site 165. "WRitE OTTAWA"
one of Cob's most potent manifestoes (see www.flickr.com/photos/48593922@N04/6222066176/ for a readable mimeo print of the text), here foregrounded by Cob documenteurs D.M.Owen (left) & Daniel Bradley. since well-scrubbed. D.M.Owen's photograph of this site appeared on the back cover of GRAFFITO vol.4 nr.1, accompanied by this unsigned brief:
Howlings from the Wall
if it can be said that there is an active body of critical thought in Canada, surely one of the few bodies that has made it visible is that of the not-so-fictitious P.Cob, whose book WORDS OF appeared piratically from Martin Garth Press in 1995. depicted here in a photograph by its compiler, D.M.Owen, is site 146, somewhere just NW of Yonge/Bloor Streets in Toronto (if it's still there [it's not]). much of what currently passes as "criticism" in the rags & wraps trade (& elsewhere) amounts to roundrobins of abusive adverbiage. amidst this splendid xenophobia, Cob's paranoid panopticism splays wide in an embrasure of his dis-ease, an ongoing project nothing less totalitarian than the (re)construction of a projected self through a discorporate set of linguistic imperatives, preferably a self that will go so far as to (dis)similarly motivate others. Cob succeeds in this catalysis in ways that the protected critical voice would have difficulties assimilating into its persona (site-specific indeed!). "critical" thought is a multilogue in crisis, not the static monological sight-projection line once rumoured to emit from us, & Cob epitomizes this receptsynthesis (ample evidence of which can be found in the small press), leying open lines of action. his repeated exhortations for aid to "HElP MASS Produc / PAiNTEd STONES AN HIdE THYEM" (site 143) is certainly a more useful projection to anchor some selves to than a call to pick them up & throw them at someone/thing.
site 165. "WRitE OTTAWA"
one of Cob's most potent manifestoes (see www.flickr.com/photos/48593922@N04/6222066176/ for a readable mimeo print of the text), here foregrounded by Cob documenteurs D.M.Owen (left) & Daniel Bradley. since well-scrubbed. D.M.Owen's photograph of this site appeared on the back cover of GRAFFITO vol.4 nr.1, accompanied by this unsigned brief:
Howlings from the Wall
if it can be said that there is an active body of critical thought in Canada, surely one of the few bodies that has made it visible is that of the not-so-fictitious P.Cob, whose book WORDS OF appeared piratically from Martin Garth Press in 1995. depicted here in a photograph by its compiler, D.M.Owen, is site 146, somewhere just NW of Yonge/Bloor Streets in Toronto (if it's still there [it's not]). much of what currently passes as "criticism" in the rags & wraps trade (& elsewhere) amounts to roundrobins of abusive adverbiage. amidst this splendid xenophobia, Cob's paranoid panopticism splays wide in an embrasure of his dis-ease, an ongoing project nothing less totalitarian than the (re)construction of a projected self through a discorporate set of linguistic imperatives, preferably a self that will go so far as to (dis)similarly motivate others. Cob succeeds in this catalysis in ways that the protected critical voice would have difficulties assimilating into its persona (site-specific indeed!). "critical" thought is a multilogue in crisis, not the static monological sight-projection line once rumoured to emit from us, & Cob epitomizes this receptsynthesis (ample evidence of which can be found in the small press), leying open lines of action. his repeated exhortations for aid to "HElP MASS Produc / PAiNTEd STONES AN HIdE THYEM" (site 143) is certainly a more useful projection to anchor some selves to than a call to pick them up & throw them at someone/thing.