summer reading mash up: thoreau cahun cooper cage

What! With all those wonderful beings around you… You’d have had time to think of me! And me so small… it’s a mistake, but do still make it… continue to make this sweet mistake with me.

Would you like to join a society called Capitalists Inc. (Just so no one would think we were Communists.)? Anyone joining automatically becomes president. To join you must show you’ve destroyed at least one hundred records or, in the case of tape, one sound mirror [tape recorder]. To imagine you own any piece of music is to miss the whole point: This is no point or the point is nothing; and even a long-playing record is a thing. A lady from Texas said: I live in Texas. We have no music in Texas. The reason they’ve no music in Texas is because they have recordings. Remove the records from Texas and someone will learn how to sing.

Alone – which you call: being free, you who forge the bars of your own prison.

Here we are now at the beginning of the
third unit of the fourth large part of this talk.
More and more I have the feeling that we are getting
nowhere. Slowly , as the talk goes on
, we are getting nowhere and that is a pleasure
. It is not irritating to be where one is . It is
only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

**INSERT LONG PAUSE**
*GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK*

Here we are now at the beginning of the
ninth unit of the fourth large part of this talk.
More and more I have the feeling that we are getting
nowhere. Slowly , as the talk goes on
, we are getting nowhere and that is a pleaure
. It is not irritating to be where one is . It is
only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

It’s over!!!!! I live on feebly, clinging to words, to fables!!!!!!!! Clinging to the dead!!, to great names!!!, to those disasters in which I claimed to see my vanity!!!, my ruin and my damned remains!!!, justified by the Conqueror’s rage!!! (Among so many confessions, what a ludicrous confession. I’m wrong to emphasise it. It would be best to let it all pass unnoticed.)

However, I feel fucking terrible….. Without doubt: my soul has become ingrown like a nail nobody has bothered to file regularly.

I am here , and there is nothing to say .
If among you are
those who wish to get somewhere , let them leave at
this moment .

Does the world have to be badly made for a being who is odd, but sexually sociable, to be forced to take refuge in crime as if it were a convent, not only to live in but even to create some new values there!

But what kind of crime? …. what does it matter! A dead end..

The confession of my shame:
Will I blame the circumstances, my contemporaries? These aren’t the circumstances of my life, these are its causes that led it astray. I was condemned before I was born. Executed in absentia.

The unnatural ones, the real ones:
No more impossible metaphysics – let them be consigned to the accessory shop: theatrical costumes but their impossible physiques remain with us, alas! – or thank god – the really tragic ones, with no theatrical strings.

My face fucking hurts!

I have nothing to say
and I am saying it and that is
poetry as I need it .

———————————————
beware of
that which is breathtakingly beautiful, for at any moment
the telephone may ring or the airplane
may come down in a vacant lot . A piece of string
or a sunset , possessing neither ,
each acts and the continuity happens

The death of Narcissus has always seemed totally incomprehensible to me. Only one explanation seems plausible: Narcissus did not love himself. He allowed himself to be deceived by an image. He didnt know how to go beyond appearances. Had he fallen in love with the face of a nymph rather than his own, his mortal impotence would have remained the same. But had he known how to love himself beyond the mirage his would have been a happy fate, the epitome of living paradise, the myth of the privileged man, worthy of envy down the centuries. That beautiful child was able to extract the infinite from his reflections, while we remain vibrations away, always the same, incapable of going any further. Oh Narcisus, you could love yourself in everything…

Eternity without you, without me, we have no need for it. We have this moment which forces itself upon us, out of love for whoever life has thrown at us, we alter ourselves to such an extent that if the ideal one ever came along we’d be incompatible without mercy, which limits us and is incarnate in an omnipotent void this categoric imperative.

“yet it is not our birth day but our death day that really defines who we were”
-blissfull2012

The Next Big Thing!

Welcome to minorprogression’s installment of The Next Big Thing, a self-interview game of blog-tag. I was tagged by Amanda Davidson, who was tagged by Deb Poe the wonderful poet, novella-ist, editor, teacher, and champion of the hybrid form. Other links to check out are Susana Gardner, Claire Donato, Matt Runkle, Jackie Clark, Ren Evans and Jenn McCreary and more will be added every Wednesday.

The idea of the project is that tagged people answer this set of questions on their blog. The questions are geared toward an in-the-works book, but Amanda suggested everyone take the liberty of broadening the criteria to include more amorphous entities or small projects people are currently working on and even went so far to suggest everyone change the questions… I’m suggesting anyone interested should tag themselves and become part of The Next Big Thing! If you do so, link your self in the comments section!

QUESTIONS:

What is the title of the book or project you want to talk about?

Parasite.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

After I read and hated JT Leroy’s The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things I knew a book for us and by us needed to be created. I know Parasite isn’t the first of this kind, but hopefully it’ll provide some justice in comparison to all the bullshit Sarah Albert created. Amazing writers like Dennis Cooper, Bruce Benderson, Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian got involved with Albert, thinking Albert was the real deal truck stop hooker she claimed to be and as Stephen Beachy later uncovered Albert was a fraud, the whole show ended up being the wrong kind of explosion, and hopefully Parasite will offer a more enjoyable-truthful-loving experience, with the hooker still the star. Not a heart of gold hooker, mind you, but you know, a hooker with some heart.

What genre does your book fall under?

It’s intended to be a genre buster! A little sci-fi, a little bit memoir, a little bit appropriated, ad a dash of glitter and heartbreak and maybe some methamphetamine?!

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Ezra Miller would be the perfect Joshua Boyer!

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

“Queer is just a word for people too busy talking…”

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

It was a continual process of layering and took me seven years to complete.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Life. Numerous writing workshops. And all of my favorite writers – Kathy Acker.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

There’s a lot of sex.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Publication Studios published it. It’s available here.

NOW! TAG! YOU’RE IT! PLEASE SEND ME YOUR LINKS TO YOUR PROJECTS!

Dennis Cooper gave PARASITE a ‘shout out!’

Dennis Cooper added Parasite to his “Three Recent Favorite Book” pile, which is sorta a big deal for me considering I’ve been a huge fan of DC’s for a long time now and consider his work both very influential and important to the creation of Parasite. Here’s the link. Also listed were Michael J. Seidlinger & their book My Pet Serial Killer + Moon Tzu & their book autumn of my youth.

I had one of those “WTF I said that?!” moments while reading the quote he put together from me. It’s a cut-up from stuff written on minorprogression and an interview I gave while putting together the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. Now, to relish in the opportunity — to quote Dennis Cooper quoting me:

‘I don’t own a Kindle. I read a lot of blogs and appreciate the Internet for allowing anyone to go online and publish their thoughts, but yeah, books are holy. I always carry a few books on me at all times. I couldn’t imagine the world without books. I need books. There have been many points in my life where I’ve questioned whether to buy books or food. We crave knowledge just as much as we crave physical sustenance. And there’s something about a physical book that sort of captures both cravings. To hold a book and be able to touch the print and mark it is an entirely different experience then that of reading on a screen. There’s a permanence that doesn’t exist with a screen. It’s why I always force myself to write longhand and not limit myself to typing on a laptop, even though it’s so much easier. There is a magick to the permanence of ink on paper that is so quickly disregarded by a keypad and a screen. …

‘I have these moments while painting. I pick colors and as I use them they’ll seem so perfect, then obvious and then I’m bored. So I switch colors. And switch colors. Until I find a color so repulsive or so out of touch with what I was originally wanting, that I take up writing.

‘Brushes with messy hairs make it impossible to direct the paint in a specific way: like I can dot an “i” but I cannot stop the dot from attaining non-circular characteristics. But I love these brushes and their imperfections. They’ve been with me in so many situations and painting for me, as one fond of the situationists, is therapy. It’s a way for me to talk to myself without using language. It’s always allowed me to forget grammar and punctuation. Paint is just a representation of color. I would hate to use a brush that didn’t seem to communicate with the paint. Nor can I ever seem to bring myself to cut my own hair.

‘An artist has always seemed to me someone that doodles while smoking a cigarette. Something may (or not) be happening; the artist notices but doesn’t stop smoking and doodling. Even if not tolerated. It’s never about results, it’s about daydreaming… living in dreamscapes. It’s about exploring when foreign lands no longer exist. It’s a means to feeling alive. To sing without lifting a note.’

–Stephen Boyer quoting Dennis Cooper quoting Stephen Boyer

Radical Library Exhibition at Center For Book Arts!

Last night was the opening for Brother Can You Spare A Stack at the Center for Book Arts. As part of the show, I built an installation out of my experience working as a librarian with the Peoples Free Library of Occupy Wall Street fame and compiling the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. For the opening, a few of the Peoples Free Library librarians showed up and set up a Peoples Free Library on the sidewalk outside of the gallery!

***

Brother, Can You Spare a Stack presents thirteen art projects that re-imagine the library as a force for social change. Each project constructs a micro library of sorts that serves specific economic or social needs within the community. Each project proposes an alternative politicized realm, which can be imagined and formed to explore the social dimensions of contemporary culture. Small and mobile, these projects resist the limitations of a controlled, highly organized system that governs our society. In contrast to subjective libraries formed by the artists picking and choosing book titles, these projects take a pragmatic and rational approach, using the library model as an interactive field. Selected projects update the principles of relational aesthetics, and shift them towards all-inclusive and useful cultural production. “Brother, Can You Spare a Stack” borrows its title from the lyrics of a popular depression era song, claiming that the artists invent alternative models of questioning, inspiring new perspectives on social transformation. They insert themselves into the most unexpected situations and spaces, in this case libraries, to propose social and cultural improvement. The exhibition includes projects by: Arlen Austin and Jason Boughton; Brett Bloom and Bonnie Fortune; Stephen Boyer; BroLab (Rahul Alexander, Jonathan Brand, Adam Brent, Ryan Roa, and Travis LeRoy Southworth); Valentina Curandi and Nathaniel Katz; Finishing School with Christy Thomas; Anna Lise Jensen and Michael Wilson; Jen Kennedy and Liz Linden; The K.I.D.S. with Word Up Collective, Eyelevel BQE, Launchpad, NURTUREart, Weeksville Heritage Center, and individual partners, as well as with Emcee C.M., Master of None; Annabel Other; Reanimation Library; The Sketchbook Project; and Micki Watanabe Spiller. Special thanks to Build It Green NYC! for their in-kind donation of materials used both in the Bronx and at the Center for Book Arts.

***

The Peoples Library of Occupy Wall Street began with a couple books placed on a bench in the north east corner of Zuccotti Park, mid-September 2011. As books were added to the pile, Betsy Fagin and a few other people named the collection “The Peoples Library of Occupy Wall Street” and began organizing the books into categories. A call went out for more books and librarians, and both (along with other supplies) continued to pour in as the Occupation gained momentum. The Peoples Library became one of the Occupation’s proudest emblems. It proclaimed “truth to power” and demonstrated the peaceful protest’s desire to spread knowledge through inclusivity; all books given to the collection were added.

Poetry provided my entry to the movement. I walked around Zuccotti Park my first few days there in late September 2011, listening, soaking in the vibrant energy and diverse conversations. My third day there, I was introduced to Travis Holloway as he put together the first Poetry Assembly, which became a weekly reading. I went to Liberty Plaza early the second week of the Poetry Assembly because I had been asked to facilitate. I met the librarians that day as I made cardboard signs for the assembly; I pitched to them the idea of an anthology and they agreed the Poetry Assembly needed to be archived and took on The Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology as its first publication.

Until the police shut down the Occupation on November 14th, the library and the anthology grew exponentially. The night the police came and destroyed OWS, I salvaged a handful of books and the original copies of the poetry anthology. A couple days after the raid, the poet Sarah Sarai and I turned the anthology into a PDF on the Peoples Library website. Because the police state shut the park down as a place of protest it became necessary to put the anthology online to spread its’ inclusive message instantaneously. It was posted with instructions “how to print” and “how to make your own copy” so anyone could acquire a copy.

For “Brother, Can You Spare a Stack”, I’ve (re/re-re/re-re-re)considered why, unfortunately, The Peoples Library disintegrated. Libraries across the country are closing down and The Peoples Library strove to show how communities could create their own library. But because of violence perpetrated by the NYPD, The Peoples Library disappeared; the night it disappeared it was a collection of over three-thousand books. But unlike most libraries it reincarnated into many forms: as the anthology, as zines and ephemera, and Occupy libraries popped up around the country. They also popped up online as theory and in practice, and the New York chapter went mobile and into the streets. The battle continues to be political, and for this installation, I’ve created my experience into captions placed alongside various ephemera and books to narrate the experience of the library and anthology and all the life and protest that has continued to coincide with both projects.

***

***

A radical queer library on display! bring a book to swap for another book! I found a vhs copy of Patricia Hearst‘s First Tape from the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)! I swapped it for a copy of Dennis Cooper‘s “Smothered in Hugs.”

***

The Patriot Library sent out from Los Angeles by Finishing School… after the Patriot Act was signed into effect by George W. Bush, Finishing School started to call around to public libraries around the country and they asked librarians if they had books on how to make a bomb. Many librarians immediately hung up the phone and others engaged them, “How big of a building are you trying to blow up?”
F.S., “Oh, you know, like a 30 story apartment building…”
Librarian, “Sounds like you need a book on demolition…”
F.S. made note of all the books suggested and then made a library!

***

There are many other libraries… all worthy of exploring! Go check them out. It’s up through March! And on March 15, at 6:30pm, I’ll be giving an artist talk along with a few other artists whose work is on display.

***

Let me know what you think! XOXOXO

MASHA TUPITSYN: VIA THE SCREEN

Interview with Masha Tupitsyn on her new book LACONIA: 1,200 Tweets on Film.

How do you prefer to watch movies? Do you think the way in which you watch a film contributes to your reaction to it?

The film critic Pauline Kael wrote: “When one considers the different rates at which people read, it’s miraculous that films can ever solve the problem of a pace at which audiences can ‘read’ a film together.’” It’s funny, a lot of people react to that line in LACONIA—where I write about watching movies alone. It’s like blasphemy when it comes to cinema. But it’s true. I do prefer to watch movies alone, for a lot of different reasons. I think they come in a different way when you watch them alone. When you do anything alone. I also started watching movies that way as a kid, and the way you start is maybe the way you always stay. I am really selective about who I watch movies with, so I had like movie friendships. Friendships that were based on watching movies together and talking about them. But I’ve moved away from that more and more, and DVDs and streamed movies only exacerbate my tendency. And since I’m also someone who writes about movies, I have particular tics and ways of watching them that would irritate someone who’s just trying to watch a movie for (uninterrupted) “pleasure,” because I’m constantly interrupting the cinematic fold, so to speak. Or maybe I’m never even in it in the way that a traditional viewer is supposed to be, which doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it intensely. Where you don’t talk while a movie is playing. You don’t stop and start a movie. Go back, go forwards. Re-watch. Watch a movie too late or over a period of 2 days. But for me it’s less about watching and more about working through a film: what it’s doing, what it’s trying to do, what it’s showing, what it’s not showing. What it does to me. What it does to the world it’s in as well the world that’s in a film. The world it makes and that makes a film possible.

There are two quotes about cinema from Steve Erickson‘s novel Zeroville that I always think about. The first is: “Last night, the movie became mine and no one else’s.” Which is the idea that there is a kind of alchemy between a film (the true or secret film that is underneath the false film, as Erickson says repeatedly, which is the one everyone watches together—the “official film—at the same time. The film you’re meant to read in a certain way) and a viewer, so that cinema is also about who’s watching it—the chemistry between a particular film and a particular viewer, at a particular time, and that, like a book, has an ideal reader that contributes to the meaning and existence of that book, and the writer who writes it—a film needs the right pair of eyes to really see it.

The second quote from Zeroville that applies to what we’re talking about is: “The thing is, that movie last night is a completely different movie when you watch it by yourself. Why is that? Movies are supposed to be watched with other people, aren’t they? Isn’t that part of the point of movies—you know, one of those social ritual things, with everyone watching? It never occurred to me that a movie might be different when you don’t watch it with anyone else.” Having said this, it’s important to distinguish the critical, discerning, and radical intimacy between a viewer and a film from a kind of purely fetishistic and possessive relationship to images that is dangerous and titillating and alienating, and which Michael Haneke so brilliantly conjures in Benny’s Video, for example. And with Pablo Larraín’s Tony Manero. Where images are used to feel less, not more. Where images are used to cut us off from knowing what things really even feel like in the real world—off the screen. To engage with the real world less, or only via the screen. So that Benny thinks killing a pig, or watching a pig get killed, is the same thing as killing a girl in real life, in his house.

What I’m interested in now is an evolution of what I’ve always been interested in when it comes to film: The cinematic subjunctive. That is, the relationship between what’s possible in the cinema (how the cinema influences and/or hijacks our idea of possibility and potentiality) and what’s possible or not possible in real life—the gap(s) in between and what those gaps do to and mean for us—for our hopes, desires, and dreams; whether they limit and expand them, whether they hold them hostage in cinematic space, and how one—offscreen vs. onscreen—affects, shapes, and confuses the other. How they overlap and blur. Rub up against each other and clash. Sometimes even cancel each other out. Which is, in many ways, what I’ve been looking at all along—in LACONIA, Beauty Talk & Monsters, and Life As We Show It. For me, the real question is always: What do images want and what do we want from images? But not just from images when we look at them, but what wants of ours are stored in and reflected back to us (often unconsciously) by/through images—films? And can we access and live those wants and desires unless they are mediated and contained by images? How do images mediate and contain us? And more, how do we live because of movies? For as Geoffrey O’Brien writes in his book about movies, Phantom Empire: “If only it had been possible to live like this.” This is what every movie is always engaging with and putting us in touch with—if only it were possible to have this, to want this, to be this. Because as O’Brien also points out: “It wasn’t narrative that drew them but the spaces that the narratives permitted to exist.”

What is your favorite period in film history?

It varies culturally, of course. Whether it’s European cinema or Third World Cinema or avant-garde cinema. But in American cinema, it’s the 1930s and 1970s. With the 1930s, you have this athletic, dexterous, and energetic attention to language. To the elliptical way people talk and feel. Their rigorous back and forth—a sign of tenacity—of not being able to let something or someone go. I think one of the great things about the screwball comedies of yesteryear (and there are many) is their velocity, because that speed and energy and attention have to do with the quantity and quality and intensity of feeling and interaction and desire. In the 1930s, as Geoffrey O’Brien writes, “a movie was a completed destiny,” which has so much to do with the motif of time and memory; the way the characters live in and through and for time. So there’s this wonderful cadence and rhythm to everything. To the way things are felt and said and done. And in the 70s, you had the recognition of social reality and what it does to people’s lives. You had incredible doubt and skepticism and suspicion of dominant power structures, so that for a moment there was a sense that things could change politically and socially.

What’s your biggest critique of the industry?

Exactly that—industry. The way everything gets turned into industry these days, including people. I think Beauty Talk & Monsters really answers that question though.

Spotlight on Masha Tupitsyn and her new book Laconia

Last night while I was prancing around as Dodie Bellamy at Heather’s celebrating the release of the buddhist, I encountered one of the most obnoxious examples of New York gentrification fascism I have ever dealt with and as if it couldn’t be more dire, it was from the mouth/hands of a “queer” person, a person I want to consider apart of my community, not an enemy… The experience reminded me of a section in the buddist wherein Dodie explains that if she lived next door to one of her friends, they definitely wouldn’t be friends. But Dodie explains the universe has allowed them to meet on grounds accommodating for parties, so they are able to see the good in one another and have a friendship “who, in a slightly different situation, I would hate… Lacan said, that all relationships are about finding the right distance….” I guess the following is a confession of my inability to find the right distance…

I stepped outside for a cigarette break with my girlfriend when outta nowhere a scowling little girl came barging up to us, demanding we relocate to the corner to continue with our cigarette. She was the barback for Heather’s and she cried that the bar’s neighbors would close Heather’s down if we didn’t immediately move up the block… For those unfamiliar with the bar, Heather’s, it’s located on the middle of a block in the bustling Lower East Side area, an area known for its eclectic mix of citizenry and for starting movements like punk rock and heroin chic. It’s a colorful neighborhood that has always welcomed in the weirdo’s that have escaped suburban nihilism. Anyway, I think last night was the first time I have ever been told not to smoke or that I’ve been too loud while standing in the Lower East Side.

The power trippin’ wanna-be trendsetting egomaniacal dyke that attacked me came careening at me with her eyes bulging from her sockets after having just finished harassing a guy for standing in the doorway with a glass of beer. At first I thought she must be best friend’s with the guy she assaulted for having a beer in the doorway because I thought her ferocity had to be sarcastic. But to my dismay I watched her come at me with the same level of anger. I knew I was dealing with a megabitch as soon as she opened her mouth because there was no level of concern in her demand, she simply wanted to be in power and tell me exactly what to do. My girlfriend is not one to backdown so when “megabitch” came at us and demanded we relocate up the street, my girlfriend yelled back. As they argued I cowered up the block, eager to avoid confrontation. I went three buildings up the street thinking that suffice distance to be removed from the bar but was I wrong! Not a moment after I puffed a puff, the little “megabitch-fascist-power-trippin’-wanna-be-trendsetting-egomaniacal-dyke ” reared her fugly little face, this time instead of just insisting I go to the corner she started name calling and threatening that I should be kicked off the block… I tried briefly to insist that being 4 buildings away was enough and besides, it was only 7pm, hardly late enough for neighbors to complain…

But it wasn’t enough… the little bitch just had to keep attacking so I demanded she recognize that everyone she was harassing was at Heather’s for an event that was giving her and her coworkers significantly more business than they otherwise would be receiving. Had we not all been there, Heather’s surely would have been dead and the tip jar empty. The little bitch needed her ego popped but it didn’t work… I asked her for her name, “Melissa Plaut” she yelled, “and you should google it because you obviously have no idea who you’re dealing with! You’re really gonna feel like a dooshbag after you google my name… Lemme spell it out for you, M.E.L.I.S.S.A. P.L.A.U.T. now go home and google it…” Then she dashed away… A few moments later the bartender approached me and asked what happened, told me she was there to “reprimand me” on behalf of the barback, we both laughed, acknowledged the absurdity of the situation, then went our merry ways…

Around this time, the fellow party attendees approached me and asked for my experience with the “fucking fascist” (name we gave her…). We all swapped stories and at some point I relayed my story to Masha Tupitsyn… Masha told me Melissa Plaut had just demanded she stop talking on her cellphone. Despite the fact that Heather’s was blaring music, Melissa Plaut thought it was inappropriate for Masha to talk on her cellphone on the sidewalk. After we finished bonding over our recent abuse we introduced ourselves to each other… I had seen Masha read a year or so ago at the RedCat in Los Angeles but never met her. She’s responsible for one of my favorite collections of writing on film, “Life As We Show It.” Once I realized I was sharing abuse stories with Masha, the incident evolved into a positive experience. Thanks Melissa Plaut for providing sucha awkward experience that I was forced to meet someone whose work I’ve admired for quite awhile! And soon I’ll be receiving a copy of her new book Laconia in the mail! Once I devour it, I’ll post a review with an interview with the author!

:::an aside for Melissa Plaut::: in the future I suggest you change your tone and how you approach people, had you been polite and nice and explained why you needed us to move up the street and stay off our cellphones I’m sure we would have been sympathetic to your request, there is no reason to attack paying customers! No reason whatsoever! Nor is there any reason for you to gloat about the things that come up when you google your name… so you made yourself a wiki page to promote your book, no one is impressed because you’re a total hack:::

Masha Tupitsyn is a writer and cultural critic who lives in New York City. She is the author of LACONIA: 1,200 Tweets on Film (ZerO Books, 2011) Beauty Talk & Monsters, a collection of film-based stories (Semiotext(e) Press, 2007), and co-editor of the anthology Life As We Show It: Writing on Film (City Lights, 2009), which was voted one of the best film books of 2009 by Dennis Cooper, January Magazine, Shelf Awareness, and Chicago’s New City. She is currently working on a new book of essays on film and the star system, Screen to Screen and Star Notes, a book about John Cusack and the politics of acting. Her fiction and criticism has appeared in the anthologies Wreckage of Reason: XXperimental Women Writers Writing in the 21st Century (2008) and the Encyclopedia Project Volume II, F-K (2010) and BOMB, Keyframe, Puerto del Sol, 2nd Floor Projects, Vertebrae Journal, TINA, Venus Magazine, The Rumpus, Animal Shelter, Fanzine, Make/Shift, NYFA Current, Bookforum, Fence, Five Fingers Review, and San Francisco’s KQED’s The Writer’s Block. She regularly contributes video essays on film and culture to Ryeberg Curated Video, which features writers like Mary Gaitskill and Sheila Heti. She teaches writing and is a PhD student at The European Graduate School.

Here’s two reviews for Laconia:

Review
There’s something about the way Masha Tupitsyn’s mind works when she addresses gender and film. It’s different from how pretty much all other contemporary feminist theorists do it. Amid so much detached deconstruction, Tupitsyn’s criticism is refreshingly full of life. Laconia, a document of Tupitsyn’s public thoughts on film, is a stream of intimate, immediate, and specific reflections on movies, as well as a broad and sustained interrogation of things like whether we can any longer truly see corporatized cities like LA and NY other than in old movies, how to understand David Lynch’s women, and whether there is any real possibility for connection in social media, or for that matter, in watching films. (Jessica Hoffman, writer and co editor, Make/Shift Magazine)

The 1200 tweets that constitute Masha Tupitsyn’s LACONIA are, each one, an aphorism in a bottle set adrift into the midst of all the other crisscrossing messages that movies and the media universe have spawned and continually and more or less blindly emit. Everything is happening in real time – not recollected in tranquility but intercepted in passing – even when the messages emanate from the deep past or (perhaps) a future around the next bend. It’s a collage of the present moment, a continuous and unyielding dialogue, open-ended and alert to the barrage of signals that has become our home. (Geoffrey O’Brien, author of The Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America, Hardboiled America: Lurid Paperbacks And The Masters Of Noir, The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century.)