“Why are so many writers now exploring strategies of copying and appropriation? It’s simple: the computer encourages us to mimic its workings.”
The above is from Kenneth Goldsmith’s introduction to Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing (a free UbuWeb download).
Goldsmith, of course, does not explain why writers have not created novels with internal combustion engines in imitation of the way cars work; or anthologies that flush their contents as you read them, in imitation of urinals.
Oh … wait….
Marcel Duchamp, “Fountain” (1917) |
_________________
* I should point out that the title of this post is a play on “stupid money”—the term I’ve heard used for money one makes without effort, simply by being in the right place at the right time. The implication is that one is likely to spend such money is stupid ways.
Even the sentence you quote makes no sense to me, because "available language" is so broad as to be meaningless. I think it was the photographer Paul Strand who said that "all light is available light." Well, all language is available language. So what? Does that fact release the artist from having to do something original with the language? (I know—what's original?
I'm working on a post about flarf at the moment and I include a few quotes from this guy although I don't tackle the issues that the conceptualists have with the flarfists (another day maybe) but the only thing I could find that makes any sense is this quote: "With so much available language, does anyone really need to write more? Instead, let’s just process what exists."<br /><
check out Irene Gammel's : Baroness Elsa: Gender, DADA, and Everyday M O D E R N I T Y<br /><br />Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven found the original urinal in the street and took it over to Duchamp's studio<br /><br />she and he hung it on the wall it fell an shattered… Duchamp subsequently did the "R.Mutt" urinal as another piece..<br />and I think that the one in the
I have another question: If one follows Goldsmith's example i.e, to the nearest men's room, might not one find himself pissing his time away?