X Artists' Books Publishes Collection Of Asher Hartman And Gawdafful National Theater Company

X Artists' Books is pleased to announce Mad Clot on a Holy Bone: Memories of a Psychic Theater, the first published collection of the work of playwright and artist Asher Hartman and his Gawdafful National Theater company. Hartman's plays mix historical metaphors and blur the boundaries of theater-based performance. As Janet Sarbanes writes in her introductory essay: "The frame-whatever it may be-simply cannot contain all the questions, life experience, and language Hartman and his actors jam into it. It fills to overflowing and explodes."

Mad Clot on a Holy Bone includes the scripts of three incendiary works first performed at Machine Project, Los Angeles: Purple Electric Play (PEP!) (2014), Mr. Akita (2015), and Sorry, Atlantis: Eden's Achin' Organ Seeks Revenge (2017). The plays' development and context are elucidated in Janet Sarbanes' and Lucas Wrench's essays for the volume, and further discussed by Hartman and his collaborators Mark Allen and Tim Reid in conversation. Rich visual documentation supplements these contributions, as well as a full-color photographic insert. Mad Clot on a Holy Bone is co- edited by Mark Allen and Deirdre O' Dwyer and designed by Becca Lofchie.

Asher Hartman is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, director, and intuitive practitioner whose work at the junction of visual art and theater centers on the exploration of the self in relation to Western histories and ideologies. His theatrical performances are particularly concerned with psychological violence in American culture. Much of his practice developed at Machine Project, Los Angeles, between 2010 and 2017. He is the founder and chief beneficiary of Gawdafful National Theater, a group of artist-actors for whom he has written since 2010. As a member of the performative duo Krystal Krunch (with Haruko Tanaka), he has taught intuition-building to artists, activists, and interested others. Asher Hartman received his BA in Theater at UCLA and his MFA in Studio Arts at CalArts.

Becca Lofchie is a Los Angeles-based designer and artist.

Deirdre O'Dwyer is an editor and artist living in Los Angeles.

Janet Sarbanes is the author of two short fiction collections, Army of One (2008) andThe Protester Has Been Released (2017), and numerous writings on art and politics, including the forthcoming essay collection Letters on the Autonomy Project. She teaches at CalArts.

Lucas Wrench was Machine Project's operations manager (2014-17) and associate curator (2015-17). He now lives in Oklahoma as a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

Mark Allen is an artist, educator, and curator. At Machine Project, an art space in Los Angeles that he founded and directed (2003-18), he produced numerous performances with Asher Hartman and the Gawdafful National Theater. Allen is a Professor of Art at Pomona College.

Tim Reid is a playwright and performer who joined the Gawdafful National Theater in 2018 as the assistant director of Sorry, Atlantis: Eden's Achin' Organ Seeks Revenge. He presently lives in New York City.

X Artists' Books, established in 2017, is a small publisher of thoughtful, high-quality, artist-centered books that fit within and between genres. XAB's books are works of art; portals to imagined worlds; treasured companions; the fabric of a community.

To post a comment, you must register and login.