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Bernar Venet + Derek Beaulieu // Conceptual Voices in a Digital Age

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A reading and performance for the release of two major books by Jean Boîte Éditions. This event brings together for the first time two leading conceptual artists.


Poetic? Poétique ? Anthologie 1967-2017 (Jean Boîte Éd., 2017) is the first book that encapsulates the entire range of poetry—which has rarely been published and was never presented in an exhibition—of French artist Bernar Venet. This collection of 248 poems significantly contributed to the development of conceptual writing in the 1960’s. Today, the prose is indicative of one of the very first steps of a major change in the twentieth century: an influx of writing which lacks creative intent, that happens to be the type of content we consume in the digital era. 

Derek Beaulieu’s a, A Novel (Jean Boîte Éd., 2017) is an erasure-based translative response to Andy Warhol’s eponymous novel. Beaulieu carefully erase all of the text on each page of the original work, leaving only the punctuation marks, typists’ insertions and onomatopoeic words. The resultant text is a novelistic ballet mécanique, a visual orchestration of the traffic signals and street noise of 1960’s New York City. This visually powerful half score/half novel highlights the musicality of non-narrative sounds embedded within conversation.



Date + Time
Wednesday, September 20
7pm

Admission
Free

Location
The Garden
51 Bergen St.

Earlier Event: September 12
Figure Drawing
Later Event: September 21
Circular by Design // Eileen Fisher