Celebrating his debut work, on the eve of Justin Allen’s live reading Language Arts (2024), published by Wendy’s Subway, we gathered tea in a boutique cafe on New York’s Lower East Side. In the field of performance, writers, artists and musicians are only a few blocks away, and soon they will recite his poem 140 bpm, a replay of the sound of the night spent at the bossa nova civic club in Bushwick, a deep, resonant bass that reflects the flesh energy of the corpse. Language Arts I managed to capture this energy in the book, blending music, dance, performance and language together to capture the reverb of the wall. All the while, he turned the thunderous lyrics into left-wing criticism: “We’re going to wait until next Friday, our rent expires/tomorrow.”
Allen, who grew up in a suburb of Northern Virginia, began performing after discovering tap and hip-hop during his adolescence and inherited his father’s diverse musical flavors, which spanned the council-Parliame and extended to the green days. Duki. As a high school student, he met experimental punk bands that pushed his musical boundaries and found solace in the chaotic hot dreams of The Blood Brothers and on jazz with the loose and expressive rhythm of Saetia.
Provided by Wendy’s Metro
But it was Allen’s move to York City that would shape his political consciousness. In the city, the artist immersed in the world of independent sleaze artists like Santigold and Mia, who found a framework for criticizing America in music. “It’s a strange moment, and everyone is scared for different reasons,” he reflected. “Whenever people are scared, something interesting happens in the culture.” Language Artsthese “fun things” take the form of text, full of sci-fi-style scenes, speculative essays and “hatnahans” – Allen’s language creates itself.
Creating a language is not a trivial matter, but for Allen, it’s second nature. An aspiring multilingual – who once had a tongue on French and Spanish – he discovered David J. Peterson’s The art of language invention (2015) In the Strand Bookstore near Union Square. After studying African languages such as Zulu and Xhosa on YouTube, he began making his own language. Hatnahans has open vowels, gender-free words and invented letters.
But the spirit Language Arts Just like academic punk. The lyrics and notes of his band Black Boots are scattered on fluorescent green pages, infusing the work with the rudeness of club culture. In his opening essay Entering the City, Allen presents a manifesto for the imaginary Hatnaha Island, integrating urban life and nature into a vision of creative and ecological harmony. It conveys a sense of buoyancy, describing the tropical climate of a vibrant urban center without the damage of infrastructure problems and imperialism. Moving between these climates, the core Language Arts Create a world as smooth as the language we speak.
