Executive Orders Vol. II
[This project is a collaboration with the Organism for Poetic Research.]
We encourage you to do a reading of these counter-orders and/or to add some of your own and perform a ritual of sorts.
We did this at the original launch of this volume and it was extraordinarily healing, a catharsis, a spell.
“After the election of Donald J. Trump in November 2016 and following his subsequent inauguration in January 2017, a group of poets and activists conceived of a project wherein we could respond to the sudden and seemingly relentless barrage of Trump’s dystopian executive orders with a series of our own orders — at times serious, lampooning, absurdist, sincere, satirical, utopian, and so on.
“The project, titled Executive Orders, was envisioned as a collaborative, freeform, prose poem that would unfold real-time responses to current events and the U.S. socio-political scape. We began the project on Google Docs (where active writing on the project continues), imagining that we would publish the project at various points in time, in an effort to further disseminate the work, draw in new collaborators, and document the project in various states as it continued to expand and evolve.
“The first volume of Executive Orders was composed online between Jan. 24, 2017 and Feb. 9, 2017, and was then published by The Organism for Poetic Research as a staple-bound zine in an edition of 50 copies. It had 15 contributors and was 43 pages long. While VOLUME I captured the document in the state it had reached as of Feb. 9, 2017, the Google Doc remained (and still remains) a continuous working space. The second volume was composed between Jan. 24, 2017 and Dec. 28, 2017 and contains all that was in this first volume, with additions and revisions. It results from the contributions of more than 50 authors and collaboration between the Organism for Poetic Research and the Operating System. Our small press collaboration goes beyond a traditional co-publishing model and involved organizing and hosting an open writing session at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on November 4, 2017 wherein we solicited orders from library patrons and passersby outside the library.
“In Executive Orders, we find ourselves on a wild ride through a landscape deformed by the destructive prerogatives of an obscene government, but lush with wildlife from some not-fully-seen political beyond — some of it beautiful, some of it hilarious. It offers a composite picture of one community’s struggle to keep sane in the growing shadow of mere anarchy.” — Ian Dreiblatt
Edited, Compiled and Designed by Elæ Moss [Lynne DeSilva-Johnson] in collaboration with OPR.
About the Contributor(s)
The Organism for Poetic Research (OPR) is a critical-poetic platform for making and studying. The OPR takes shape from its many members, often operating semi-autonomously and spontaneously, and its contributors. The OPR operates primarily out of Brooklyn, NY and Providence, RI.
The OPR works through writing, visual art, group discussion, and performative events to explore ideas—materially and generatively—across disciplines, e.g. “science,” “philosophy,” “history,” or “painting,” “poetry,” “music,” etc. OPR projects take a number of forms: readings, seminars, installations, books, digital residency projects on our website, and Pelt, a sporadically published (in print and online) magazine organized around an invented concept that is further articulated through the collective work of the issue.
Contributors: Kimberly Adams, Kate Angus, Annie Bielski, Maria Bowler, Elena Callahan, Joe Cogen, Matthew Corey, Celia Daniels, Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, Ian Dreiblatt, Gabrielle Fazevedo, Andrew Gorin, Maryam Gunja, David Hobbs, Kaisa Holt, Amy Howden-Chapman, Kerrilee Hunter, MC Hyland, Jake Kennedy, Zane Koss, Anna Kreienberg, Tiziana La Melia, Derek Lee, Rachel Levitsky, Lina (age 10), Lola (age 9), Sandy Mandel, Paco Marquez, Joshua Mathews, Arthur Menezes Brum, John Melillo, Carol Mirakove, Lauren Neefe, Heyrling Oropeza, Janet Klein, Pakeezah, Nate Preus, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, Rejaur Rahman, Ronald S., Archibald Sadynayskiy, Anne-Britt Starli, Courtney Stephens, Errol Styles, Orchid Tierney, Doris Vila Licht, Marina Weiss, Weze, Rachael Wilson, Sparrow X, xtian w., Anonymous.
Elæ Moss is a multimodal artist-researcher, curator, designer, and educator. Seeking Speculative Solidarities, they employ analog and digital media to investigate human, institutional and ecological systems and to iterate open source strategies for ecological and social change. Recent projects have shown at La Mama Galleria, EFA Project Space, STWST/Ars Electronica, Usdan Gallery, Judson Church, the Segal Center, SOHO20, Dixon Place, and the Exponential Festival, among others. Select publications include Big Echo, Tagvverk, Vestiges, Matters of Feminist Practice, The Transgender Narratives Anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, and Resist Much, Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance. Books include Ground, Blood Altas, Overview Effect, Sweet and Low: Indefinite Singular, Bodies of Work, and The Precarity Bodyhacking Work-Book and Guide. Moss is a Professor at Pratt Institute, and the developer / founder of the Operating System + Liminal Lab. More at: https://onlywhatican.net and https://theoperatingsystem.org.
