ESTAR(SER) — The Esthetical Society for Transcendental and Applied Realization (now incorporating the Society for Esthetic Realizers) — is a private, dedicated body of amateurs, scholars, and interested parties who concern themselves with the historicity of The Order of the Third Bird. This community of researchers works to sift evidences of Bird-like attentional practices in the historical record, and to present those evidences to critical readers. In this project ESTAR(SER) is fortunate to be in possession of a vast (possibly infinite) body of source materials — known as “The W-Cache” — which appears to have been assembled by an aspiring historian of the Order seeking to write a comprehensive history of the Birds. He or she did not succeed, but bequeathed to the Society a valuable and diverse archive. The academicians of ESTAR(SER) have made it their business, over the years, to publish critical editions of these primary sources, materials that see print in The Proceedings of ESTAR(SER).
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NEWS & UPCOMING PUBLIC EVENTS
* NEW DEACCESSIONS *
ESTAR(SER)’s Committee on Holdings wishes to have it known that a recent cull of the W-Cache has resulted in a considerable suite of DEACCESSIONS. These works, previously thought to be authentic archival artifacts documenting the doings of the Avis Tertia have now been shown, by our researchers, to be forgeries insinuated into our collections by irresponsible agents of the Order of the Third Bird. As we have done on other occasions, we are releasing these diverse materials, which are now available to the curious. Interested parties may direct inquiries to GALLUCCI TULL, Ltd., of Los Angeles, who currently hold these artifacts.
SURPRISING RECENT PRESS
Consider the recent (rather extensive) discussion of the Avis Tertia, and the work of ESTAR(SER) in The New Yorker.
NEW PUBLICATION!
And don’t forget about: IN SEARCH OF THE THIRD BIRD
Our long-awaited collaborative/anniversary volume, In Search of the Third Bird: Exemplary Essays from The Proceedings of ESTAR(SER), 2001-2021, edited by D. Graham Burnett, Justin E.H. Smith, and Catherine L. Hansen, can be found here on the MIT Press Website, and you can order here from Strange Attractor Press, UK, or buy wherever fine scholarly books are sold! (And consider the thoughtful reviews in the LARB, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere…)
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THE MILCOM MEMORIAL READING ROOM
Click for more information about the “Milcom Memorial Reading Room and Attention Library”
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COMMUNIQUÉS
Visit Communiqués — notes, comments, and queries from the ESTAR(SER) community
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PUBLICATIONS & OFFPRINTS
THE FRYE TRUNK: Opening a “Pandora’s Box” in the Archives of Attention
(a monographic supplement to the Proceedings)
Presenting and Representing the W-Cache
(a monographic supplement to the Proceedings)
“The Museum Plans”
(a pamphlet supplement to the Proceedings)
“The Bird Bookmarks”
(a pamphlet supplement to the Proceedings)
“Milcom the Metagnome”
(a pamphlet supplement to the Proceedings)
Appareil Card – Insert (all languages)
B.B. Chamberlin Distinguished Lecture, 2017
(a pamphlet-program supplement to the Proceedings)
Proceedings Offprint: “The Cleremont Connection”
Proceedings Offprint: “Dearest E”
Proceedings Offprint: “The Lyell Slip”
Proceedings Offprint: “The Hale Transcripts”
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FROM THE DESK OF THE CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
A Brief Introduction to the History of ESTAR, SER, and Their Unions
A Clarification on the Topic of Secretaries
The Blow Bequest: Proposals Solicited for Grants-in-Aid
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PAST LECTURES, PRESENTATIONS, EVENTS (SELECTED)
2024
“Listening to the Nightingale”
The Kunsthistorisches Institut, Palazzo Grifoni, Florence (Italy)
A BOX OF BIRDS
The Opening Gallery, Tribeca
The Milcom Memory Box
The American Academy of Arts and Letters, NYC
SPLIT THE LARK
The Brant Gallery, MassArt (Boston)
2023
LIGHT & AIR
The Watermill Center, Watermill, NY
Attention! A Conversation about In Search of the Third Bird
The American Library in Paris
THE THIRD, MEANING: An Exhibition
15 October 2022 – 15 October 2023, The Frye Museum, Seattle
TALKING BIRDS: The Mystery of Radical Attention
The Frye Museum, Seattle [click here for a recorded version]
ESTAR(SER) at Watermill
The Watermill Center, Watermill, NY
The Bird and the Book
La Napoule Art Foundation, France
“Pas de Trois: The Music of Attention”
The Frye Museum, Seattle [click here for a recorded version]
The Birds, and the Trunk: A Reading and Discussion
The Frye Museum, Seattle
2022
On ESTAR(SER): A Conversation With Michael Wood
Labyrinth Books, Princeton
A BIRD IN THE HAND: Aesthetics, Attention, History
The Watermill Center, Watermill, NY
In Search of “Alex Barbou”: The French Connection
– After 8 Books, Paris
2021
Auricular Radiance & Concentration (a.k.a, “The Dance of Attention”)
– Glasgow International, Scotland
2020
The Milcom Stills
– CADAF Digital Art Fair
“The Work of ESTAR(SER)”
– Mana Contemporary “Collective Work” Series
2019
“The Sprague Sheaf”
– MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA
“The Museum Plans”
– Mana Contemporary, Jersey City
“El Halo del Cuidar”
– Reina Sofia, Madrid
“Seeing Attention”
– Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France
“The Bird Bookmarks”
– Mana Contemporary, Jersey City
“The Corona of Care”
– RISD, Rhode Island
“The Lone Tree Folds”
– Stokes Hall, Boston College
2018
“All Senses on the Qui Vive”
– 33rd São Paulo Biennial, Brazil
“‘The Milcom Memorial Reading Room and Attention Library: OPEN HOUSE”
– Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ
‘The Goodway Speeches”
– Mildred’s Lane, Narrowsburg, NY
‘The Baptistry as Aviary”
– Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers (France)
2017
“‘Polishing the Spectacle of Myself'”
– Arts Initiative Tokyo
“Participatory Ethnography of the Object”
– Social Saturday, Mildred’s Lane, Narrowsburg, NY
“‘It’s not the thing, but the way you thing it’: An Introduction to the Work of ESTAR(SER)”
– Museo Tamayo, Mexico City
2016
“The Oannes Scrap: The Hydrographic Habitus and Sea-Surface Attention”
– The Kochi Biennial (Kerala, India)
WOUND: Mending Time and Attention
– 41 Cooper Gallery, NYC
“The Nachtigall Plot: Figuration and Incarnation in the Prosphorion”
– e-flux, NYC
“THE 2016 JOINT SYMPOSIUM”
-The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles
“The Ketchem Screen: Recovering the Dynamics of Centripetal Attention”
-Cabaret der Künstler / Zunfthaus Voltaire, MANIFESTA 2016 (Zurich)
“The Fitzwilliam Schism: Attentional Practice and Practical Criticism in the Interwar”
-Social Saturday, Mildred’s Lane, Narrowsburg, NY
“Le Rite De L’Appareil: la Boîte, la Nuit, et le Photograph”
-Écologies de L’Attention, Centre Culturel International de Cerisy (France)
“The Trochilus Exercise: Marton Bialek and the Ecstasy of the Rülek Scrolls”
-Asian Arts Theater, Gwangju, South Korea
“The Boğaziçi Rolls: Erich Auerbach and Practical Figuration in Istanbul, circa 1943”
– SALT (Galata), Istanbul
2015
“The Work of Art as Technical Image”
– Without Firm Ground: Vilém Flusser and the Arts (Akademie der Künste, Berlin)
“Le souci de soi chez les Oiseaux: Considérations foucauldiennes à propos de la cache « Coffey»”
– International Domestic Exhibitions by Affinity – Zelarrayan, Paris
“The Nachtigall Convolute: Techniques of Metempsychotic Figuration and the Matter of Lost Objects”
-The Leventritt Lecture, Harvard University Art Museums
“‘I AM NOT A FLOWER’: Margaret Preston, Félix Régamey, and Metempsychotic Ikebana, ca 1930”
– Sullivan Galleries, SAIC, Chicago
“The Kittiwake Dossier: Flocking, Flight, and Failure in Interwar Paris”
– Andquestionmark, Stockholm, Sweden
“Temporary Metempsychosis May Occur”
– PARSE Biennial, Gothenburg, Sweden
“The Order of the Order: Mad Love and Failures of Conveyance in Interwar Paris”
– Nida Art Colony, Neringa, Lithuania
“MET-HIM-PIKE-HOSES: The Greer Fragments and the Literature of Amphibious Ecstasy in the Americas, 1948-1962″
– Mildred’s Lane, Narrowsburg, NY
“The Order on Display: Inyard Kip Ketchem (1847-1919), The Man Who Made Attention Pay”
– Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
“Re-reading the Hale Experiments: Object-Oriented Ventriloquy in the Cold War”
– Keynote: Hybrid Practices, Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence
2014
“Prosopopoeia as Protocol: The Hale Experiments and Object-Oriented Ventriloquy
during the Cold War”
– RISD Museum, Providence, RI
-Le souci de soi chez les Oiseaux: Considérations foucauldiennes à propos de la cache « Coffey»”
– Centre Pompidou, Paris
“The Rülek Scrolls and the Practice of the Door”
– MoMA PS1, New York
“The Rülek Scrolls and the Practice of the Door”
– with Family Business at Palais de Tokyo, Paris
“Fix Your Eyes Right Here!”
– with Family Business at Chalet Society, Paris”
2013
2012
“Further Research on the Fascicle of E”
– Harvard University, Cambridge
“The Order of the Third Bird: Documents and Considerations”
– Bard Graduate Center, New York
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NOT UNRELATED MATTERS, BODIES, WRITINGS
ESTAR(SER) is in sympathetic association with the so-called “FRIENDS OF ATTENTION”
and would recommend their “TWELVE THESES ON ATTENTION”
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To contact ESTAR(SER) directly: esthetical.society[at]gmail.com