This Lonely Century: Barrett White Interviews SOd Press at Fanzine
At Fanzine, poet Barrett White contributes the transcript from his recent discussion with Australian publishing influencers SOd Press (a.k.a. aj carruthers and Amelia Dale). "I was immediately compelled by the strangeness of the work I found on their site," White writes. "Neo-Dadaesque asemic and collage work. Glitch art and childlike sketches bordering on Art Brut. A PDF based on the Braille reading of a beaded garment." From there:
Who are these people? I wondered to myself. Then a coworker walked up and asked me to make some copies in a glazed over mutter. I was back to reality. The ‘lo-fi’ nature of the works collected on their minimal Tumblr site did not compromise the radicality of these texts, but enriched them in a complicatedly quixotic way. Later, the names of the editors, aj carruthers and Amelia Dale, bubbled to the surface. Through my tendency of extensive internet lurking, I tracked down some information about this truly unique Australian avant-garde press. That said, I was still thirsty for more data. How did all of this come about? Through the establishing of a Google Doc (a strange blank digital bridge between our continents) and several weeks of exchange, I was able to ask a few questions of Amelia and aj to try and understand a little more about the ethos, intention, and direction of SOd.
Barrett White: I was hoping we could begin by discussing the future first. Are there any upcoming or recently released projects with SOd that you are particularly excited to share?
A.D.: We’ve just published a set of (chap)books, among them catherine vidler’s chaingrass, an extraordinary sustained piece of visual, post-digital work, which can be downloaded from the site.
vidler’s work is part of a pdf SOd.doc series I am editing, which I guess could be characterised broadly as encompassing post-digital work by experimental, feminist writers.
Other work that’s “fresh” on the “stale” site is Nick Whittock’s untitled cricket pdf book: a treat, especially if you’re interested in antipodean experimentalities.
How did you two meet and how did the initial idea of starting an online press emerge? And how did the name/term “Stale Objects dePress” come about?
aj: Sometime in 2011 myself and another poet Sam Moginie (we were sharing a house) had a piece of stale bread that was lying around. We didn’t know what to do with it. Throwing it away felt wrong. So we watched it. And at a certain point after watching it go even more stale — going through that process of dehydrating but never quite going rotten — I decided to hang it up as art. Then in the tradition of the modernist avant-garde, we wrote an (anti)manifesto we both have since disowned. When it became unsightly to leave the bread hanging there, we decided to paint it red and turn it into a “Ferrari” (true to our implicit critique of value). Then it was thrown away. An absurd anecdote.
Read on at Fanzine.