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Abstract
This paper discusses the work of Claude Parent and The Serving Library, considering the critiques generated by their intersecting of architecture, art and editorial design. Through focus on the ways in which hosting environment, architecture and forms of expanded publishing can serve to dissolve disciplinary boundaries and activities of production, spectatorship and reception, it draws on the lineage of 1960s/70s’ Conceptual Art in considering these practices as a means through which to escape medium specificity and spatial confinement. Relationships between actual and virtual space are then read against this broadening of aesthetic ideas and the theory of critical modernity.
Notes
1 Claude Parent, “Drives,” Architecture Principe: Habitable Circulation no. 5 (July 1966); in Claude Parent and Paul Virilio, Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996, translated from the French by George Collins (Besançon: Les éditions de l’imprimeur, 1997), xiv.
2 This theory was first presented by Parent and Virilio in Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996, the magazine of their Architecture Principe group. The group also included artists Michel Carrade and Morice Lipsi, but only Parent and Virilio put their names to the short articles published in the magazine, stating that this collection of articles constituted the group’s “permanent manifesto”; ibid., Citationv. Architecture Principe was published in nine issues throughout 1966, with a tenth issue thirty years later in 1996.
3 Claude Parent, “Architecture: Singularity and Discontinuity,” Architecture Principe: Disorientation or Dislocation no. 10 (September 1996); in Parent and Virilio, Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996, 153.
4 Paul Virilio, “Disorientation,” in Parent and Virilio, Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996, 11.
5 Parent and Klein’s propositions for “Air” architecture were presented through drawings of fictional environments, with compressed air used to create transparent walls, roofs and furniture for domestic dwellings. See, for example, the accounts by Myriam Mahiques, “Air Architecture and Social Reform through Immateriality,” in Thoughts on Architecture and Urbanism (October 2009). Accessed June 22, 2014. http://myriammahiques.blogspot.fr/; and Mariabruna Fabrizi, “The Possibility of an Immaterial Architecture: The Collaboration between Yves Klein and Claude Parent,” in SOCKS: Art, Architecture, Culture, Sounds, Territories, Technology [January 2014]. Accessed June 22, 2014. http://socks-studio.com/.
6 Steve Redhead, “Toward a Theory of Critical Modernity: The Post-Architecture of Claude Parent and Paul Virilio,” TOPIA: The Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies no. 14 (Fall 2005):39–56 (42).
7 Virilio’s writings in Architecture Principe also make reference to painting and sculpture – see, for example, his essay “Habitable Circulation (2),” Architecture Principe: Habitable Circulation no. 5 (July 1966), xv; Parent and Virilio in Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996 – but his account of the shift in art practice and discourse at that time is limited when compared with that of Parent. His writings cross-refer instead to the ideas of Gestalt psychology and phenomenology with the declaration that he was “a man of percept as well as concept”; Parent and Virilio in Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996, xv.
8 “Dematerialised” is a contested term in the critical discourse of Conceptual Art, as discussed initially by Terry Atkinson of Art & Language: “Concerning the Article: ‘The Dematerialisation of Art’” [1968]; excerpt cited in Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (eds), Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 46–50. This letter-essay was written in response to Lucy Lippard and John Chandler’s “The Dematerialisation of Art” (1967) and is dated 23 March 1968. A shortened version was published in Lucy Lippard (ed.), Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (Berkley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1973); the version cited here is a selection of excerpts from the original held with Lippard’s papers at the Archives of American Art (uncatalogued).
9 For this show, Siegelaub displayed only a few works in a temporarily rented office (at the McLendon Building, 44 East 52nd Street, New York), instead using the catalogue as the actual site for the exhibition. The exhibition is usually now referred to by its dates alone, although its full title at the time was “January 5–31, 1969: 0 Objects, 0 Paintings, 0 Sculptures.”
10 Dan Graham, “Homes for America: Early 20th-Century Possessable House to the Quasi-Discrete Cell of ’66,” Arts Magazine 41, no. 3 (December 1966–January 1967): 21–2.
11 Robert Smithson and Mel Bochner, “The Domain of the Great Bear,” Art Voices (New York) (Fall 1966): 44–51. This is an article/artwork, about the American Museum of Natural History and its connected Hayden Planetarium in New York.
12 Robert, Smithson, “Ultramoderne: The Century Apartments, New York City,” Arts Magazine. 42, no. 1 (1967): 30–3.
13 Art & Language: Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin, “Air Show” [1968], in Art & Language. Exhibition catalog (Eindhoven: van Abbe Museum, 1980); first published in a limited edition booklet, Frameworks – Air Conditioning (Coventry: Art–Language Press, 1968).
14 Paul Virilio, “Architecture: Disorientation or Dislocation,” in Parent and Virilio, Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996, 152.
15 Steve Beard, “Dromographic Stress Disorder (How e-Commerce makes Survivors of Us All),” Mute: I am the Network 1, no. 18 (2000). Accessed June 29, 2005. http://www.metamute.org/, 1.
16 Virilio, “Disorientation,” 10.
17 Parent, “Architecture: Singularity and Discontinuity,” 153.
18 For a detailed account of the operation, through publishing contexts, of this type of Conceptual Art, see Ruth Blacksell, “From Looking to Reading: Text-Based Conceptual Art and Typographic Discourse,” Design Issues 29, no. 2 (2013)Citation: 60–81.
19 Claude Parent, “The Limits of Memory: For a Critical Architecture,” in Parent and Virilio, Architecture Principe 1966 and 1996, 16, 17.
20 A trio of exhibitions – “Transmitting Andy Warhol,” “Gretchen Bender” and “The Serving Library” – were presented as part of this Making Things Public season, between November 2014 and February 2015.
21 TSL was founded in 2011 by editorial designers Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt (who were already collaborating as Dexter Sinister) and the writer Angie Keefer. TSL was intended as a means by which “to carry on where [its forerunner] Dot Dot Dot left off.” Dot Dot Dot was a print-based journal originally founded in 2000 by Bailey with the graphic designer Peter Bil’ak; Stuart Bailey, 1 January Citation2011/ Announcements/ Dot Dot Dot is Dead. Posted on the Dot Dot Dot website. Accessed February 13, 2015. http://www.dot-dot-dot.us/, n.p.
22 “‘Bulletins’ is really just another name for ‘articles’ or ‘essays’ but [the name] alludes to the fact that they’re issued individually, as and when complete, on the website in advance of being collected into a larger volume”; Dexter Sinister, interviewed by Eleonore Hugendubel, curatorial assistant at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, New York, and posted on the MoMA website in four parts: July 2, 17, 30, and August 10, 2012. Accessed February 16, 2015. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/ecstaticalphabets/.
23 Adam O’Reilly, “Dexter Sinister’s New Character,” Art in America October (2011): n.p. Accessed July 6, 2015. http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/dexter-sinister-archive/.
24 The Serving Library, Making Things Public: Transmission/ Media/ Critique/ Publishing/ Infiltration/ Information. Exhibition text, Tate Liverpool, 2014–15, n.p.
25 These particular commissions were for Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2012); the Whitney Biennial in New York (2008); and the Frieze Art Fair in London (2010). Their “occasional (one day a week) bookstore” operates from a basement space at 38 Ludlow Street, NYC, which the group also describe as a “Just-in-time workshop” or design studio, aimed at collapsing the separation between production and distribution.
26 Emma O’Kelly, “Architect Claude Parent Gives a New Slant to Tate Liverpool,” Wallpaper (July 7, 2014): n.p. Accessed July 1, 2015. http://www.wallpaper.com/art/architect-claude-parent-gives-a-new-slant-to-tate-liverpool/7655/.
27 The one-day symposium event, “Rolling Around like Gorillas on the Incline: Opening the Imaginary in Architecture and the Arts,” was organized by Tate Liverpool and CAVA at the University of Liverpool. The event was held at Tate Liverpool auditorium on October 23, 2014.
28 Tate Liverpool and CAVA, “Rolling Around like Gorillas on the Incline: Opening the Imaginary in Architecture and the Arts,” 2014. Published rationale for the one-day symposium event at Tate Liverpool auditorium, October 23, 2014. Accessed July 1, 2015. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/special-event/rolling-around-gorillas-on-incline-opening-imaginary, n.p.
29 In the 1960s, this was described in terms of the formation-of-art-through-reading rather than the reception-of-art-through-looking, as discussed, for example, by Robert Smithson, “Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read.” Press release written for the first of four “Language” shows at Dwan Gallery in New York between 1967 and 1970; see Jack Flam, Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996); see also Atkinson, “Concerning the Article” and in his introduction to the first edition of the journal Art–Language (in 1969).
30 Others like Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth and Vito Acconci could similarly be cited.
31 Mike Metz and Dan Graham, “Dan Graham Interviewed by Mike Metz,” in Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art, edited by Alexander Alberro (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1999); first published in Bomb no. 46 (Winter 1994), 185; Anne Rorimer, “Siting the Page: Exhibiting Works in Publications – Some Examples of Conceptual Art in the USA,” in Rewriting Conceptual Art, edited by Michael Newman and John Bird (London: Reaktion, 1999), 13.
32 Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, Notes on Analysis (Coventry: Art-Language Press, 1970); excerpt reproduced in Lucy Lippard (ed.), Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (Berkley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1973), 136–137.
33 Peter Osborne, Conceptual Art (London: Phaidon, 2002).
34 Dexter Sinister, interviewed by Hugendubel (see note 22), n.p.
35 Anthony Elms, “A Flibbertigibbet, a Will-o’-the-Wisp, a Clown (or 10 Reasons why Graphic Design is Not the Issue),” Afterall (Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design, London) no. 27 (2011): 37.
36 Saul Anton, “Propositions and Publications: On Dexter Sinister,” Afterall (Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design, London) no. 27 (2011): 21.
37 This description is taken from that used by Peter Osborne in discussing the operation of key published artworks from the period of Conceptual Art in the 1960s and 1970s; Osborne, Conceptual Art, 31.
38 Parent, “Limits of Memory,” 16.
39 Price, whose work interrogates the mutability and open-endedness of digital web-based channels, refers to this in particular as “a model that encourages contamination, borrowing, stealing, and horizontal blur”; Seth Price, Dispersion (2002–ongoing). Free PDF download accessed February 18, 2015. http://www.distributedhistory.com/, n.p.
40 Other similar practices include that of Paul Chan, whose self-established publishing activity Badlands Unlimited makes books in what he terms “the expanded field,” via projects like How to Download a Boyfriend, a group exhibition in the form of an e-publication (see http://badlandsunlimited.com); Rhizome and Triple Canopy, whose advanced models of contemporary arts spaces are hinged on the development of publishing systems and depend upon digitally networked forms of production and circulation (see http://rhizome.org and http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com); and Journal, a 2014 exhibition curated by Matt Williams at the ICA, London, which expanded the physical gallery environment though an online space with documentations ranging from digital artworks, performance, screenings and writings (see http://journal.ica.org.uk).
41 Redhead, “Toward a Theory of Critical Modernity,” 42.