The Detonator: The Best of BOMB Magazine

In this time we are living in artists continue to play a special role in society by virtue of their patience alone. In the face of marketing machines that co-opt and disseminate the aesthetic production of creative producers more rapidly than ever before, patience is the distinguishing quality between art and advertising.

—Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich, BOMBlog 2011

Inner Resources

It feels good to love our country.
We must not say so. I’m divided by a love
of our millions of brilliant inventions
and how I’ll dumbly sniff and rub each one
until I’ve figured out how I can use it for that
other thing. Just like a brilliant inventor I too
have a body so I know everything’s invented
to pleasure a body. I was born to this country
and all of it was entranced by my tiny fingers
and then I learned where I could put them.
Before I was born there was sniffing and rubbing
and it formed a tiny unity. Already it was getting
too big to call by one name. It was becoming
a collection of purposes. Which is like calling the sky
a collection of purposes because stars exist.
This is why I write little notes to myself
reminding myself to take all the notes out
of my pockets before sleep. The notes say look
at the sky and when I remember to do it I feel
very American. I feel American when I want
to be able to rub up against what I’m pretty sure
is that planet. Planets exist. They hold the names
we gave them inside them like a breath. I need
to remember to look up the names of the planets
I’m seeing. I’m fairly certain of what I’m seeing.
It’s too bright to be anything else.

This edition of BOMBlog’s Word Choice brought to you by poet Laura Eve Engel and artist Coke O’Neal.

Check out the latest BOMB Featured Tumblr Artist!

Mowgli Omari, hailing from London, produces striking collage work that reminds us of a geometric mash up of the National Geographic.

Thanks for the submission, Mowgli!

happy creating,

the BOMB crew

mowgliomari:

≡ XIV Ltd Edition 3D Zine Centerfold (by Mowgli Omari)

http://mowgliomari.tumblr.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mowgli-omari/

Since I am part of a certain society, the arrows I aim at myself might also hit the larger target.

Guy Ben-Ner, BOMB 111/Spring 2010

It’s very hard to maintain ambiguity on screen. That’s actually a quality of moviemaking, it’s like painting, you have to say, “This is the color and this is the form.”

—Volker Schlondorff, BOMB 32/Summer 1990

Laurie Anderson’s Michigan, 2012.

Sergio Vega: I will always be devoted to paradise in one way or another. One way of ending it would be to simply move there, and live in the Garden of Eden forever after. Although I’m thinking about other projects for the future. One of them is to isolate Saint Francis’s and Che Guevara’s DNA, then blend both of them into one being and resurrect him like Lazarus. Designed to be a great leader, he will turn this nasty world we live in into a paradise for all. If I fail with the experiment, I’m going to get a parrot and teach him to sing the Internationale.

Nicolás Guagnini: What you mean is that making art is like being in paradise?

SV: Making art is like being in paradise. Being a professional artist is a lousy purgatory.

BOMB 74/Winter 2001

By making people laugh, I break down a lot of the barriers I’ve set up by creating uncomfortable and frightening situations. My work creates feelings of tension and anxiety; laughter relaxes people, so it makes it easier for them to absorb an idea.

—Mark Pauline on combining violence and humor, BOMB 6/Summer 1983

It’s All in Your Head: Frank Thurston Green reviews the Andrzej Zulawski retrospective at BAMcinématek on the BOMBlog.