Bas Jan Ader was born in 1942 in the Netherlands. He attended the Otis Art Institute and went on to teach art and study philosophy at Claremont Graduate School. In 1970, he entered the most productive period of his career, beginning with his first film “Fall 1”. In 1975, he mysteriously disappeared while on a voyage to cross the Atlantic in a 12.5 foot sailboat. The voyage was the middle part of a triptych called “In Search of the Miraculous”. Six months after his departure, his boat was found, half-submerged off the coast of Ireland.

www.basjanader.com

Bas Jan Ader is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

Charles Olson was born in 1910 in Worchester, MA. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1933 and subsequently enrolled at Harvard University from 1936-1938. He was a major influence on postmodern American poetry and was a leading voice of the “Black Mountain Poets”, which included Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn, and Joel Oppenheimer. His most notable works include “The Maximus Poems”, “Projective Verse”, and the essay "Human Universe" published in 1951. He passed away in 1970.

Charles Olson is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

Embryo is a musical collective from Munich, founded by Christian Burchard and Edgar Hoffmann in 1969. To date more than 400 musicians have played with the collective, but longtime members include Dieter Serfas, Roman Bunka, Uve Mullrich, Michael Wehmeyer, Chris Karrer, Lothar Stahl, and Jens Polheide. They have played festivals around the globe, include the Mumbai Jazz in 1979, Reading in England in 1973, Port Harcourt Jazz in Nigeria in 1987, and Wakayama in Japan in 1991. They were awarded the German World Music Award RUTH at the TFF.Rudolstadt Festival in 2008.

www.embryo.de

Embryo is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

The German modernist, Hans Richter, was born in Berlin in 1888. A painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer, Richter was one of the original visionaries of Dada. He studied art at the Academy of Art in Berlin, the Academy of Art in Weimar, and for a short period in Paris, and later taught at the Film Institute of City College in New York after being forced to leave Germany due to his involvement in the Association of Revolutionary Artists. Hans Richter died in 1976.

Marcel Duchamp's bio can be found here.

Hans Richter is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

Harry Everett Smith was born in 1923, in Portland, Oregon. Smith studied anthropology at the University of Washington from 1943-44. Soon after, in San Francisco, Smith began to build a reputation as one of the leading American experimental filmmakers. He showed frequently in the "Art in Cinema" screenings organized by Frank Stauffacher at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Smith received a Solomon Guggenheim grant in 1950. In 1952, Folkways Records issued Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Released in three volumes of two discs each, the 84 tracks of the anthology are recognized as having been a seminal inspiration for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. The 1997 reissue by the Smithsonian was embraced with critical acclaim and two Grammy awards. Smith spent his last years as "shaman in residence" at Naropa Institute, where he offered a series of lectures, worked on sound projects, and continued collecting and researching. In 1991 he received a Chairman's Merit Award at the Grammy Awards ceremony for his contribution to American Folk Music. Smith died at the Chelsea Hotel in 1991.

www.harrysmitharchives.com 

Excerpted from “Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular (Issues & Debates)” by Andrew Perchuk and Rani Singh, published by Getty Research Institute in 2010.

Harry Smith is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

Ranked the 35th in the Rolling Stone Magazine's "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2003, John Fahey was a fingerstyle guitarist who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instument. Often described as the founder of American Primitivism, Fehey's roots can be found in the folk and blues traditions in American music and he later introduced classical, Portuguese, Braziliam and Indian music to his sound. He died of heart surgery complications in 2001.

www.johnfahey.com

John Fahey is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

Len Lye was born Leonard Chalres Huia Lye in New Zealand in 1901. He was known primarly for his experimental films and kinetic sculptures. His films are held in archives such as the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Pacific Film Archive at University of California, Berkeley. Lye's sculptures are found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Berkeley Art Museum. Associated with many visionary art groups, beginning with London’s modernist Seven and Five Society in the 1920s, the International Surrealist Movement in the 1930s, and the Kinetic Art Movement in the 1960s, Lye is renowned for his influence in hand-crafted abstract cinema. He died in 1980 in Warwick, New York.

Len Lye is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

Lionel Ziprin was born in 1924 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. He was a poet who spent most of his life attempting to find a large record label to distribute a 15-LP set of Jewish liturgical music performed by his grandfather Nuftali Zvi Margolies Abulafia. He became a beatnik symbol of the Lower East Side, attracting a loose collective to his apartment to speak and exchange ideas which included Robert Frank, Thelonious Monk, and Bob Dylan. Ziprin passed away in 2009.

Excerpted from the first issue of “The Nightjar Review” in November 2005.

Lionel Ziprin is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

NNCK is a seven-member free-form improvisational musical collective based in Harlem, New York. Formed in 1992, NNCK was initially inspired by the Louisville cum NYC art rock of Circle X, as well as underground groups like Royal Trux and Harry Pussy. NNCK came to embrace, among other things, Jean Crotti and Susanne Duchamp’s Tabu, Japanese ghost mythology, LSD and psychedelic consciousness, lovecraftian phantasmagoria, and Kasmir Malevitch’s suprematism. NNCK has published over 30 LPs and CDs in the US and abroad, on labels including Alga Marghen, Locust Music, 5RC, Staubgold, Ecstatic Peace!, SERES, and their own S@1 imprint. Their latest release is "YTIU" LP (kelippah), in part a meditation on the life and death of Pink Floyd founding member Richard Wright.

www.fusetronsound.com

NNCK is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

Townes Van Zandt was born in 1944 in Fort Worth, Texas. He was a country-folk singer/songwriter, performer, and poet. While he did not achieve commercial success in his lifetime, his songs were often covered by musicians such as Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, and Bob Dylan. He passed away in 1997.

www.townesvanzandt.com

Townes Van Zandt is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb

Walter Benjamin was born in 1892 in Berlin. He was an intellectual, functioning as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster, and essayist. He coined the term “auratic perception”, which describes the aesthetic faculty by means of which civilization may recover an appreciation of myth. He was a member of the Institute of Social Research, which included Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer. He passed away in 1940.

Excerpted from “Illuminations”, published by Schocken in 1969.

Walter Benjamin is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb