Ideas on the Page

This was a curiously indigestible ICA talk, that turned out to be a progress report on the speaker's PhD thesis.

There was a dusty, mimeographed'n'stapled tone to the whole presentation, as the actual art reference points were almost entirely focused on East Coast American art of the late 60s; artists were realising that there was a vast newly constituted cultural space, only just beginning to be mediatised, which was almost completely naive as far as aesthetics went.

As as result, work was being made to 'infiltrate' the magazine and commercial publishing sectors which was either vacuous outside the fact of infiltration (Dan Graham), or reduced to arch and impenetrable game-playing within the micro-monde of the poetry journal (Vito Acconci). We would have been much more engaged with a critical analysis of the contribution of this work, and a less America-centric world-view, rather than a defensive account of how personal loyalties and old-boy-network got some of these artists space to publish in.

http://www.ica.org.uk/?lid=31848