Triple Canopy is pleased to present Automatic Reading, a seminar addressing the act of reading as a part of contemporary artistic practice. Open to the public, the seminar will bring together Erica Baum, Franklin Bruno, Corina Copp, Jim Fletcher, Ariana Reines, Mónica de la Torre, R. H. Quaytman, and others, whose work in visual art, writing, and performance is informed by the history of conceptual art. Participants will discuss how the legacy of conceptualism has challenged traditional notions of reading both as an exchange between an individual and text and as a public activation of the written word.
Reading is frequently understood as a private encounter with characters, narratives, and, perhaps, an author. Reading in the context of conceptual art, in contrast, may underscore the material qualities of the codex (the page, binding, and technologies of printing) or cultural assumptions about readers and authors bound up with the physical format of the book. Rather than producing meaning, tout court, reading in a conceptual sense may become an encounter with an object, an audience, or social context—or with discourse itself. As in the case of unoriginal composition, the act of writing can be nearly indistinguishable from the act of looking over words. Conceptual reading establishes new uses for books and texts, even as it moves reading out of the realm of contemplation and into the space of action.
Automatic Reading is part 2 of Corrected Slogans (A Publication in Four Acts), Triple Canopy’s ongoing collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, in conjunction with the exhibition “Postscript: Writing after Conceptual Art.” The first act of Corrected Slogans—Triple Canopy’s September 15th symposium, Poems for America—emphasized strategies of unoriginal writing and art making. Automatic Reading will extend this line of inquiry by focusing on how conceptual practices make use of conventions of reading.
This seminar is open to the public. Seating is extremely limited; please arrive early.
***
Corina Copp is the author of the poetry pamphlet Pro Magenta/Be Met (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011), and is currently working on the three-part performance The Whole Tragedy of the Inability to Love—based on the work of Marguerite Duras—the first installment of which was presented in this year’s PRELUDE Festival.
Erica Baum lives and works in New York. She has had solo exhibitions at Bureau, New York; Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin; and Circuit, Lausanne. Past group exhibitions include “Subject, Index,” at Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden. Her work will be included in the upcoming group exhibition “Postscript: Writing after Conceptual Art,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and the 2012 São Paulo Bienal. Her work was included in the book Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography, edited by T. J. Demos (Phaidon Press, 2006). Her artist’s books include Dog Ear (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011), with essays by Kenneth Goldsmith and Beatrice Gross, Sightings (onestar press, 2011), and Bbabaubaumbaudevin (Regency Arts Press, 2012). Baum is also the author of “The Melody Indicator,” included in the sixteenth issue of Triple Canopy.
Franklin Bruno is a writer and musician based in Jackson Heights, Queens, and author of the article “Wouldn’t It Be Milchedich?,” multimedia analysis of My Fair Lady and its localized parodies, to be included in the eighteenth issue of Triple Canopy.
Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow, Coeur de Lion, Mercury, and the play Telephone and the translator of books by TIQQUN, Jean-Luc Hennig, and Charles Baudelaire. Reines is also the author of “Un Coeur Simple”, originally commissioned by Triple Canopy for the public-program series Miscellaneous Uncatalogued Material at the Museum of Modern Art.
Jim Fletcher has worked with Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players for more than twelve years, most recently in Early Plays, a joint production with the Wooster Group. He is a member of the cast of Gatz, the Elevator Repair Service production based on The Great Gatsby, and has worked with Bernadette Corporation, Claire Fontaine, the English group Forced Entertainment (Sight is the Sense That Dying People Tend to Lose First, Quizoola!), and Sarah Michelson (Devotion). In 2012, he received an Obie award for sustained excellence of performance.
Mónica de la Torre’s poetry collections include two in English, Talk Shows (Switchback Books, 2006) and Public Domain (Roof Books, 2008), and two in Spanish, Acúfenos (Taller Ditoria, 2006) and Sociedad Anónima (UNAM/ Bonobos, 2010). She is the editor, with Michael Weigers, of the bilingual anthology Reverisible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon, 2002). Her translations from Spanish include Lila Zemborain’s Mauve Sea-Orchids (co-translated with Rosa Alcalá) and Poems by Gerardo Deniz, which she also edited. A recent collaborative book project, Taller de Mecanografía, was published in 2011 in Mexico City by Tumbona Ediciones. Four, a group of four new chapbooks, is just out from Switchback Books. She lives in Brooklyn and is senior editor at BOMB Magazine.
R. H. Quaytman is a painter living in New York City. Over the last decade Quaytman’s practice has encompassed various roles, including artist, writer, and curator. Recent projects include the artist book Spine published in 2011, directorship (from 2005 to 2008) of the New York gallery known as Orchard, a collective of artists, filmmakers, and art historians. In 2009 Quaytman’s first solo museum exhibition was mounted at the ICA Boston, and in November 2010 the artist’s first survey opened at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York and traveled in June 2011 to the Basel Kunsthalle. Quaytman has had solo exhibitions at Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; Silberküppe, Berlin; Gladstone Gallery, Brussels; Daniel Buchholz, Cologne.
