Language (+ Materials): Word & Image, Sound Art, Performance Writing

When you are dealing with language, there is no edge that the picture drops over or drops off. You are dealing with something completely infinite. Language, because it is the most non-objective thing we have ever developed in this world, never stops. Lawrence Weiner

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Word & Image A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry
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language + the materials referred to

Lawrence Weiner designates “language + the materials referred to” as the medium for his work, allowing him to situate his sculptural practice in a wide range of geographical locations and cultural systems (or “points of reception”, in Weiner’s words). This course explores writing as a creative and critical strategy through themes such as art writing; materiality and genre; the aesthetics of the dematerialized artifact; language as sculpture, sound art, and the role of language in conceptual art.

Carey Young

Carey Young
Cautionary Statement (2007)

COURSE TEXTS

  • Birgit Pelzer & John Goodman (1999), Dissociated Objects: The Statements/Sculptures of Lawrence Weiner (October, Vol. 90, pp. 76-108. Available via JSTOR)
  • Course blog
  • Donald Judd (1965) Specific Objects (in Thomas Kellein, Donald Judd: Early Work, 1955-1968, New York: D.A.P., 2002. Originally published in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965. Available via course blog).
  • Jack Burnham (1968), ”System Esthetics” in Artforum
  • Silvia Kolbowski (2000) An Inadequate History of Conceptual Art (October, Vol. 92, pp. 52-70. Available via JSTOR)
  • Simon Morley: Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003)
  • The Prose Poem: An International Journal
  • Ubuweb
  • W.J.T. Mitchell (1994), “Ekphrasis and the Other” in Picture Theory

A bit of matter and a little bit more

A bit of matter and a little bit more
Lawrence Weiner (1976)
In the buginning is the woid, in the muddle is the sounddance.
James Joyce

Marcel Broodthaers holding Sadoul's L'Invention du Cinéma

Marcel Broodthaers holding Sadoul's L'Invention du Cinéma
Photo: Joaquin Romero Frias
"Let's waltz the rumba."
Fats Waller

This is...

7. This is not philosophy, it’s poetry. And if I say so, then it becomes painting, music or sculpture, judged as such. If there are variables to consider, they are at least partly economic—the question of distribution, etc. Also differing critical traditions. Could this be good Poetry, yet bad music? But yet I do not believe I would, except in jest, posit this as dance or urban planning.

from The Chinese Notebook
by Ron Silliman

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

ALICE was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?'

Lewis Carroll

from Philosophical Investigations

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Word and Image Masters Course

Class of 2008 course blog
Class of 2009:
Willow Tyrer
Brett Ascarellia


Rui Tenreiro
Roberta Burchardt (PDF available on request)
Merve Ertufan


Induction valve (Soupape d'admission) by Francis PICABIA

Induction valve (Soupape d'admission) by Francis PICABIA
50x33 cm. Gouache over an engineering blueprint. Private collection.

ART & CONCEPTUAL WRITING

  • A Writing Glossary (Dartington College)
  • ARRAS: New Media Poetry and Poetics
  • Compendium of Lost Words
  • Electronic Poetry Center
  • In Ekphrasis
  • Paul Thek Project
  • Penn Sound
  • Situationist International archives
  • Topo/graphics: reading the movable text
  • UBUWEB ANTHOLOGY OF CONCEPTUAL WRITING

Dada stirs up everything (Dada soulève tout)

Dada stirs up everything (Dada soulève tout)
15 January, 1921

PERFORMANCE WRITING & SOUND POETRY

  • (Poetry is) The Lipstick of Noise
  • Book of Voices
  • Caroline Bergvall
  • Jackson Mac Low
  • Spoken Word and Performance Poetry
  • Third Factory (Steve Evans)

The Bearded heart (Le Coeur à barbe)

The Bearded heart (Le Coeur à barbe)
Sole issue of a "transparent newspaper" published by Tristan Tzara in April 1922. 2x14 cm., 8 p. Black printing on pink paper.

RHETORIC & EKPHRASIS

  • CONVENTIONS OF EKPHRASIS
  • Ekphrasis
  • Rhetoric and composition
  • Rhetorical Figures
  • Silva Rhetoricae
  • The 14 Progymnasmata
  • Virtual Salt: A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices

SPIRIT VESSEL by Katherine Ng

SPIRIT VESSEL by Katherine Ng
WORKING NOTE: SPIRIT VESSEL is letterpress printed artist book produced through a Brody Arts Fund Grant. The hand set type was printed on two sides of the paper, then cut into strips (pages) and woven into the shape of a gourd. The text lists the uses of gourds from different cultures and so does the title of this piece. In the Chinese culture, the gourd is used as a container to capture evil spirits, whereas in the Japanese culture, the gourd is used as a vessel for intoxicating spirits.

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About Me

Rolf Hughes
Writer & critic; Guest Professor in Theory and Practice-Based Research at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm; Senior Professor in Research Design at the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Brussels & Ghent; Senior Researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology, School of Architecture, Stockholm.
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