Johannes Goransson

Johannes Göransson interviewed at HTML Giant

At HTML Giant, Blake Butler interviews Johannes Göransson, author of *entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011): "I don’t think of art as separate from the world, nature etc. Nor am I interested in art which claims to be part of the world; art that claims to not be art. I am interested in art that is invested in its own Art-ness – with all of its crass devices and costumes, all of its kitschy metaphors and pageantry, all of its infected toys. On the other hand I’m not interested in creating a kind of refined space of contemplative art either, I don’t want art as an escape. I suppose in all of these what I object to is a kind of stability, a kind of space that art depicts or documents or provides. I’m more interested in art as violence, art as a haunting, as a spirit photograph, as what Aase Berg calls a 'deformation zone' or what Joyelle has called 'necropastoral'." (JG)

"This is a Poem, Not an Act of Terrorism": Student arrested after imitating work by Tarpaulin Sky Press author Johannes Göransson

A feel-good story about Louisiana State University student James Bellard, who was arrested after writing a "quite disturbing" poem inspired by Tarpaulin Sky Press author Johannes Göransson. "I was in Tureaud hall walking towards my last class of the day," writes Bellard, "when a man walked up behind me and said in a voice like my high-school teacher that had always stood by the school entrance and inspected everyone’s uniforms, 'Excuse me sir!' I turned around to see what he wanted (faintly annoyed by the association), then I saw the badge clipped to his belt. 'Put your hands on the wall!' he commanded."

HTML Giant reviews Johannes Göransson’s entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate

At HTML Giant, Ryan Downey reviews Johannes Goransson's *entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2011): "A hybrid form somewhere between or among the categories of poetry, prose, essay, theatre production, and instruction manual.... A relationship to an Artaudian Theatre of Cruelty.... Masks and intricate costumes aplenty.... Dresses made from looted items, prison-style clothes, black and polished bodies, cowboy costumes, skins charred from suicide bombings, heaps of dead horses, birds bursting from bodies, wounds, basketball jerseys on androgynous children, kissing faces and murder victims, exoskeletons, audience members in whiteface.... A pile up of sequined things and fleshy things. . . . The audience is often implicated. After all, torture and interrogation is not borne out of individual will and action alone. . . . All aboard."

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