaBarge, Catherine Damman, Johanna Fateman, Dan Fox, and Lynne Tillman, co-presented with 4Columns.
“To drill one hole after another into [language] until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through—I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.” — Samuel Beckett
“Making sense of mute things is a normal activity of language, and any patter about the special un-translatability of paintings misses that obvious point.” — T. J. Clark
In 2009, Emily LaBarge and her family were held hostage at gunpoint while on vacation. A crocheted blanket was placed over her head while Mrs. Doubtfire and “Agnus Dei” played on repeat. Her new book, Dog Days, unfolds in the long shadow of that freak violence—where language stammers, time loops, and the body remembers what the mind can’t. An electrifying synthesis of memoir, criticism, and psychoanalytic theory, Dog Days channels form into political inquiry: interrogating how language and institutional structures constrain and distort our understandings of trauma, violence, and care.
Throughout, LaBarge draws from theory, literature, film, music—and art, about which she writes ecstatically, ekphrastically, conjuring for us images including Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, Francisco de Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei, Botticelli’s Primavera, the raucous paintings of Mary Barnes, Joan Mitchell’s Girolatas. “Images,” LaBarge writes, “which is what art is made of, do not happen all at once, they repeat themselves, they bear repeating; and it is the duty of writing to imitate or address that state of suspension or dispersal that looking at art can be.”
To mark the US publication of Dog Days, 4Columns and e-flux invites you to an evening of ekphrastic communion that considers writing about art as a form of survival and thought, that considers what criticism is for, far beyond an evaluative process. Invited respondents Catherine Damman, Johanna Fateman, Dan Fox, and Lynne Tillman will open the evening by each evoking a single artwork of particular importance to them—sight unseen—followed by an invigorating conversation with LaBarge.
is a nonprofit, online publication covering the gamut of contemporary culture, from literature to film to the visual arts. We are committed to criticism as a writerly genre in which singular passions ignite public discourse. Find us at 4columns.org.
For more information, contact [email protected].
Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator nearest to 180 Classon Ave (garage door) leading into the e-flux office space. A ramp is available for steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom with no steps between the event space and this bathroom.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
e-flux, 172 Classon Avenue, Brooklyn, United States
USD 0.00
