Triple Canopy is pleased to announce the release of our newest print publication, Corrected Slogans: Reading and Writing Conceptualism. The book is the fourth and final installment of the multi-part project Corrected Slogans (A Publication in Four Acts), which was conceived as Triple Canopy’s contribution to “Postscript: Writing after Conceptual Art,” an exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. The book is the culmination of a collective effort by artists, poets, scholars, editors, curators, and designers to establish a new critical discourse around conceptual art and poetics. In the past year, that effort found expression in a series of public discussions, a special online publication, and QR codes affixed to the walls of the galleries at the MCA. Each “act” of Corrected Slogans—dispersed as they are between Triple Canopy’s home in Brooklyn, the exhibition in Denver, the Web, and print—is integral to the same dynamic process; the project as a whole represents Triple Canopy’s ongoing attempt to define an expanded field of publication.
Corrected Slogans: Reading and Writing Conceptualism documents the previous acts but also elaborates, edits, amplifies, and contradicts; the form and content of the public discussions are reinterpreted using tools specific to print. The critical debates represented in this book remain unresolved as they circulate to wider audiences through new channels of distribution. Corrected Slogans features annotated transcripts of previous events along with contributions, new essays, artworks, and poetry from Nora Abrams, Andrea Andersson, Erica Baum, Franklin Bruno, Corina Copp, Michael Corris, Brian Droitcour, Jim Fletcher, Zachary German, Lucy Ives, Aaron Kunin, Margaret Lee, Paul Legault, K. Silem Mohammad, Ken Okiishi, R. H. Quaytman, Katie Raissian, Ariana Reines, William S. Smith, Mónica de la Torre, Gretchen Wagner, Hannah Whitaker, and Matvei Yankelevich.
Neither an anthology or nor a collection of essays, Corrected Slogans is a carefully constructed critical response to the advent of conceptual writing—interrogating the changing roles of readers and authors, as well as the future of literary value, as writing moves off the page and onto gallery walls. At a time when digital culture is sometimes said to have successfully obviated literature altogether, Corrected Slogans challenges easy assumptions about the relationship between literature and visual art and activates the book as a site of creative production, enacting an expanded notion of publishing as a mode of critical inquiry.
Act I of Corrected Slogans, “Poems for America,” is a symposium that took place on September 15, 2012, at 155 Freeman Street in Brooklyn. We invited artists and poets to discuss the history and legacy of conceptualism, and asked how conceptual strategies of writing have transformed conventional notions of expression. The symposium included three sessions:
À Rebours, a conversation between Aaron Kunin and Ken Okiishi, moderated by Katie Raissian
Black and White Debates, Gray Matters, and Red Herrings, a conversation between Michael Corris and Matvei Yankelevich, moderated by Lucy Ives
Commonplaces, a conversation between Margaret Lee and K. Silem Mohammad, moderated by Gretchen Wagner
Act II, “Automatic Reading,” is a roundtable discussion Triple Canopy convened on October 20, 2012, also at 155 Freeman Street. Erica Baum, Franklin Bruno, Corina Copp, Jim Fletcher, R. H. Quaytman, Ariana Reines, and Mónica de la Torre, along with moderators William S. Smith and Lucy Ives, debated 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.
Act III is a special issue of Triple Canopy’s online magazine, “Corrected_Slogans”, accessible to MCA Denver visitors via QR codes on the gallery walls. The issue includes new Web-based artworks by artists Erica Baum and Gareth Long and poet Caroline Bergvall, whose works were also included in the MCA exhibition, as well as a selection of projects from Triple Canopy’s archive that reframes the exhibition’s questions about conceptual art and writing in terms of digital publishing.