A recording of Neither Here nor Now, a conversation between artists Ralph Lemon and Adam Pendleton, moderated by Triple Canopy associate editor Lizzie Feidelson. They discuss On Value, a multifarious book about the value of ephemeral artworks and the labor and bodies that make them.
Please join Triple Canopy and the Studio Museum in Harlem to celebrate the publication of On Value, a multifarious book about the value of ephemeral artworks and the labor and bodies that make them. Choreographer and artist Ralph Lemon, who coedited the book with Triple Canopy, will be joined in conversation by artist and On Value contributor Adam Pendleton. They will discuss how each has sought to transpose live events, whether dance performances or charged historical events, into publishable forms such as essays, visual artifacts, and print books, as well as the simultaneous redundancy and incompleteness inherent in such acts of translation. They will also examine the ways their respective starting points—Lemon in performance, and Pendleton in visual art—have influenced their distinctive approaches to interdisciplinary work, and how their work might disturb epistemological frameworks and challenge the treatment of historic inaccuracy. Can publication function at once as a wager, a provocation, and a practicality?
On Value emerged from Value Talks, a series of private conversations organized by Lemon at the Museum of Modern Art in 2013 and 2014. Lemon asked artists, writers, scholars, and curators to consider the allure of artworks that, by nature, resist institutional parameters. On Value is an expanded record of these conversations. It also culminated in the series Passage of a Rumor, which began publication in August 2015 and includes digital versions of several of the projects in the book. On Value features works by Kevin Beasley, Claire Bishop, Philip Bither, Paula Court, Adrienne Edwards, Tom Finkelpearl, Ana Janevski, Claudia La Rocco, Thomas J. Lax, Ralph Lemon, Glenn Ligon, Glenn Lowry, Sarah Michelson, Fred Moten, Adam Pendleton, Yvonne Rainer, Will Rawls, David Velasco, and Nari Ward. On Value necessarily addresses the ephemeral nature of conversation itself: How might discussions that occur in private—about art, race, money, community, and power—be circulated without either compromising their intimacy or promising unmediated access? Rather than purport to exhaustively document or analyze these exchanges, On Value circulates novel versions of events while providing an impetus for new artworks and writings commissioned in response.
The conversation will be moderated by Triple Canopy associate editor Lizzie Feidelson. Neither Here nor Now will be held as a part of the Studio Museum’s Studio Salon. Studio Salon is the Museum’s literary society that explores the dynamic intersections of literature and contemporary art through artist talks, book launches and writing workshops inspired by our exhibitions. This edition of Studio Salon is presented on the occasion of Surface Area: Selections from the Permanent Collection8, an exhibition which explores the possibilities of surface as an expanded space, where mediums interact and the history of an object or a body leaves traces.
This program is free with Museum admission, which is a suggested donation of $7 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. To pre-register for this event, please click here. All seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Ralph Lemon is a choreographer, writer, and visual artist. He currently serves as the artistic director of Cross Performance, an organization dedicated to the creation of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performance and presentation.
- Adam Pendleton is a conceptual artist known for his multidisciplinary practice, which moves fluidly between painting, publishing, photographic collage, video, and performance. His work centers on an engagement with language, in both the figurative and literal senses, and the recontextualization of history through appropriated imagery to establish alternative interpretations of the present and, in his words, “a future dynamic where new historical narratives and meanings can exist.”
- Lizzie Feidelson is a dancer, writer, and former Triple Canopy contributing editor.