Please join us on October 6 at 7pm at Center for Book Arts for an in-person event celebrating the (official) launch of Adeena Karasick and Warren Lehrer’s stunning and provocative new book Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings. The night will begin with a multimedia performance/reading, followed by a conversation with Lehrer and Karasick moderated by CBA Director Corina Reynolds, followed by a signing, and food, drink and festivities.
Seating is limited. Please RSVP.
About Ouvert Oeuvre
“A vivid new graphic-text collaboration by poet-theorist Adeena Karasick and writer-designer Warren Lehrer… Distinctly shaped, strikingly formed, Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings is a work worth looking at and reading as—not through—its graphical language… A vibrant, attractive book, handled with suppleness.”
Johanna Drucker, JD: ABCs Newsletter“An arresting attempt to put collective pain and healing on the page… Karasick’s poems and Lehrer’s images of textual choreography deal with what emerging from a long, isolating quarantine feels like ‘in the today of wild touching; / the today of withholding, the today of / passionate rations.’ …This collaboration keenly embodies a collective trauma that eludes a singular definition.”
Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)“A true masterpiece of linguistic play and exploration! Karasick and Lehrer have created an exceptional work that deserves recognition for its innovative approach to language, masterful use of visual and literary techniques, and its contribution to the ongoing conversation about language, media, and culture.”
Paolo Granata, Professor, Book and Media Studies, University of Toronto“Karasick’s spoken-word performance sizzles your ears with the breathy heat of her voice… Her delivery is hypnotic and erotic as waves of text roll and break, sometimes starting as whispers before sliding into chant-like passages that culminate in a libidinous frenzy.”
Chris Rule, Opera Wire“In Lehrer’s books, words take on thought’s very form, bringing sensory experience to the reader as directly as ink on paper can allow.”
Julie Lasky, The New York Times Book Review
About the Presenters
Adeena Karasick, Ph.D., is a New York based Canadian poet, performer, cultural theorist, media artist and the author of 14 books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha), noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein), “a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin), “demonstrating how desire flows through language, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural), word-play, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work” (Mark Scroggins). Honors include: 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award recipient; Voce Donna Italia Award for her contributions to feminist thinking; 2023 Media Ecology Association Outstanding Book Award; shortlisted for 2023 ICA Outstanding Book of the Year Award; 2023 Poet Laureate of the Institute of General Semantics.
Karasick teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute; is Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology; and Associate International Editor of New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” is established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.
Warren Lehrer is a writer/designer known as a pioneer in the fields of visual literature and design authorship. His books are acclaimed for capturing the shape of thought and reuniting the oral and pictorial traditions of storytelling with the printed page. Honors include: The 2019 Ladislav Sutnar Lifetime Achievement Prize, 2016 Center for Book Arts Honoree, the Brendan Gill Prize, the Innovative Use of Archives Award, the Independent Publisher Outstanding Book of the Year Award, the International Book Award for Best New Fiction, three AIGA Book Awards, two Type Directors Club Awards, two Design Incubation Awards, a Media That Matters Award, and fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Foundation for the Arts, and the Rockefeller, Ford, Greenwall, and Furthermore Foundations. His work has been exhibited widely and is in many collections including MoMA, L.A. County Art Museum, The Getty Museum, The Walker Art Center, Pompidou Centre, and Tate Gallery. He is also a performer, animator, and has co- written four plays and one opera.
Lehrer is a frequent presenter at universities, art and literary centers, and bookstores. He is a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author/Entrepreneur MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, and Professor Emeritus at Purchase College, SUNY. Lehrer is Co-Founder and Co- Artist Director of EarSay, a non-profit arts organization in Queens, NY.
Corina Reynolds (she/her) is the Executive Director of Center for Book Arts in New York City. At CBA, she has focused on connecting artists across distance and time through a diverse program of exhibitions, panels, conferences, and classes.
Her passion for the art of the book has led her to curate exhibitions, organize conferences and panels, publish books, and teach about the book arts in the US and abroad. She has an MFA in textiles from Cranbrook Academy of Art and, in 2012, she co-founded Small Editions, an artists’ book publisher and curatorial residency program in Brooklyn, NY with the goal to expand the public understanding of artist’s books. During her time at Small Editions she published over 30 artists’ books which are now held in some of the most prestigious public and private collections across the globe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Over the years she has overseen the production of hundreds of books including books about artists’ books, design, architecture, photography, and contemporary art. In 2021, she and two collaborators founded Book Art Review, a new serial publication that ventures to develop, diversify, and propel critical discourse in the book arts.
Upon registering, please consider making a donation in support of Center for Book Arts. You can do so by editing the field below displaying the suggested amount of $5 to reflect the amount you would like to give. If you are not able to give at this time, you can enter “0” as the amount. If you have difficulty registering, please contact us at info@centerforbookarts.org.
