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

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Assignment 1

Devise a distribution system for your own practice designed to enhance the impact of its content on a target group of decision makers living in a specific region of your choice in Sweden. Define the content, visually, with language or otherwise and then describe how and why the system would work and estimate its effectiveness.

Presentation: 15 mins.

Due: Wednesday 4th March

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.

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

SPIRIT VESSEL by Katherine Ng