Triple Canopy Issue #1

To: Retort
Via: IB

[We have just received the first issue (see below) of a new online journal entitled Triple Canopy. Our opening exchange, last October, with Sam Frank of Triple Canopy provides some background to the project. IB]   

Oct 9, 2007
Dear Retort,

I'm writing because I deeply admire Afflicted Powers, and because I
and others--from Harper's, Art/Bookforum, the Believer, Cabinet,
Bidoun; academics; artists--are starting an online magazine called
Triple Canopy, to launch in January. The basic thought is to pursue
ideas that might not otherwise have a proper venue, and pursue them in
ways that will distress propriety—small ideas and obscure lines of
inquiry developed in unusual forms, until no longer small or obscure.
We want to give everything a specifically Internet presence—but also
to slow down the Internet, to cut against its grain and give the work
the time it needs to exist in full. So, poetry and short fiction with
archives or video or sound; annotated maps and field recordings;
collaborations at a distance. Plus nonfiction, in odd shapes. The
geography of black sites. Diseases afflicting scholars. Polemics.
Aphorisms. Eventually, we intend to publish print catalogues that
revisit and remake our projects and articles, and mount exhibitions
and other intrusions into the real world.

I was hoping you might be interested in working with us to develop
some sort of Internet broadside, which would engage with the medium
without kowtowing to it. We'd offer technical help and any suggestions
you'd like on bringing multiple media, for example, into an uneasy
relationship on screen. Beyond that, I'll leave it open to you. Thanks
for your time, and for your consideration.

Very best,
Sam
-----------------------

10/10/07
Dear Sam,
Thanks for your intriguing note.  So far we only know Triple Canopy as
the private firm of ex Delta Force mercenaries.

Tell us a bit more about yourself/ves.

for Retort,
Iain Boal
-----------------------

Dear Iain and Retort,

"The name Triple Canopy was initially chosen to evoke the protection
offered by a 'triple canopy' jungle. The company still embraces this
idea but further defines itself by the multiple layers of security it
offers as well as the levels of redundancy built into every
operation." Whereas we, our company, are simple aesthetes; like
Blackwater, it's a pretty name, an ugly company. We'd like the beauty
for ourselves.

I'm a copy editor and novelist living in Brooklyn; I graduated from
college in 2002 with a history degree, though I spent much of my time
rehabilitating the radio station, until I was kicked off the air by
the grasping new president, the future founder of Yale Students for,
let's call it, Democracy. My coeditor graduated in 2005 and spent a
year in Bolivia and Egypt; we met when he was interning at Harper's
and I was copyediting there. Our group is in large part mid-twenties
white Americans (some of us abroad), aesthetically semi-advanced and
politically semi-aware but unsullied by activism; we're trying to
expand the circle as rapidly as possible.

In the meantime, we're thirty-odd writers ("media," MFA,
unaffiliated), artists, academics (a geographer, an art historian, a
sociologist, an ethnomusicologist, a librarian ...), lawyers,
programmers. We're orbiting an empty program--a formal and practical
one--but it exerts gravity. That is, we want interesting material that
works on and against the Internet, with politics never out of mind.
The meaning of "interesting," "works," and "politics" left open to all
of us, but with Alex and I as potential autocrats. Mostly technocrats,
though, or, again, aesthetes--editors. We want this magazine to work,
and work in as many ways as possible; we don't know in advance what
will gain purchase on the world, or where resistance lies.

We're hoping to be direct as well as oblique. It would be great to
work with you.

very best,
Sam

Announcing
Triple Canopy
Issue #1: The Medium Was Tedium
http://canopycanopycanopy.com

Writing from Descriptive Video Service®, Sheila Heti, Dan Hoy, the
International Necronautical Society, Craig Kalpakjian, Sarah Kessler,
Wayne Koestenbaum, Live® Entertainment Inc., Russell Martin, Peter
Schwenger, Iain Sinclair, William Smith, Brooke Wilensky-Lanford &
Diane Williams

Art & video from Keren Cytter, Jenni Knight, Rachel Mason, Emily
Richardson, James Sham, UbuWeb Outsiders & Paul Verhoeven

An interview with Samantha Power by Howie Kahn

A new online magazine

...........................................................................................................................................

Please join us:

Saturday, April 12
Triple Canopy
launch & fund-raiser
at the Gowanus Studio Space
Video, music & art
Doors 7 PM—$7 donation

119 8th Street between 2nd & 3rd avenues
Brooklyn, NY

Take the F or G to Smith & 9th streets
or the F, M, or R to 4th Avenue & 9th Street

http://canopycanopycanopy.com
http://gowanusstudio.org