ferrum wheel

Ferrum Wheel Issue 6, March 2007

2007-04-08T14:29:00.000-04:00

Ferrum Wheel Issue 6 was released in a limited edition of 49 in March 2007. It was wrapped comfortably in a three-pocket canvas apron, hand screenprinted with the Ferrum Wheel logo and the names of contributors. The theme: apron, of course.

"Ferrum Wheel Issue 6: Apron"

Ferrum Wheel No. 6: Apron
Apron in between so as not to get dirty, or in the case of the blacksmith, burned by a sprinkle, a barrier to protect, but not always - as in the apron of the garden, the liminal, the overlap, the wide swath that must be crossed to find oneself inside, somehow a signal or a symptom, somehow this flat nothing lay down fence a semaphore for the beginning of something; to say wearing an apron, wearing down this between things, the tamping of soil to make a place that is both, where each is becoming in opposite directions, wear this apron, place these things next to each other, on each other, on one another’s aprons, a blacksmith’s canvas garden.
cf.2007.march11

"Ferrum Wheel Issue 6 - inside"

"Ferrum Wheel Issue 6 - Ferrum Wheels in a Ferrum Wheel"

"Alex Rose"

"Brian Carpenter"

"Flash Card Front"

"Flash Card Back"

"Christophe Casamassima"

"Plane Ticket Front"

"Plane Ticket Reverse"

"Dale Roberts"

"Dale Roberts"

"Found Bracelet"

"Found Film Canister"

"Giles Goodland"

"Guy R. Beining"

"John M. Bennett"

"Justin Katko"

"Justin Katko"

"Kevin Thurston"

"Mark Greenwood"

"Mark Greenwood"

"Wendy Collin Sorin"

"Wendy Collin Sorin"

"Ross Priddle"

"Ric Royer"

"Mike Basinski"

Ferrum Wheel Issue 5, January 2004

2004-10-07T01:47:00.001-04:00

Ferrum Wheel Issue 5 was released in a limited edition of 50 in January 2004. It was confined to foot long sections of PVC pipe capped at both ends with red and white gingham. The theme: pipe-bomb picnic-basket.

'ferrum wheel 5'

Ferrum Wheel Number Five: pipe-bomb / picnic-basket
upon the point of detonation the pipe bomb being a wholly exothermic reaction a shock wave followed by a parade of calories heating objects to the point of dissolution. its signal to noise ratio dependent on how well you cover your head. picnic-basket an entirely endothermic reaction a display of digestables requiring organization - work - calories go into making your food they do not simply come out of it. you are Maxwell's Demon this time around if you choose to be. signal to noise Sorter. Make no longer, only Move. Detritan become a Velocitator. or you are a soldier with your helmet pulled low after the flash point. it is your choice.
it is time to recognize that these are the things we eat these are the things that kill us. c.f.

'ferrum wheel 5 contents'

'reactor shielding for nuclear engineers' - Colleen Roche

'The Salo Cantos' - Ezra Pound, translated by Ezra Pound and Shinaz Giusti with an introduction by Kimblerly Filbee'

'tealight ballet' - Bill howe and Lisa phillips

'note for the upper left hand pocket' - David Baratier

'found poetic ephemera' - ferrum wheel 5

'body map' - Holly Johnson

'par coeur envelope' - Karissa Cove

'par coeur' - Karissa Cove

'undream' - Lisa K. Graham

'WASH' - Mark Owens

'Viz signals' - Mike Basinski

'words' - Richard Kostelanetz

Ferrum Wheel Issue 4, January 2003

2004-09-25T03:33:00.002-04:00

Ferrum Wheel Issue 4 was released in a limited edition of 50 in January 2003. It was hidden inside novels, textbooks, and other assorted hardbound books from a library sale. An entire brown paper bag full of books costed one dollar. These books were then manipulated to house the contents of Ferrum Wheel by cutting, burning, ripping, modifying and removing pages.

"front cover ferrum wheel issue 4"

This issue of Ferrum Wheel recycles. 50 different hardcover books have been used, drilled, cut up, glued, and defaced in an attempt to produce something more useful. This is the plastic model of how we write and otherwise carry on: the process of taking in the information and reporting it back into the world as our own. Sometimes it is altered, sometimes identical to the original. These books were, in some sense, rescued. They were bought for 10 cents a piece at a library "discards" sale. They might have been thrown out, or purchased to sit on a shelf, used to balance the air hockey table at the Genesee Youth Center. We give these books a new identity, a new audience, and a way for them to be appreciated for their newness again.

"ferrum wheels" - ric royer

Ferrum Wheel #4 is hiding. The contributors are lost inside each lengthy hardbound book. It is the reader's job to find the contributor within the book. Maybe, instead of being lost, the participators are just hiding. Right, hiding. Is hiding the same as being lost? As in hide-and-go-seek, the hiding player has made him/herself lost, that is, lost to another player. But the player is lost within boundaries and understands that there is no game if he seriously cannot be found. As always, the game-play is significant to this issue.

I know what's hiding inside of the double-bound codex. We find things, people find things, and we stick them in the editions. So many thin items that I once owned have been sacrificed to this project. I lose, you find, you keep. I fantasize about an endless on-sending of material, a loop of lost and found. The creator makes an issue using found objects and artistic contributions and then gives this creation to a reader who, in turn, becomes creator by ripping it apart, taking pieces from it and combining it with other works or objects to make another creation. This is continuing; go ahead and dismantle our work. rr.

some parasites hide, some are too small to be seen. they appear to live off of the host body, but in actuality, they are doing their own work. the blood of one becomes the blood of another. most disrupt the system of the body. most, hidden and not, are necessary. they eat the skin that we would drown in, they digest the fungus that would digest us.

some develop symbiotic relationships with the host, thereby enhancing one another. they become a functioning whole, no longer a series of organs that make up a machine, but two machines working and producing in synthesis. they eat our waste. we would drown in it. stacks are the detritus of literature. ferrum wheel eats the waste and hands it back. this is the beginning of output, this is some sort of birth. ferrum wheel is auto-cannabalism digesting in a transparent body and relieiving itself. its digests the waste of language and gives a new language back. the new language is a new detritus to be eaten and given back.

it is a parasite a modification that draws off current - a short circuit of the relationship between itself and something else. a burrowing insect laying eggs the subsequent birth of thousands of wriggling disgusting temporarities that will eat themselves soon enough. it feeds on blood and touch, lives in the space between skin and muscle. after absorbing itself it will have the strength to begin again. there is a stirring proboscis involved not so much fingernails as small clutching pliers reinforcing nourishing tools. both fed and nurtured it grows to a size equal to that of its host the body supplants the original and for one brief beautiful moment there is the illusion that the relationship between it and other is symbiotic, not parasitic. by then it is too late to burn it off. cf.

"baseball cards"

"another method of compensation" - ric royer

"baby love"

"bucky and fluff"

"card catalog card"

"celtic celt"

"fig. 55"

"fig. 56"

"immerse" - Shana MacDonald

"IVF andrology laboratory" - Adam Caccamise

"mixed media" – Found

"omelettes, chapter 23" - Tim McPeek

"parentheses" - Sheila Murphy

"porn"

"the principles of the correction of the deviation"

"s tub" - John M. Bennett

"s tub" - John M. Bennett

"sodomize my days" - Emilie Kennedy and Prasejit Maiti

"the community of thoughtful hedonists"

"two green popes" - ric royer

Ferrum Wheel Issue 3, May 2002

2004-09-22T02:05:00.000-04:00

Ferrum Wheel Issue 3 was released in a limited edition of 50 in May 2002. It was packaged in gallon freezer bags with a carpet sample on the front, and three pez candies denoting the issue number.

Ferrum Wheel 3: survival kit. for this issue - chant its incantations, wonder at its randomness, smell the sulfur, read the fine print, and feel the fingerprint. to complete this issue, burn the bag it came in. burn it on your delicates. ferrum artists perform intense creative rituals to produce 50 pieces of art progeny only to give them away to peers and strangers. respect their loss by celebrating your gain.
let the cycle style us.

Ferrum Wheel is craftonics, the raw voice of lost and found boxes, poetic parody, the ligaments between art and trash, most, it is a paper mache bust of William Blake.

"Ferrum Wheel Issue 3 packaging" - Chris Fritton and ric royer

"ferrum wheel logo" - ric royer

how to set your kitchen on fire.

"aeropoem number one home launch kit" - Bill Howe

your dust will be disturbed today/rest without alarm.

"fortune receipt" - ric royer

one of fifty from ferrum wheel's home decor line.

"whiney little pedant" (fridge magnet) - ric royer

Golem/ice was a ghost/powdery wraith of loose/miracle of rare device. the buffalo cycle in all its glory.

"snowflake" - Jessica Smith

a levinisian poetics approaches language as the other that empties us of meaning and implicates our authority as fundamentally non-autarchic. alternately, we give meaning to language, but through a radical ingratitude, language never returns meaning back to the self. to do so would be a movement towards the same, which would negate language's other-ness. it is this other-ness that defines us through its constant emptying of the self. wittgenstein says that 'the meaning of a word is its use in the language,' and that 'to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.' our use of language is fundamentally ethical, in that we are constantly asked to give meaning and to negotiate the perpetual flux.

"levinisian poetics" - Matt Chambers

what every pink balloon aspires to be, language has provided for...

"inflatable bird of prey" - Chris Fritton

in the American grain American poetry can absorb aborant forms eve ef yore bread mol ds angels stole love once upon a timeor OZ that pubis iv eleves bliss U. vithvissor ar got er got incant:

"homage to Frank O'Hara's lunch poems" (sandwich of wheat bread and purple sponge) - Mike Basinski

punch and pull. lick and spit. a movement long and drawn and stopping. dark and grey and orange. with the smell. an odor so real. it stings my nostrils. makes my face go all scrunched up.

"felt swatch" - Christie Gormon

if it's all happening at the same time, a question about 'first' doesn't make sense.

"chicken and egg" - Matt Dente

Ferrum Wheel Issue 2, December 2001

2004-09-21T20:14:00.000-04:00

Ferrum Wheel Issue 2 was released in a limited edition of 50 in December 2001. It was wrapped in wallpaper from the early 1970's; a hole was cut in the front to reveal the Ferrum Wheel logo.

Ferrum Wheel is a collection of process, parts, pre-order, raw materials exploited under artistic/poetic concentration, stolen goods, destroyed articles, that bang before creation, the gift from me to you.

Ferrum Wheel is loose-pamphleteria, dirt-propaganda, treatments for failure, recipes for communicatory illusion, (contact art), plagiarism, and my hands. it is velocity. it is immediacy of touch, but most of all it is loss. it is residue. it is not so much the creation of a thing as the loss of many beautiful, quickened, fickle events.

"front cover - Ferrum Wheel Issue 2" - ric royer

"back cover - Ferrum Wheel Issue 2" - Charlene Dickerson

this is the gospel text line incantation that conjures Ferrum Wheel, the alchemical directions for assembling, the blueprint for synergy.

"directions for assembling" – Found

a hidden phrase that would come alive resounding off the teeth; the roles we play trapped inside jawbones, contact can be made mouth to mouth.

"i want to dress you up and scream in your mouth" - Anastasia Long as spoken to ric royer

a party dropping into your lap, courtesy of a young jewish girl.

"young jewish girl covering envelope filled with keys and confetti"

honey, jam, hot cocoa, and cool milk. bogs in the back of my mind bubbling like burning polaroids.

"memories" - Eric Gelsinger

cut up your favorite t-shirt. go out. get one. make it dirty. punch.

"my favorite t-shirt" - ric royer

bingo dotter mesh pink envelope sends the message 'scar tissue in/braille representation/of the antidote to/phonemic obsession.'

"phonemic obsession" - Charlene Dickerson

all the letters of my language mean something to someone else.

"the ferrum wheel" - Mike Sawyer

errant errata, we have missed you for long, john long.

"tribute to john long" - Chris Fritton

there are wrinkles in these minerals. semen smells of wet copper pennies. find some pennies and flatten them, wet them and make them wrinkled. wrinkled minerals are pennies. put them inside something mesh, hang them on a bedpost, and wet them. hung mineral wetpennies are semen.

"wrinkles in these minerals" - Chris Fritton

Ferrum Wheel Issue 1, August 2001

2004-09-21T01:30:00.000-04:00

Ferrum Wheel Issue 1 is a packet of poetic raw materials trapped in a manila envelope bearing ric royer's Ferrum Wheel logo. It is an assembling of found ephemera, visual poetry, and manipulated gifts. A limited edition of 50 copies were completed and distributed in August 2001. Contributors included: Mike Basinski, Tawrin Baker, Eric Gelsinger, Adam Caccamise, Tracey Long, ric royer, John Long, Jordan Berry, Chris Fritton, Jessica Smith, Matt Chambers, Ashton Royce, Charlene Dickerson, and a fifteen year old girl.

"Ferrum Wheel - Issue 1" - ed. c. fritton and ric royer

not quite words and not quite verbs,
just worbs.

"worbs" - Mike Basinski

oscillating as the wings of a bird,
the folding in and folding out of a
small origami crane reveals a motion poem
of feather-letters.

"crane" - Jessica Smith

a mystical twist on the age old rabbit's foot,
a two-dimensional familiar.

"druid power friend" - ric royer

raw teenage hope.

"diary entry" - unknown 15 year old female

raw teenage heartbreak.

"diary entry 2" - unknown 15 year old female