Derek Pell
Encyclopedia
Derek Pell is a visual artist, photographer, and writer. He is the editor in chief of Zoom Street Magazine. He was editor of DingBat Magazine, a contributing editor to PC Laptop, and founder of the international anticensorship
art collective Beuyscouts of Amerika. Under both his name and his pen names, most notably Norman Conquest, Derek Pell has authored more than 30 books, many of which he designed and illustrated, including the Doktor Bey series, Bewildering Beasties, X-Texts, Assassination Rhapsody, Lost In Translation, and The Little Red Book of Adobe LiveMotion, along with several collections of his work.
He had been a regular contributor to Playboy
, National Lampoon, LA Weekly
, as well as a columnist for The Westport News and PC Laptop Magazine. His work has been featured in such publications as Adobe Magazine, Natural History, The Times
, Rolling Stone
, The New York Times Sunday Magazine,and Fiction International
.
under various pseudonyms, most notably Doktor Bey and Norman Conquest. His primary style was incorporating mixed-media and using collage-text and cut and paste techniques. After the success of his Doktor Bey series in the late 1970s, Derek Pell moved to Los Angeles
in the eighties, during this period he was charged by the FBI for defacing US Currency while working on a mail-art performance. He began experimenting with cybertext
, hyperlinks, and other computer-aided art in 1991. Derek Pell currently resides in the Bay Area.
/postmodernism
themes and styles in his craft. Using a remarkable range of formal discourses and methods, Pell's work often employs elements of intertextuality
, metafiction
and reflexivity, decenterization, pastiche
, appropriation
, found materials, and sampling. Through various mediums such as mail art
, text-and-collage
, gallery exhibits, and book object(Artist's book), his style uses satire
, sarcasm
, wit
, and humor (wordplay, dark humor, absurdist humor, shock humor, visual and textual puns
) to comment, criticize, and occasionally openly mock America's traditional cultural attitudes and values though work that is as much conceptual and performance art
as it is fiction
.
Doktor Bey
Bey is a fictional scholar, born in New York
and Tibet
in 1877. Author of Doktor Beys Suicide Guide (1977), Doktor Beys Bedside Bedbug Book (1978), Doktor Beys Handbook of Strange Sex (1978), Doktor Beys Book of Brats (1979), Doktor Beys book of the Dead (1981).
Norman Conquest
This is Derek Pell's visual and performance focused alter-ego and digital artist. Norman's art is featured in texts by authors such as Harold Jaffee's Straight Razor (1995), as well as his own work, A Beginner's Guide to Art Deconstruction (1995). He is founder of the international anticensorship art collective Beuyscouts of Amerika which has created over 100 mixed-media book-objects and has been featured in the Spencer Museum of Art
and selected for a permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art
. He is also art director of Zoom Street Magazine.
Che Wax
One of Derek's earliest fictional pseudonyms, which appeared on the novel "Brother Spencer Goes to Hell" published by The Fault (Union City, CA: 1979) Source: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL16223566M/Brother_Spencer_goes_to_hell
Collection of iconic sexual and erotic literature
, in which each story is a meta-story, or treated version, of the original. Examples include Lady Chatterley's Loafer, Lolita, Over the Hill, and 9½ Weeks: The Long March.
Assassination Rhapsody
A deconstruction version of the materials in the Warren Commission Report. Examples include the use of collage
and absurdism
mixed with mechanical manipulations and transformations of the Commission texts' in A The Nature of the Shots, illustrations in A Bullet Theory Poem, and lipogram
in The Magic Bullet.
The Marquis De Sade's Elements of Style
Introduced as a "found book" originally published by Marquise de Sade while in a lunatic aslym, with pictures and edits done by the "author", Derek Pell. Presented as a book on style, it is divided into four sections, Elementary Principles of Composition, A Few Matters of Form, Words and Expressions Commonly Misued, An Approach to Style, and an untraditional index, with wood print images either designed or found and incorporated throughout.
The Little Red Book of Adobe LiveMotion
Written as an absurdist pastiche of Chairman Mao's red badges
, which were to inform the citizens of "correct" political information, is a reference guide to Adobe's LiveMotion software. The text serves as a humorous instruction manual for using flash as a political tool to oppose corporate culture and to foster a political revolution against capitalism. Resignifying symbols, images, and texts, the book is an example of the fluidity of meaning and identity found in the World Wide Web.
Bewildering Beasties
Written as a warning, the book is framed as a rare surviving copy of a book of endangered species from England's Victorian period
. The illustrations serves as puns and wordplay combine with nostalgia
, pastiche
, and found materials to serve as an absurd, but nonetheless less meaningful warning on extinction and humanities role in the environment.
Morbid Curiosities
Scar Mirror
----
Doktor Bey
The Doktor Bey books are designed as absurdist
collages of mixed media recontextualizing images to create these darkly humorous "How To" guides.
Doktor Bey's Handbook of Strange Sex
Doktor Bey's Bedside Bug Book
Doktor Bey's Suicide Guidebook
Doktor Bey's Book of the Dead
Doktor Bey's Book of Brats
since 1974. He is Editor in Chief of Zoom Street Magazine (www.zoomstreet.org) and the author of SHOOT TO THRILL: A HARD-BOILED GUIDE TO DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY (Que: 2009)
He wrote The Little Red Book of Adobe LiveMotion (No Starch / O'Reilly) -a guide to Flash animation. He has worked as a press photographer for UPI, and his photographs have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Rolling Stone
, Lens Culture
, The Times
, New York
, Interview, L.A. Weekly, American Forests
, Fiction International
, The Village Voice
, and Zink.
's Some Other Frequency.
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
art collective Beuyscouts of Amerika. Under both his name and his pen names, most notably Norman Conquest, Derek Pell has authored more than 30 books, many of which he designed and illustrated, including the Doktor Bey series, Bewildering Beasties, X-Texts, Assassination Rhapsody, Lost In Translation, and The Little Red Book of Adobe LiveMotion, along with several collections of his work.
He had been a regular contributor to Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
, National Lampoon, LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
, as well as a columnist for The Westport News and PC Laptop Magazine. His work has been featured in such publications as Adobe Magazine, Natural History, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, The New York Times Sunday Magazine,and Fiction International
Fiction International
Fiction International is a literary magazine devoted to innovative forms of fiction and non-fiction which addresses progressive political ideals. Founded in New York by Joe David Bellamyin 1973, the magazine moved to San Diego State University in 1983, where it has been "edited by Harold Jaffe and...
.
Biography
Derek Pell dropped out of the Chicago Art Institute in the late 1960s. His writing began appearing in the 1970s in publications of experimental literatureExperimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
under various pseudonyms, most notably Doktor Bey and Norman Conquest. His primary style was incorporating mixed-media and using collage-text and cut and paste techniques. After the success of his Doktor Bey series in the late 1970s, Derek Pell moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in the eighties, during this period he was charged by the FBI for defacing US Currency while working on a mail-art performance. He began experimenting with cybertext
Cybertext
Cybertext is the organization of text in order to analyze the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic, as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997...
, hyperlinks, and other computer-aided art in 1991. Derek Pell currently resides in the Bay Area.
Themes
Derek Pell explores literary modernismModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
/postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
themes and styles in his craft. Using a remarkable range of formal discourses and methods, Pell's work often employs elements of intertextuality
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
, metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
and reflexivity, decenterization, pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
, appropriation
Appropriation
Appropriation is the act of taking possession of or assigning purpose to properties or ideas. The word appropriation was first used by a Russian theorist named Bakhtin to describe a holistic language theory. The Russian word for appropriation is prisvoenie, which directly translated means ‘to make...
, found materials, and sampling. Through various mediums such as mail art
Mail art
Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...
, text-and-collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
, gallery exhibits, and book object(Artist's book), his style uses satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
, sarcasm
Sarcasm
Sarcasm is “a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter jibe or taunt.” Though irony and understatement is usually the immediate context, most authorities distinguish sarcasm from irony; however, others argue that sarcasm may or often does involve irony or employs...
, wit
Wit
Wit is a form of intellectual humour, and a wit is someone skilled in making witty remarks. Forms of wit include the quip and repartee.-Forms of wit:...
, and humor (wordplay, dark humor, absurdist humor, shock humor, visual and textual puns
Puns
Puns may refer to:*Partido de Unión Nacional Saharaui, the Sahrawi political party* Pun, figure of speech* Phoenicians...
) to comment, criticize, and occasionally openly mock America's traditional cultural attitudes and values though work that is as much conceptual and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
as it is fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
.
Pseudonyms
Derek Pell has published work under various pseudonyms, some with fictional biographies, which serve to question the concept of authorial originality intention while giving focus and outlet to his different faucets of creative expression.Doktor Bey
Bey is a fictional scholar, born in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
in 1877. Author of Doktor Beys Suicide Guide (1977), Doktor Beys Bedside Bedbug Book (1978), Doktor Beys Handbook of Strange Sex (1978), Doktor Beys Book of Brats (1979), Doktor Beys book of the Dead (1981).
Norman Conquest
This is Derek Pell's visual and performance focused alter-ego and digital artist. Norman's art is featured in texts by authors such as Harold Jaffee's Straight Razor (1995), as well as his own work, A Beginner's Guide to Art Deconstruction (1995). He is founder of the international anticensorship art collective Beuyscouts of Amerika which has created over 100 mixed-media book-objects and has been featured in the Spencer Museum of Art
Spencer Museum of Art
The Spencer Museum of Art, or SMA, is an art museum on the campus of University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. While admission is free, donations are accepted. Also located inside the Spencer Museum of Art are the Kress Foundation Department of Art History, and the Murphy Library of Art &...
and selected for a permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
. He is also art director of Zoom Street Magazine.
Che Wax
One of Derek's earliest fictional pseudonyms, which appeared on the novel "Brother Spencer Goes to Hell" published by The Fault (Union City, CA: 1979) Source: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL16223566M/Brother_Spencer_goes_to_hell
Books
X-TextsCollection of iconic sexual and erotic literature
Erotic literature
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intended to arouse the reader sexually. Such erotica takes the form of novels, short stories, poetry, true-life memoirs, and sex manuals...
, in which each story is a meta-story, or treated version, of the original. Examples include Lady Chatterley's Loafer, Lolita, Over the Hill, and 9½ Weeks: The Long March.
Assassination Rhapsody
A deconstruction version of the materials in the Warren Commission Report. Examples include the use of collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
and absurdism
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
mixed with mechanical manipulations and transformations of the Commission texts' in A The Nature of the Shots, illustrations in A Bullet Theory Poem, and lipogram
Lipogram
A lipogram is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided — usually a common vowel, and frequently "E", the most common letter in the English language.Writing a lipogram is a trivial task...
in The Magic Bullet.
The Marquis De Sade's Elements of Style
Introduced as a "found book" originally published by Marquise de Sade while in a lunatic aslym, with pictures and edits done by the "author", Derek Pell. Presented as a book on style, it is divided into four sections, Elementary Principles of Composition, A Few Matters of Form, Words and Expressions Commonly Misued, An Approach to Style, and an untraditional index, with wood print images either designed or found and incorporated throughout.
The Little Red Book of Adobe LiveMotion
Written as an absurdist pastiche of Chairman Mao's red badges
Chairman Mao badge
Chairman Mao badge is the name given to a type of pin badge displaying an image of Mao Zedong that was ubiquitous in the People's Republic of China during the early period of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1971. The term is also used for badges associated with Mao that do not actually have...
, which were to inform the citizens of "correct" political information, is a reference guide to Adobe's LiveMotion software. The text serves as a humorous instruction manual for using flash as a political tool to oppose corporate culture and to foster a political revolution against capitalism. Resignifying symbols, images, and texts, the book is an example of the fluidity of meaning and identity found in the World Wide Web.
Bewildering Beasties
Written as a warning, the book is framed as a rare surviving copy of a book of endangered species from England's Victorian period
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
. The illustrations serves as puns and wordplay combine with nostalgia
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
, pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
, and found materials to serve as an absurd, but nonetheless less meaningful warning on extinction and humanities role in the environment.
Morbid Curiosities
Scar Mirror
----
Doktor Bey
The Doktor Bey books are designed as absurdist
Absurdist fiction
Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature, most often employed in novels, plays or poems, that focuses on the experiences of characters in a situation where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events...
collages of mixed media recontextualizing images to create these darkly humorous "How To" guides.
Doktor Bey's Handbook of Strange Sex
Doktor Bey's Bedside Bug Book
Doktor Bey's Suicide Guidebook
Doktor Bey's Book of the Dead
Doktor Bey's Book of Brats
Photography
Pell has been involved with photographyPhotography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
since 1974. He is Editor in Chief of Zoom Street Magazine (www.zoomstreet.org) and the author of SHOOT TO THRILL: A HARD-BOILED GUIDE TO DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY (Que: 2009)
He wrote The Little Red Book of Adobe LiveMotion (No Starch / O'Reilly) -a guide to Flash animation. He has worked as a press photographer for UPI, and his photographs have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, Lens Culture
Lens Culture
Lens Culture is a subscription-free, online magazine of international contemporary photography, inclusive of all genres of photography. The magazine contains photo book reviews, essays, analysis and criticism about contemporary photography and culture...
, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Interview, L.A. Weekly, American Forests
American Forests
American Forests is a 501 non-profit conservation organization dedicated to protecting and restoring healthy forest ecosystems. Their stated mission is to "grow a healthier world with trees". The organization was established in 1875 as the American Forestry Association by physician and...
, Fiction International
Fiction International
Fiction International is a literary magazine devoted to innovative forms of fiction and non-fiction which addresses progressive political ideals. Founded in New York by Joe David Bellamyin 1973, the magazine moved to San Diego State University in 1983, where it has been "edited by Harold Jaffe and...
, The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, and Zink.
Publications
A complete list of the works of Derek Pell and his alter-ego's is found in Larry McCafferyLarry McCaffery
Lawrence F. "Larry" McCaffery Jr. is a literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University...
's Some Other Frequency.