Monday, February 06, 2006

KOSHKIN & ROGERS HOT WHISKEY PRESS

The work Michael Koshkin and Jennifer Rogers have done with their imprint Hot Whiskey is nothing short of sensational. Both the single-author publications & the magazine are things of beauty, each carefully crafted, most of them hand-sewn.

The fall/winter 2005 issue of the zine has a hand-screened two-color cover, the texture of the ink thick, the feel perfectly homespun. Contributors to the issue include Jena Osman, Tim Armentrout, Elizabeth Robinson, Christopher Ryan, Linh Dinh, John Sakkis, Jessica Hullman, Farid Matuk, Robert Roley, Julia Hastain, Dale Smith, Leah Hansen, Anselm Parlatore, Tyler Doherty, Jared Hayes, Joseph S. Cooper, Hoa Nguyen, Lisa Jarnot, Andrew K. Peterson.

Single-author pubs include slim volumes by Anselm Parlatore, Joseph Massey & two collaborative efforts--Stinkbug Barbiturates by Koshkin & Rogers… & Structural Blue In Circuits the Blood Can Be Used: Insuring the Wicker Man Shadow Created Delusion by Cooper & Hayes.

The collaborative work between Cooper & Hayes is particularly interesting. A book which is all things body & surgery, all things anatomy & text, flesh & language. The work contains both visual images & text, found images & found text coiled round one another throughout, forming engaging & complex relationships. The book is all things somatic &, paradoxically, all things surgical & artificial. The book is all things hybrid &, in its hybridity, it confounds the logic of the binary which would pit body against mechanization, nature against technology.

According to the authors, "This text has been transplanted and cut up from the essays of Homi K. Bhabha, William S. Burroughs, Samuel R. Delany and Pierre Joris." Thus we have hybridity, contagion, peculiar juxtapositions & linguistic/conceptual vivisection. A welcome edition to any collection of medical texts.
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