Calendars:Networked Media Calendar/Networked Media Calendar/13-05-2016 -Event 3

LECTURE MFA: 19:00 Johanna Drucker, CURRENT CONCEPTUALISMS [lg project space]

Conceptual work has a century-long history within the visual arts with a commitment to exposing the institutional frames of cultural practices at the meta-level. But what does it mean in the current literary realm? Is conceptual writing the tail end of an avant-garde of radical defamiliarization? Is it an agonistic move against the traditions of poetics, or a necessary end-game to expose the desperate condition of poetics in our time? And end, a beginning, or a continuation--conceptual writing has the power to galvanize and polarize in ways that have to be taken into account in any critical assessment of what matters in artistic practice--and what gets traction in contemporary culture. This argument is based on a conviction that self-conscious attention to making, a meta-formalism with an epistemological edge, is an essential aspect of literary and artistic work as a unique and distinct activity.

Johanna Drucker is Professor of Bibliographical Studies at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, fine art, and digital humanities. In addition, she has a reputation as a book artist, and her limited edition works are in special collections and libraries worldwide. Her most recent titles include Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Harvard, 2014), Diagrammatic Writing (Onomatopee, 2014), What Is?: Nine Epistemological Essays (Cuneiform Press, 2013), SpecLab: Digital Aesthetics and Speculative Computing (Chicago, 2009), Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide (Pearson, 2008) and Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity (University Of Chicago Press, 2006).