Shannon Mattern

@shannonmattern.bsky.social

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director of creative research @ the metro ny library council; faculty @ a 🫣 conglomerate (2004-22: @thenewschool)

architecture, archives, 🎨, cities, 🐕, infrastructure, libraries, 🗺️, sound++

philly + nyc

wordsinspace.net

Posts Replies Media

1777 catalog for the William Prince Nursery in Flushing, Queens archive.org/details/CAT3... The Princes were apparently part of the rootstock of American commercial horticulture!: arboretum.harvard.edu/stories/the-...

I'm pulling together an experimental syllabus for the Metro Library Council's Library Field project. Now working on tree libraries, I've discovered Eli Gras's Xylotheque (🌳📚) album, for which a special edition came in wood cookie packaging 😊 laollaexpressrecords.bandcamp.com/album/xyloth...

Huh - Melvil Dewey wrote a report on traveling libraries for the NY Home Education Dept in 1901. I'm finding some good historical materials on outdoor and traveling libraries books.google.com/books?id=lFl...

Everyone is (perhaps rightly) fixated on bad things - but I'm finding some cool historical examples of outdoor libraries ("Reading in the Open Air," Recreation, 1937; "Outdoor Libraries," Hygeia, 1938; Los Angeles Public Library park pop-up, 1937, via the LAPL's sesquicentennial exhibition)

"In 1876, the Light House Establishment added a portable wooden library box to the list of supplies they delivered... The rugged box served as shipping box and bookshelf, and delivered much-needed entertainment to the lighthouse staff." www.beachcombingmagazine.com/blogs/news/l...

Did not like the recent show at SculptureCenter. This chattering of chairs was more interesting.

Hadn't before noticed this sign on the Bowery 🤩

I’m old, and I no longer live in a cool neighborhood where things like this are distributed — but I’m so glad the kids are still making show papers *in print* (this, via Secret Riso Club) 🥰

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Shannon Mattern

I’ve been intrigued by MSCHF, but I didn’t know how to navigate through their overwhelming site. Great to hear from their designer. Now wondering if anyone’s written about their work within the Dada - AdBusters - Barbie Liberation Organization - culture jamming - etc genealogy

I’d like to read some hagiographic MAGA poetry about Trump Shoe as symbol of potency and persecution, love and labor, leather and soil and nativism

The last Manhattanhenge of the year is tonight. My neighborhood is perfectly situated for a full-width, cross-island view, and the photographers are already setting up – eight hours ahead of the main event!

And now that we're talking signs: I remember seeing some Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen work, like, 25 years ago that blew me away. I thought they were *so cool*. {📸 from aspen art museum}

And speaking of sign-painting magazines, BLAG is very good

BLAG Magazine: Adventures in Sign Painting Craft, Community & Culturebl.ag Adventures in sign painting craft, community and culture with BLAG (Better Letters Magazine), the only print and online publication dedicated to the trade.

Margaret was a book conservator at the San Francisco Public Library, which makes *total* sense! Her _In the Sweet Bye & Bye_ is such a beautiful book!

Learning in the Summer issue of Maggot Brain about comic artist / sign painter Justin Green’s one-page Musical Legends biographies (1992 - 2002) 😊

Colleagues asked me to identify cultural org's that host vibrant event series AND have great websites where they promote and archive those events. I mentioned the Ctr for Book Arts; Canal Projects; Print Ctr NY; Ctr for Art, Rsch & Alliances; Issue Project Rm; others below. Might others have recs?

My *favorite* media format is the cylinder seal :) Here, the Morgan Library

The Free Library has a nice little exhibition about microfilm, one of my favorite media formats! 😍

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Bones Hyland's Homeopathic Cold Relief

You can download a pdf from our class website: localmedia.wordsinspace.net/spring2024/ Plus, I plan to take free copies to Iffy Books, PhillyCAM, and the Parkway Central Library tomorrow or Thurs :) I hope ulises will take some, too!

Our designer Elaine Lopez, my Philly/NY friend and Parsons colleague, will create more professional documentation — but here’s the final product! Love the yellow and pink accents, the typefaces by Philly-based James Hultquist-Todd, and the printing from Philly’s own Fireball!

We’ve got a mock-up of our Local Media Field Guide! We’ll print next week, then mail copies to all contributing students and hand-deliver to our local collaborators!

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Shannon Mattern

BTW, that's me down there in the bottom left in this Francisco López video :) issueprojectroom.org/video/franci...

Our field guides are in! Now, to mail copies to all contributing students and hand-deliver to other local collaborators, hosts, local friends! You can also download a pdf from our class website (this is v.5; I'll upload the final-final soon :) localmedia.wordsinspace.net/spring2024/

We’ve got a mock-up of our Local Media Field Guide! We’ll print next week, then mail copies to all contributing students and hand-deliver to our local collaborators!

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Shannon Mattern

Also: please see the always 🌟 Jennifer Light's _From Warfare to Welfare_! www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

My uncle has a fireplace on his back porch where the chickens like to hang out

This Lilly ad in today’s Times 🤔 Not sure about the rhetorical justification for all that anaphora. And the fragmented parataxis. I wonder what the copywriter was thinking?

A fantastic Arena Channel, featured in today's newsletter. Nice connections to @loriemerson.bsky.social's work on "other networks," David Benqué's "diagram studies," and all the "poetic web" stuff www.are.na/julieta-cola...

"The Fallow Frames Biennial is an upcoming public art festival that will be held [in Ridgewood, Qns] on July 13th and 14th, where local artists are invited to use 24 abandoned tree beds to stage site-specific installations and performances." www.fallowframes.org

Still one of my faves :) “Dismissed from his tchg post [in] 1968, [Fredy] Perlman (of the Red & Black Gang + Detroit Printing Co-Op) announced his separation from the academy in a scorching pamphlet, I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror + Violence..." peoplesgdarchive.org/item/2246/i-...

I learned through the People's Graphic Design Archive about Croydon's Suburban Press, published in the 1970s to criticize free-market urban planning peoplesgdarchive.org/item/4987/su...

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Shannon Mattern

The warmest of memories: the light from dad’s wood-shop shining into the night.