Guerrilla warriors on the Brooklyn Bridge: a case-study of the Unbearables' poetic terrorism (1994-2001)

On 13 September 1994, a loose collective of Downtown poets known as the Unbearables lined up on the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway, all the way from Manhattan to Brooklyn. During rush hour, they simultaneously ranted erotic poems in six-minute loops, so that, at least theoretically, "a few words from each reader would have reached each pedestrian's ear, and the whole string of phrases would add up to a single 'stochastic' poem, a different version for each and every passerby" (Bey 1994, n.p.). The Unbearables' thirty-minute performance was repeated in six consecutive years with only minor variations. The current article reconstructs the annual Brooklyn Bridge readings on the basis of previously unpublished sources that include personal interviews with the Unbearables and archival material from New York University's Fales Library Downtown Collection and the SUNY of Buffalo Poetry Collection. On the basis of this reconstruction, the article analyzes the event as a poetic implementation of anarchist philosopher Hakim Bey's theories on the Temporary Autonomous Zone, Poetic Terrorism and Artistic Disappearance

McSweeney's and the challenges of the marketplace for independent publishing

In their article "McSweeney's and the Challenges of the Marketplace for Independent Publishing" Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen argue that the artistic projects of the US-American author, activist, and editor Dave Eggers are marked by a tension between the desire for independence and the demands of brand-building. The article offers a close analysis of the materiality and paratexts of one particular issue of McSweeney's, the literary magazine of which Eggers is the founding editor. Both the content and the apologetically aggressive tone of Eggers's editorial statements betray a deep unease with the inability to inhabit a cultural and economic position that is untainted by the compromises that publishing requires. Still, this disavowed complicity with the market in fact sustains Eggers's editorial practice in McSweeney's, which, in marked contrast to his explicit statements, thrives on a dynamic of commodification

Sex as the city? The unbearables' erotic tours of downtown New York

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Bohemian like you? The predicament of the underground in feast and Kolm's Neo Phobe (2006)

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