#16, please (265): “Describe what you’re wearing. To set the scene, I want to begin by asking you to complete one of your own tasks from “Eighteen Lunchtime Assignments”. In this interview, we attempted to figure out some things together.īlue Painting by Mondschwinge ( Pixabay License / Pixabay) He is a relentless interrogator of culture and many things he wrote two or three decades ago still offer fresh astute points. There are also a good many “assignments” in it, or specific instructions for approaching life more playfully and attentively. Koestenbaum’s latest work, Figure It Out, is a collection of 26 meditations on many of his lifelong interests like punctuation, porn, dreams, and celebrity. Regardless of genre or medium or even subject, to know this avant-garde artist is to love him-for the intensity of his studies, the nuance of his self-reflections, the exactitude of his articulations. He also teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Some focus on people like Warhol or Groucho, some focus on feelings of humiliation trance. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.Wayne Koestenbaum is the author of 20 or so books. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired his literary archive in 2019. In 2020 he received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His first feature-length film, The Collective, premiered at UnionDocs (New York) in 2021. His first piano/vocal record, Lounge Act, was released by Ugly Duckling Presse Records in 2017 he has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, The Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, the Renaissance Society, and The Poetry Project. He has exhibited his paintings in solo shows at White Columns, 356 Mission, and the University of Kentucky Art Museum, as well as in many group shows, including at Essex Flowers, Gordon Robichaux, Klaus von Nichtssagend, Yossi Milo Gallery, FIERMAN, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Geoffrey Young Gallery, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. His most recent book, Ultramarine, the third volume of his trance trilogy, was published by Nightboat in February 2022. Wayne Koestenbaum is a poet, critic, novelist, artist, filmmaker, performer-has published 22 books, including The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award).

Figure It Out by Wayne Koestenbaum