CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/2/2014

'The Best Most Useless Dress: Selected Writings of Claudia La Rocco' Launch Event at The Kitchen

Next Monday, September 8, The Kitchen presents The Best Most Useless Dress, a reading and book signing by Claudia La Rocco with special guest Ralph Lemon.

Widely known as an incisive critic for the New York Times and Artforum, Claudia La Rocco is also a poet and performer whose hybrid texts are as mercurial and imaginative as her criticism. The Best Most Useless Dress (Badlands Unlimited, 2014) is La Rocco's first collection of writing and it encompasses a decade's worth of poetry, essays, performance texts and reviews. Acclaimed choreographer Ralph Lemon will open the evening with a special surprise and La Rocco will read from her book. The Kitchen's director Tim Griffin will engage La Rocco in a conversation about writing and its relationship to poetry and performance. La Rocco will be available to sign books afterwards.

Claudia La Rocco is a writer most known for her work as a critic for the New York Times and Artforum. She also works with choreographers on performance projects. Recent collaborators include Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, the performance company Findlay//Sandsmark, and composer Phillip Greenlief. La Rocco founded PerformanceClub.org, which focuses on criticism as a literary art form and won a 2011 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. She is a member of the Off the Park poetry press. She is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts’ graduate program in Art Criticism and Writing, and teaches at Princeton University, Arizona State University, and Movement Research, among others. She lives in Brooklyn. The Best Most Useless Dress is La Rocco’s first book.

Founded in 2010 by artist Paul Chan, Badlands Unlimited publishes e-books, limited edition paper books, and artist works in digital and print forms. Historical distinctions between books, files, and artworks are dissolving rapidly. Badlands publishes and produces new works by artists and writers that embody the spirit of this emerging dissolution. Badlands makes books in an expanded field.