Thank you to everyone who entered a drawing of a mule in the Win an ARC of The Republic of Dirt contest!
The winners are:
Carole Ann Shaw
Carrie Mac
Rachel Jackson
Winners, if you haven’t already done so, please send me your mailing addresses and when I receive my copies I will send along your copies.
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who entered, including Philip Gordon, who sent along this creation:
When I congratulated him on his risk-taking approach to mule representation and compared his mule-punk image to Jo-Anne Stoltz’s cat-mule, I got this response:
The cat mule is exceptional because it redefines the concept of ‘mule-ness’ outside of the realm of physical representation–all I’ve done here is try to blur the label between ‘object’ and ‘simulacrum’, with some commentary on digital visuals wedged in. This mule t-shirt is shaping up to be a piece fit for the Louvre it seems, no doubt!
Oh quite.
Then Jo-Anne Stoltz weighed in with:
Thank you for recognizing my submission as the triumph of artistic representation that it is. I was attempting to position Fluffy the Mule in that liminal space between physical representation (see Gordon, 2014) and the post-colonial deconstructionism of Derrida and Rodchenko, but mainly Lissitzky. I think I succeeded nicely.
I’m pleased to say that all mules will be featured on an upcoming bit of promotional paraphernalia for The Republic of Dirt. Book promotion may never be the same but mules themselves will not change in the least.