Bøker av Rob Kovitz

What am I going to say now? I'm going to ask myself, I'm going to ask questions: that's a good stop-gap. (Not that I'm in any danger of stopping. Then why all this fuss?) That's right, questions: I know millions, I must know millions.Samuel Beckett, The UnnamableThere are so many people asking questions¿¿¿¿¿everywhere.There is the bloody blindman, and the angry one, and thedisheartened one,and the wretch, the thorn tree,the bandit with envy on his back.Pablo Neruda, Ode to Federic Garcia Lorca (Residence on Earth)I was questioned several times immediately after my arrest. But they were all formal examinations, as to my identity and so forth. At the first of these, which took place at the police station, nobody seemed to have much interest in the case. However, when I was brought before the examining magistrate a week later, I noticed that he eyed me with distinct curiosity.Albert Camus, The StrangerRob Kovitz's eagerly awaited supercut extravaganza, Frequently Asked Questions, is an epistemological-ontological-metaphysical-montage-appropriation-detective-spy-mystery-thriller-courtroom procedure caper, in which every text selection includes the word question, but much funnier than that sounds (though not any shorter). In two volumes."The question at stake," said Epictetus, "is no common one; it is this:-Are we in our senses, or are we not?"Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of EpictetusMy lords, the judges find a difficulty to give a distinct answer to the question thus proposed by your lordships, either in the affirmative or the negative, inasmuch as we are not aware that there is in the courts below any established practice which we can state to your lordships as distinctly referring to such a question propounded by counsel on cross-examination as is here contained, that is ...T. C. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates: Official Report of the Session of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, June 27-September 7, 1820The reason why I knew you had not read it is the reason why I call it "my" book. For the last ten or twelve years I have been recommending it. Usually I speak about it at my first meeting with a stranger. It is my opening remark, just as yours is something futile about the weather. If I don't get it in at the beginning, I squeeze it in at the end. The stranger has got to have it some time. Should I ever find myself in the dock, and one never knows, my answer to the question whether I had anything to say would be, "Well, my lord, if I might just recommend a book to the jury before leaving."A. A. Milne, Not That It MattersTreyf Books¿Keep Refrigerated

"Listen to me," said the Demon, as he placed his hand upon my head. "The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya ...       - Edgar Allan Poe, Silence: A Fable As they neared the coffin lid, the wind picked up dramatically and a massive, black thunder cloud moved over the site. The walls of the tent covering the excavation began to snap loudly, and as the weather continued to worsen the five researchers finally stopped their work and looked at one another. The conditions had suddenly become so strange that Kowal observed, "This is like something out of a horror film."       - Owen Beattie and John Geiger, Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition Canadian author-artist Rob Kovitz commemorates the recent discovery of one of the missing ships from the famously doomed Franklin polar expedition with one of his inimitable super-cut bookworks that imagines what may have happened to this and various other fateful northern peregrinations. Warning: includes graphic and shocking scenes of boredom, failure, madness, freezing, murder, cannibalism and mysterious things that may or may not be hidden beneath flat, frozen surfaces. From the Excerpts From Ice Fishing in Gimli Series. About the Author Rob Kovitz is the creator of Treyf Books, ingenious montage-appropriation novels that consist of texts and images compiled from various sources, usually obsessively related to one or more themes, and then recombined to form new works of imagination that are both profusely polyphonic and surprisingly cohesive. Kovitz's previous bookworks include Pig City Model Farm, Room Behavior, Games Oligopolists Play, Death Wish Starring Charles Bronson Architect, Capital of the World, According to Plan, and the 8-volume award-winning appropriation epic, Ice Fishing in Gimli. "Strange and clever."       - Globe & Mail "Funny, but deep."       - Umbrella "Is this a new form of discourse in step with its multivalent, chaotic times, or just an excuse for intellectual laziness? Only the author knows for sure."       - Canadian Architect

"If we could suddenly see this arranged order as it will be seen in its full functioning, it is not to be doubted that many of the Civilized would be struck dead by the violence of their ecstasy." PIG CITY MODEL FARM is a strange, amusing and disturbing book about architecture, agriculture, and utopia. About instrumental thinking and rational method versus irony and doubt as anti-method. About copronomy and building design, model farms, country-life, class status in the Chinese countryside, Ultra-Sweet Pignectar, an architect's first sexual experience, Charles Fourier, Marcel Duchamp, paranoia, poisonous fruit, and how things become their opposite. Treyf 25th Anniversary edition. treyf, adj. [Yiddish] - not kosher, unclean. Treyf Books by Rob Kovitz are unusual books of an indeterminate type, sort of story-picture montage-remix books for people who can't stomach any more schmaltzy Chicken Soup for the Soul. Treyf Books are cooked up using texts and images compiled from various sources, usually obsessively related to one or more themes, and then recombined through a process of highly subjective editing, ordering and juxtaposition. "Strange and clever." - Globe & Mail "Funny, but deep." - Umbrella "Is this a new form of discourse in step with its multivalent, chaotic times, or just an excuse for intellectual laziness? Only the author knows for sure." - Canadian Architect

Robert Macaire, discount broker: "Here are my conditions." - Honoré Daumier, Le Charivari, 27 September 1836 Jean Baudrillard once suggested an important correction to classical Marxism: exchange value is not, as Marx had it, a distortion of a commodity's underlying use value; use value, instead, is a fiction created by exchange value. - n+1 Magazine, Death by Degrees He had ferreted so much, collected so many clues, that he could have prophesied how the new neighbourhoods would look in 1870. Sometimes, in the street, he would look curiously at certain houses, as if they were acquaintances whose destiny, known to him alone, deeply affected him. - Émile Zola, The Kill Our new Gilded Age looks a lot like the 19th century version, as seen and annotated in Rob Kovitz's Capital of the World, with words and images collected and remixed from Émile Zola, Honoré Daumier, Lewis Lapham, Baron Haussmann, Sam Lipsyte, n+1 Magazine, and various others. 'You'll see, ' murmured Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, 'that I have perhaps carried poetic licence too far, but I think my boldness has worked. Echo, seeing that Venus has no power over Narcissus, takes him to Plutus, the god of wealth and precious metals. After the temptation of the flesh, the temptation of riches.' 'That's very classical, ' replied Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, with an amiable smile. 'You know your period, Monsieur le Préfet.' - Émile Zola, The Kill *** treyf, adj. [Yiddish] - not kosher, unclean. Treyf Books by Rob Kovitz are unusual books of an indeterminate type, sort of story-picture montage-remix books for people who can't stomach any more schmaltzy Chicken Soup for the Soul. Treyf Books are cooked up using texts and images compiled from various sources, usually obsessively related to one or more themes, and then recombined through a process of highly subjective editing, ordering and juxtaposition. "Strange and clever." - Globe & Mail "Funny, but deep." - Umbrella "Is this a new form of discourse in step with its multivalent, chaotic times, or just an excuse for intellectual laziness? Only the author knows for sure." - Canadian Architect

"Clearly, someone had to have a plan, an idea, a beginning ..."       - John McCabe, Stickleback "What's the plan?"       - youtube, Battlestar Actors Lay Out the Plan Canadian author-artist Rob Kovitz is the creator of Treyf Books, inventive montage book projects that juxtapose texts and images collected from widely varied sources. Centered around a certain theme, he then recombines these findings to form new works of imagination that are at once multivalent and surprisingly cohesive. Kovitz's latest super-cut bookwork, According to Plan, begins with his interest in the word "plan," and every text selection includes the word "plan." The result is a funny, disquieting, and thought-provoking exploration of the human obsession with making plans. About the Author Rob Kovitz's previous bookworks include Pig City Model Farm, Room Behavior, Games Oligopolists Play, Death Wish Starring Charles Bronson Architect, Capital of the World, and Ice Fishing in Gimli, which was awarded the Art Gallery of York University's Artists' Book of the Moment Award in 2010. In 2011, Kovitz was chosen one of Broken Pencil magazine's 50 all-time favorite indie artists, and in 2014, Treyf Books is celebrating its 25th anniversary with the publication of According to Plan.

A woman sits alone in a darkened boiler-room. A man enjoys hanging suspended from the ceiling. A dirty room indicates the secret sexual proclivities of its occupant. A curtain rustling in the breeze portends fear and paranoia. "The purpose of a room derives from the special nature of a room. A room is inside. This is what people in rooms have to agree on, as differentiated from lawns, meadows, fields, orchards." Room Behavior is a book about rooms. Composed of texts and images from the most varied sources - including crime novels, decorating manuals, anthropological studies, performance art, crime scene photos, literature and the Bible, to name a few - Kovitz shapes the material through a process of highly subjective editing, ordering and juxtaposition to create an original, fascinating and darkly funny rumination about the behavior of rooms and the people that they keep. "Like the rooms he depicts, the pages of this book are host to an evocative and thought-provoking life of their own." - Uptown Magazine "Strange and clever." - Globe & Mail "The book is a unique mini-coffee table paperback, beautifully designed.... Much more than a 'gift' book, Room Behavior is something to pause and reflect on whenever you think about rearranging your furniture." - Fast Forward "This is a book to keep, to review again and again. Funny, but deep." - Umbrella Treyf 25th Anniversary edition.

"Oligopoly, like international diplomacy, labor-management negotiations, and so on, is one of the speediest and most thrilling of sports." Games Oligopolists Play features oligopolists playing at Canada's favourite game, along with pointed commentary from noted hockey analysts Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Don Cherry. Handsomely designed and printed, Games Oligopolists Play consists of texts and images collected from economic textbooks and various books and articles on hockey that have been recombined, juxtaposed and ordered by the author in a completely subjective manner. Sharp and funny political/social satire for beginning and advanced fans alike. Treyf 25th Anniversary edition. treyf, adj. [Yiddish] - not kosher, unclean. Treyf Books by Rob Kovitz are unusual books of an indeterminate type, sort of story-picture montage-remix books for people who can't stomach any more schmaltzy Chicken Soup for the Soul. Treyf Books are cooked up using texts and images compiled from various sources, usually obsessively related to one or more themes, and then recombined through a process of highly subjective editing, ordering and juxtaposition. "Strange and clever." - Globe & Mail "Funny, but deep." - Umbrella "Is this a new form of discourse in step with its multivalent, chaotic times, or just an excuse for intellectual laziness? Only the author knows for sure." - Canadian Architect

The first one is the hardest. Then he discovers he likes it. DEATH WISH: Starring Charles Bronson, Architect is based on the sensationalistic and controversial Death Wish movies, in which Charles Bronson portrays an architect who becomes a vigilante-killer. Death Wish by Rob Kovitz is a kind of enigmatic allegory, in which Bronson is Everyman, and Architecture is the dream/nightmare that goes to bed with each of us at night. Treyf 25th Anniversary edition. treyf, adj. [Yiddish] - not kosher, unclean. Treyf Books by Rob Kovitz - unusual books of an indeterminate type, sort of story-picture remix books for people who can't stomach any more schmaltzy Chicken Soup for the Soul. Treyf Books are cooked up using texts and images compiled from various sources, usually obsessively related to one or more themes, and then recombined through a process of highly subjective editing, ordering and juxtaposition. "Strange and clever." - Globe & Mail "Funny, but deep." - Umbrella "Is this a new form of discourse in step with its multivalent, chaotic times, or just an excuse for intellectual laziness? Only the author knows for sure." - Canadian Architect