Simon Morris examines the relationship between reading and art. He proposes a new method of making art via conceptualist performed readings. This method grafts the aesthetic legacy of Conceptual Art on to various notions of writing (from literary composition to data management) in order to produce materially-specific poems as artworks that have in some way re-read a found object. Professor Morris is a leading contributor to the field of conceptual writing with a publishing imprint dedicated to the genre, multiple books, as well the first film on key protagonist Kenneth Goldsmith and the first public exhibition of conceptual writing in the world (The Perverse Library, Shandy Hall). This output builds on his existing research, examining the act of reading and how this could be seen as its own form of making. The new insight it proposes is that work in this discipline in the post-internet age has either too much language (The Ecstasy of Communication — Baudrillard) or too little language (The Infrathin — Duchamp).
Image courtesy of interviewee. September 4, 2018