Barbara Barg
Encyclopedia
Barbara Barg is a poet, writer, and musician.
Barg was born in Memphis and raised in Forrest City, Arkansas. After studying with poet Ted Berrigan
at Northeastern Illinois University
in Chicago, she moved to New York City and became involved in a number of individual and collaborative projects. She performed frequently at venues like The Kitchen
, Bowery Ballroom
, St Mark's Poetry Project, Bowery Poetry Club
, Nuyorican Poets Café
, Fez, CBGB
, Luna Lounge
, Sidewalk Cafe's The Fort, Mercury Lounge
, Galapogos, The Sculpture Center, The Open Center, as well as One World Poetry Festival (Amsterdam) and The International Festival of the Poets (Rome). With writer Maggie Dubris she co-founded the all-women cult band "Homer Erotic" (1991 to 2000), which came to life during a lull in poetry readings in the early 90s. The group was composed of seven women interested in music and poetry as performative art forms. She has also performed with Pauline Oliveros
, Z'EV
, Susie Ibarra
, Janene Higgins
, Elliott Sharp
, Todd Colby, and Monique Buzzarté
. Her poetry is attuned to notions of political sanity
, and what she calls "voluntary evolution", which she describes as "evolution for the hell of it". Barg is currently living in Chicago and writing screenplays for Power Mad Films, a French production company.
Barg has contributed to three of Elliott Sharp
's multi-artist compilation CDs State of the Union and "Beneath the Valley of the Yahoos", Phone Noir (with Fem Noir), and Late 20th Century Sexual Practices — as well as to One World Poetry, a multi-artist compilation recorded at Amsterdam's One World Poetry Festival, and Sugar Alcohol & Meat, produced by John Giorno
Poetry Systems. Barg features in two multi-artist compilation tapes: Noise Fest
with the band Avant Squares and Tellus #5
with Barbara Ess.
Barg was born in Memphis and raised in Forrest City, Arkansas. After studying with poet Ted Berrigan
Ted Berrigan
-Early life:Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in...
at Northeastern Illinois University
Northeastern Illinois University
Northeastern Illinois University is a public state university located in Chicago, Illinois. The main campus is located in the community area of North Park with three additional campuses in the metropolitan area. Tracing its founding to 1867, it was first established as a separate branch of a...
in Chicago, she moved to New York City and became involved in a number of individual and collaborative projects. She performed frequently at venues like The Kitchen
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
, Bowery Ballroom
Bowery Ballroom
The Bowery Ballroom is a music venue in the Bowery section of New York City. The structure, at 6 Delancey Street, was built just before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It stood vacant until the end of WWII, when it became a high-end retail store. The neighborhood subsequently went into decline...
, St Mark's Poetry Project, Bowery Poetry Club
Bowery Poetry Club
The Bowery Poetry Club is a New York City poetry performance space founded by Bob Holman in 2002. Located at 308 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston Streets in Manhattan's East Village, the BPC provides a home base for established and upcoming artists...
, Nuyorican Poets Café
Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, USA, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre.-History:...
, Fez, CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...
, Luna Lounge
Luna Lounge
Luna Lounge was a bar at 171 Ludlow Street, on the west side of Ludlow Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side. It opened in 1995, and was a popular venue for local bands and stand-up comics...
, Sidewalk Cafe's The Fort, Mercury Lounge
Mercury Lounge
The Mercury Lounge is a club/music venue, in the Lower East Side section, of New York City. The structure, at 217 East Houston Street, housed the servants to the Astor Mansion, connected to it by an underground labyrinth of tunnels...
, Galapogos, The Sculpture Center, The Open Center, as well as One World Poetry Festival (Amsterdam) and The International Festival of the Poets (Rome). With writer Maggie Dubris she co-founded the all-women cult band "Homer Erotic" (1991 to 2000), which came to life during a lull in poetry readings in the early 90s. The group was composed of seven women interested in music and poetry as performative art forms. She has also performed with Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
, Z'EV
Z'EV
Z'EV is an American poet, percussionist, and sound artist. After studying various world music traditions at CalArts, he began creating his own percussion sounds out of industrial materials for a variety of record labels...
, Susie Ibarra
Susie Ibarra
Susie Ibarra is a Contemporary Composer and Percussionist who has worked and recorded with jazz, classical, world, and Indigenous musicians. She is known for her work as a performer in avant-garde, jazz, world and new music...
, Janene Higgins
Janene Higgins
Janene Higgins is a graphic designer and video artist based in New York City. Her work spans several genres, from video performance in the experimental music scene to videos for Saks Fifth Avenue, and the design of several hundred CD packages for such record labels as Sony, BMG, PolyGram, and a...
, Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...
, Todd Colby, and Monique Buzzarté
Monique Buzzarté
Monique Buzzarté is a composer, trombonist, and activist who coordinated a worldwide effort on behalf of the International Alliance for Women in Music , leading to the admission of women as members of the Vienna Philharmonic in 1997.Specializing in contemporary music, she has commissioned works...
. Her poetry is attuned to notions of political sanity
Sanity
Sanity refers to the soundness, rationality and healthiness of the human mind, as opposed to insanity. A person is sane if they are rational...
, and what she calls "voluntary evolution", which she describes as "evolution for the hell of it". Barg is currently living in Chicago and writing screenplays for Power Mad Films, a French production company.
Books
- The Origin of THE Species, photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe (MIT Press)
- Obeying the Chemicals with photographs by Nan GoldinNan GoldinNancy "Nan" Goldin is an American photographer.-Life and work:Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest...
(Hard Press)
Recordings
- Yield (with the band Homer Erotic, 1998 - Creme de la Femme)
- Homerica the Beautiful (with the band Homer Erotic, 1999 - Bobby Previte's Depth of Field label)
- Calling You Home (with the band Coyote Poets of the Universe, 2008 - Square Shaped Records)
- Holding Patterns (with the band Zanana, 2005 - Deep Listening )
Anthologies
Barg's works have appeared in the following anthologies.- American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century (Four Walls Eight Windows)
- Poems for the Nation: A Collection of Contemporary Political Poems (Seven Stories Press) Edited by Allen GinsbergAllen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
with Andy Clausen and Eliot Katz - AM LIT: Neue Literatur Aus Den USA (Edition Druckhaus / Germany) Edited by Gerard Falkner and Sylvere LotringerSylvère LotringerSylvère Lotringer is a literary critic and cultural theorist. A younger contemporary of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio and Michel Foucault, he is best known for synthesizing French theory with American literary, cultural and architectural avant-garde movements...
- Out of This World: The Poetry Project at St Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery; 1966-1991 (Crown Publisher, Inc). Edited by Anne WaldmanAnne WaldmanAnne Waldman is an American poet.Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist....
, forward by Allen GinsbergAllen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression... - The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (Southern Illinois University Press) Edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews
Barg has contributed to three of Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...
's multi-artist compilation CDs State of the Union and "Beneath the Valley of the Yahoos", Phone Noir (with Fem Noir), and Late 20th Century Sexual Practices — as well as to One World Poetry, a multi-artist compilation recorded at Amsterdam's One World Poetry Festival, and Sugar Alcohol & Meat, produced by John Giorno
John Giorno
John Giorno is an American poet and performance artist. He founded the not-for-profit production company Giorno Poetry Systems and organized a number of early multimedia poetry experiments and events, including Dial-A-Poem. He became prominent as the subject of Andy Warhol's film Sleep...
Poetry Systems. Barg features in two multi-artist compilation tapes: Noise Fest
Noise Fest
Noise Fest was an influential festival of no wave noise music performances curated by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth at the New York City art space White Columns in June 1981. Sonic Youth made their first live appearances at this show...
with the band Avant Squares and Tellus #5
Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine
Launched from the Lower East Side, Manhattan, in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus cassette series took full advantage of the popular cassette medium to promote cutting-edge downtown music, documenting the New York scene and advancing experimental composers of the time...
with Barbara Ess.