In response to recent returns to historical Concrete poetics, Abraham Adams has assembled works by artists Noor Abed, Cory Arcangel, Fia Backström, Lou Cantor, Rafael Kelman, Jaeeun Lee, Todd Lerew, Andrew Ross, and Mary Walling Blackburn in the James Gallery. This project asks: Why has the typographic word been privileged over the body of the poet? This line of inquiry reflects a larger effort to consider the temporal attitude of artworks as expressed by their commitments to concrete space and duration. How might a shared somatic basis emerge between the works on view, within the variety of relationships to language and communication they express? This would suggest an expansive conception of the Concrete in parapoetic performance and for contemporary art. Many of these artists are part of a cross-platform project that will culminate in a two-volume collection coedited by Adams and Lou Cantor titled Intersubjectivity, to be published by Sternberg Press.
Cosponsored by the PhD Program in Art History.
