Ira Cohen was an
American poet,
publisher,
photographer and
filmmaker. Cohen lived in
Morocco and in New York City in the 1960s, he was in Kathmandu in the 1970s and traveled the world in the 1980s, before returning to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Cohen died of renal failure on April 25th, 2011.
[1]
(February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) |
Early life
Cohen was born in 1935 in the
Bronx,
New York City, to deaf parents. Cohen graduated from the
Horace Mann School at 16 and attended
Cornell, where he took a class taught by
Vladimir Nabokov. He dropped
out of Cornell, then enrolled at the School of General Studies of
Columbia University but did not graduate.
Cohen married Arlene Bond, a Barnard student, in 1957. They had two children, David Schleifer and Rafiqa el Shenawi.
[1]
Morocco
In 1961 Cohen took a
Yugoslavian freighter to
Tangier, Morocco where he lived for four years. He published
GNAOUA, a magazine devoted to
exorcism and
Beat Generation poetry, introducing the work of
Brion Gysin,
William S. Burroughs,
Harold Norse and some other Burroughsonians.
GNAOUA also featured
Jack Smith, and Irving Rosenthal. He also produced
Jilala, a mythic recording of
trance music by a sect of
dervishes, which was recorded by
Paul Bowles. Cohen published the
Hashish Cookbook - authored by the pseudonymous 'Panama Rose'.
Cohen then lived for some time on Spain's
Costa del Sol, specifically in or near
Torremolinos. He went to Paris from Spain and from there very briefly to London.
Return to New York
Cohen returned to New York in the mid-1960s. In his loft on the
Lower East Side, Cohen created the "
mylar images", styled as "future icons" as developed by a "mythographer". Among the reflected artists in his mirror:
John McLaughlin,
William S. Burroughs and
Jimi Hendrix who said that looking at these photos was like "looking through butterfly wings".
[1] With this shamanic and tantric exercise Cohen explored the whole spectrum of photography from infrared to black light. In 1968 he also directed the "phantasmaglorical" film
Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda and produced Marty Topp's
Paradise Now, a film of the
Living Theatre's historic American tour.
[2] was inspired by the films of
Kenneth Anger and
Sergei Parajanov and began as an extension of his photography work with his Mylar chamber.
Travels in the 1970s
Cohen went to the
Himalayas in the
'70s where he started the starstream poetry series under the Bardo Matrix imprint in
Kathmandu, publishing the work of
Charles Henri Ford,
Gregory Corso,
Paul Bowles and
Angus Maclise; and developing his art of bookmaking, working with native craftsmen. In 1972 he spent a year in
San Francisco reading and performing and then returned to New York mounting photographic shows.
Amsterdam
In early 1964, Cohen visited Amsterdam (during same trip up from Tangier when he arranged for the printing of
Gnaoua in Belgium). He befriended writer
Simon Vinkenoog, who would later translate many of Cohen's writings into Dutch. However his real Amsterdam period began in the spring of 1978. It was then that he met Caroline Gosselin, a French girl who was making and selling life masks at the
Melkweg (Milky Way) multimedia center. She and Cohen expanded this into
Bandaged Poets - a series of
papier-mâché masks of dozens of well-known poets that he subsequently photographed. He also reconnected with
Eddie Woods, whom he had first met in Kathmandu in 1976. Woods, who co-founded
Ins & Outs Press with Jane Harvey, was preparing to launch
Ins & Outs magazine. Cohen's work appeared in every issue and he regularly served as a contributing editor. He performed at the first of Benn Posset's long-running
One World Poetry festivals,
P78. Cohen (and Gosselin) lived in Amsterdam for the next three years; and even after leaving he made several return visits to the city, often staying for long spells. Ins & Outs Press, which had already published postcards of the
Bandaged Poets series, produced three limited-edition Kirke Wilson silkscreen prints of the photographs including those of William Burroughs and
Allen Ginsberg.
[3] His film
Kings with Straw Mats was also edited, in collaboration with Ira Landgarten, at Ins & Outs.
[4] In September 1993 Cohen returned to Amsterdam from New York to participate in a Benn Posset-organized tribute to Burroughs, along with Woods, the American writer
William Levy, the German translator & publisher
Udo Breger, and others.
Cohen further developed a close association with the artists colony village of
Ruigoord (eight miles west of Amsterdam) and is one their very few trophy holders.
[5]
Second return to New York
In 1981 Cohen again returned to New York, and moved in with his mother in an
Upper West Side apartment. In 1982 he married Carolina Gosselin, and they had a daughter, Lakshmi Cohen, before divorcing in 1989.
[1]
Cohen continued to travel during the 1980s , making trips to
Ethiopia,
Japan, and back to India where he documented on film the great
kumbh mela festival, the largest spiritual gathering on the planet in the film
Kings with Straw Mats.
[6] In the latter part of the decade Synergetic Press published
On Feet of Gold, a book of selected poems.
[7]
Cohen also worked as a contributing editor of Third Rail magazine, a review of international arts and literature based in Los Angeles.
Publications and exhibitions
In the 1990s Cohen met with increasing international recognition as his poems were published in England by Temple Press under the title
Ratio 3: Media Shamans Along with Two Good Poet Friends, the friends being
Gerard Malanga and Angus Maclise. He had a show called
Retrospectacle at the
October Gallery in London and he also took part along with William Burroughs, Terry Wilson and
Hakim Bey at the
Here To Go Show in Dublin in 1992 which celebrated the painter Brion Gysin.
[8]
In 1994
Sub Rosa Records released Cohen's first CD,
The Majoon Traveller, with
Cheb i Sabbah, which also included the work of
Don Cherry and
Ornette Coleman.
In the 2000s Cohen gave a number of readings in New York City, including a collaboration with the musical group
Sunburned Hand of the Man.
Cohen was a participating artist in the
Whitney Biennial 2006, "Day for Night" with two back-lit transparency photographs,
Jack Smith as the Norebo, Prince of the Venusian Munchkins, and
The Magician from the Grand Tarot.
In May 2007 Cohen was featured in performance Georg Gatsas'
Process VI - FINAL exhibit at the Swiss Institute in New York City. Cohen read poems accompanied by projections of his mylar photographs and was accompanied by the musical group Mahasiddhi.
[9][10]
In October 2007 an exhibit of Cohen's portrait photographs
Hautnah / Up Close & Personal was mounted at the WIDMER+THEODORIDIS contemporary gallery in
Zurich. A complementary book was planned by Papageien-Verlag for early 2008 but is, as yet, unpublished. Subjects included
Patti Smith,
Madonna, William Burroughs and
Paul Bowles[11] [12]
Also in October 2007 an exhibit of his mylar photographs opened in London at October Gallery.
[13]
Bibliography
- The Hashish Cookbook (auth. Panama Rose) (Gnaoua Press 1966)
- Seven Marvels (Bardo Matrix, Katmandu 1975)
- Poems from the Cosmic Crypt (Bardo Matrix and Kali Press, Katmandu 1976)
- From the Divan of Petra Vogt (Cold Turkey Press, Rotterdam, 1976)
- Gilded Splinters (Bardo Matrix, Katmandu 1977)
- The Stauffenberg Cycle and Other Poems (Uitgeverij 261, Heerlen, Netherlands 1981). ISBN 90-6512-013-0
- Media Shamans Ratio 3 (with Gerard Malanga and Angus MacLise, Temple Press, London 1991). ISBN 1-871744-30-X
- On Feet of Gold (Synergetic Press, London 1986). ISBN 0-907791-107
- Minbad Sinbad (Didier Devillez, Brüsszel 1998)
- Wo das Herz ruht (Switzerland, 2001, translated by Florian Vetsch)
- Kaliban und Andere Gedichte (AltaQuito Press, Göttingen, 1999, translated by Florian Vetsch)
- Poems from the Akashic Record (Goody, New York 2001)
- Shamanic Warriors Now Poets (Anthology edited by J.N. Reilly and Ira Cohen, R & R Publishing, Glasgow, Scotland 2004). ISBN 0-9534280-1-X
- Chaos and Glory (Elik Press, Utah 2004)
- Whatever You Say May Be Held Against You (Shivastan Press) (2004)[12][14]
- Cornucopion - Bőségszaru (Új Mandátum and I.A.T. Press, Budapest, 2007, translated by Gabor G Gyukics)
- Hautnah / Up Close & Personal (Papageien-Verlag) (Unpublished)
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