Intercourse is a Pioneerworks romp through current art and science, by George Fiala

One doesn’t generally encounter slick literary magazines in a NYC bodega, but when the bodega is a block away from the publisher, it becomes a possibility.

So the other day at the Pioneer Street Supermarket I picked up a copy of Dustin Yellin’s Intercourse magazine.

My normal reading habits range from Foreign Affairs to the Daily News, so I’m the first to admit that this type of literature is not my bailiwick.

First of all let me say that this is not exactly a literary magazine as I know it. It seems more a potpourri of intellectual thought. This is in keeping with Mr. Yellin’s stated goal of Pioneerworks, which he originally did call Intercourse. In addition to serving as an artist studio, a school and a place for events, Yellin intended Pioneerworks, located a bit to the west of the deli, at the cross section of Pioneer and Imlay Streets, to be a place where accomplished persons of all disciplines would be in residence and cross fertilize.

The slick, square shaped magazine spans almost two hundred pages. It is organized into four sections, consisting of long articles, shorter essays, academic studies and finally, something called Portfolios, which seem to stress works of art but also include essays.

Yellin, who is one of the editors, writes a forward to this third edition of what I take to be a quarterly publication. He wonders about the lifespan of dead bones, which then transforms into a discussion of life being transformed into digital information.

I was reminded of a class I took in graduate school where the professor and most of the students happened to be devotees of the philosopher Michel Foucault. It took a number of classes until I started to get an idea of what everyone was talking about. My fellow students were as immersed in Foucault as I used to be with the 1969 NY Mets. I felt as if I had stumbled into some sort of private club. This magazine felt the same way to me.

In the same way that eventually I kind of ‘got’ Foucault, I am slowly getting into Intercourse.

The first article is an interview with author Ben Lerner. Philistine that I am, I am not familiar with his novels or poetry, which include Leaving the Atocha Station and The Lichtenberg Figures, but they have been widely acclaimed and are prize winners. So the questions he is asked largely went over my head, until a subject came up that I am familiar with, namely, Star Trek.

Here the discussion paralleled thoughts that I have had. Lerner says that while writing his latest novel, 10-4, he watched the entire Next Generation series.

He calls it a “90s fantasy about multiculturalism.” Lerner continues: “every time you confront an alien civilization it’s like, ‘what’s the framework that’s going to allow us to respect difference but also get along.’”

While that’s all true, I take issue with multiculturalism being a dominant theme of any of the Star Treks. Beginning with Roddenberry’s very first series, which included a black, a Russian, an Asian and a doctor from the deep South, multiculturalism was a given.

What I have taken from of all the Star Trek series’ was a positive vision of a future earth, where the fruits of technology allows people to follow their dreams, as cheap energy serves to provide everyone’s more basic needs.

I must add here that the magazine misspells the name of Worf, which someone who equates Gene Roddenberry with Foucault might take issue with, but that’s really just a minor quibble. Heaven knows that this publication has been guilty of multiple misspellings in it’s publishing history.

The Lerner interview goes on for seven dense pages, and for someone who has read his work, I’m sure it is fascinating and revealing, and educational.

The next article is another interview, this time with musician Adam Green. While I am aware of his former band, the Moldy Peaches, I am more a Richard Thompson man, and so again, much of this interview is lost on me. Perhaps I should expand my horizons in his direction, especially since he claims to be a huge fan of the late singer Harry Nilsson, who is acclaimed by people of my generation as one of the great ones, not to mention a great pal of John Lennon.

Although many of the musical references are lost on me, this seems a worthwhile read for the intellectual music lover. Adam Green is also a filmmaker, and the article is interspersed with some great photos including one of the artist Francesco Clemente dressed as a clown, playing the role of ‘Genie,’ as explained in the photo credit. Some research informs that Green is working on a film version of Aladdin.

A further example of how un-artsy I happen to be is the story of my own meet-up with Clemente.

My daughter graduated from the St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights where one of her friends was Nina Clemente, Francesco’s daughter. One night I had to go to Greenwich Village to pick her up from a play date. I really had no idea who Francesco Clemente was. I did know that a lot of my daughter’s friends had wealthy parents.

I rang the bell and a smallish man with an accent came out to see what I wanted. I assumed he was some kind of servant and asked for my daughter.

It was some time later that I happened to see this “butler” type pictured on the sides of NYC buses, as Francesco Clemente was prominently featured in ads in a MOMA show of his work.

Mr. Green sounds like an interesting and talented guy and I will now make an attempt to seek out his work.

One aside – I have no idea what ketamine is.

The next article is about Hart Island. This is something else I have been in the dark about. Somewhat thankfully, the author of this story also had been unaware of its existence, until assigned this article.
It turns out that Hart Island, close to the Bronx, is a real place, owned by NYC, and is a publicly run cemetary. Over a million bodies are buried there, some in mass graves. It is a kind of potter’s field, where people who haven’t the means for a proper burial are interred.

Artist Melissa Hunt began an online project – the Hart Island Project – www.hartisland.net. Hunt introduces the website saying “The mission of the Hart Island Project is to make the largest cemetery in the United States visible and accessible so that no one is omitted from history. We recently acquired a map of intact mass burials and GPS location information. We ask for your support to create a new application tied to our on-line database of burials.”

The article is about Hunt, and it has piqued my interest.

What follows is a two page spread featuring three top selling nude paintings on EBAY. I kind of wish the Star-Revue had thought of this first. Pretty imaginative. One can discover a lot about current pop culture by trolling through the online marketplace, I am sure.

You might tell that I am warming up to Intercourse. One use of it would be to give a thirty-something literati wannabee lots to talk about at parties.

A less cynical view, which I am now tending to, is that one can get a well rounded idea of current culture by spending some good quality time with this magazine.

I’ve just gone through a small snippet of content. Poetry, art, fiction and science litter it’s opulent pages.

I did happen to buy the store’s  only copy of the Winter 2015 edition of Intercourse, but I imagine many more can be found at Pioneerworks, 159 Pioneer Street. It’s actually a bargain at $12.