Table Of ContentPOSTSCRIPT:
WRITING AFTER
CONCEPTUAL
ART
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EDITED BY ANDREA ANDERSSON
POSTSCRIP T:
WRITING AF TER
CONCEP TUAL
ART
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART − DENVER
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2018
Toronto Buffalo London
utorontopress.com
Printed in the U.S.A.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4984-2
Printed on acid-free paper.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Postscript : writing after conceptual art / edited by Andrea Andersson.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4984-2 (cloth)
1. Art and literature. 2. Literature, Experimental. 3. Conceptual art. 4. Conceptualism.
5.Written communication. I. Andersson, Andrea, editor II. Title.
PN53.P67 2018 809'.93357 C2017-902742-5
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for
the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications
Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing
program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency
of the Government of Ontario.
Funded by the Financé par le
Government gouvernement
of Canada du Canada
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
NORA BURNETT ABRAMS
“I, too, wondered …”: An Introduction to
Conceptual Writing after Conceptual Art 3
ANDREA ANDERSSON
The Conceptualist Turn: Wittgenstein and the New Writing 27
MARJORIE PERLOFF
From “The Fate of Echo” (Introduction to Against Expression:
An Anthology of Conceptual Writing) 41
CRAIG DWORKIN
Was Ist Los 54
SETH PRICE
Echo Ήχώ 63
VANESSA PLACE
Sharon Hayes and Most People 73
RACHEL HAIDU
What Do We Mean by Performance Writing? 86
CAROLINE BERGVALL
Rescuing the Past: Repetition and Re-enactment
in Jeremy Deller, Andrea Geyer, and Sharon Hayes 93
PATRICK GREANEY
From Notes on Conceptualisms 108
ROBERT FITTERMAN AND VANESSA PLACE
The Melancholy of Conceptualism 117
MICHAEL GOLSTON
Untimely Models 129
LYTLE SHAW
Indifferent Voices 135
PAUL ELLIMAN
A Week of Blogs for the Poetry Foundation 141
KENNETH GOLDSMITH
Give Them What They Want: Populist Rhetoric
in Conceptual Art and Writing 152
BRIAN REED
To Teach and Delight – A Few Precedents
for an Art of Instruction 168
CATHLEEN CHAFFEE
Semantic Analysis: The Art of Parsing Found Text 184
SARAH COOK
Conceptual Computing and Digital Writing 197
NICK MONTFORT
vi
Poetry without Poets 211
DARREN WERSHLER
Documents from “True Mirror” 221
DAVID REINFURT AND STUART BAILEY
233
From Materiality to Dematerialization and Back:
Conceptual Writing in a Digital Age
GWEN ALLEN
Little Bastard: The Invention and Introduction of a New Word 243
RYAN GANDER WITH ALICE FISHER AND STUART BAILEY
What Was Conceptual Writing? 260
NICK THURSTON
The Bioinformatic Sublime: The Life of Data and the Data
of Life in Conceptual Writing 270
PAUL STEPHENS
Two Dots over a Vowel 290
CHRISTIAN BÖK
Like in Valencia: On Translating Equivalence 303
MÓNICA DE LA TORRE
Russian Lessons for Conceptual Writing 316
JACOB EDMOND
Reading as Art 335
SIMON MORRIS AND THOMAS CAMPBELL
Ambivalence of the Grid 342
LIZ KOTZ
The Concrete, The Conceptual, and the Galáxias 358
ANTONIO SERGIO BESSA
vii
N.B. 373
SETH KIM-COHEN
Plagiarism: A Response to Thomas Fink 381
TAN LIN
Bibliography 387
Index 409
viii
Acknowledgments
This book begins, in every sense, with my most trusted mentors, and so do my
thanks. I will always be indebted to Marjorie Perloff for her invitation and chal-
lenge to enter a conversation about the interdisciplinary avant-g arde, and for
her introduction to Craig Dworkin and Michael Golston, my most inspired and
inspiring teachers and friends. My work will always be an admiring response
to their own.
As a collection of essays, this book attests to a long- running and spirited con-
versation between friends and colleagues, deeply invested in cross- disciplinary
scholarship and practice. I extend my thanks to all the contributors for their
intellectual generosity.
As an exhibition publication, this book is realized by a much wider net-
work of individuals. First and foremost, I express my respect for and appre-
ciation to the artists and writers who participated in the exhibition Postscript:
Writing after Conceptual Art and to all those who built walls, shipped crates, and,
broadly speaking, made place for the conversations that unfold here. In this
sense, this book began as a proposal to Adam Lerner, director of the Museum
of Contemporary Art Denver for an exhibition on the subject of Conceptual
writing, and I am grateful for his enduring support, without which this proj-
ect would not have been possible. I also extend my thanks to all of those who
worked to realize it as a travelling exhibition at the Power Plant Gallery in
Toronto and at the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at Michigan State University.
But most of all, I give thanks to Nora Burnett Abrams, my co- curator and my
friend – long before we imagined this exhibition and long after its close.
I am so appreciative for the guidance and commitment of our editors,
Siobhan McMenemy, who began this project with me at the University of Toronto
Press, and to Frances Mundy, who saw it through to its conclusion. Nick Thurston
oversaw the creation of the index with erased reference locators.
I remain filled with admiration for Bina Gogineni, Casey Shoop, Jenelle
Troxelle, and Eugene Vydrin for never losing faith in the Free University.
Description:One of the most important movements in twenty-first century literature is the emergence of conceptual writing. By knowingly drawing on the histories of art and literature, conceptual writing upended traditional categorical conventions.Postscript is the first collection of writings on the subject of
