An exploration of Minimal writing--texts generally shorter than a sentence--as complex, powerful literary and visual works.
When reading has become scanning a screen and Writing tapping out a text, Absence of clutter invites us to reflect on how we read, see, and pay attention..
Text, it seems, is becoming ever more prevalent in visual art; meanwhile, poems are getting shorter.
He reverse engineers recent works by Jen Bervin, Craig Dworkin, and Christian B k that draw on molecular biology, and explores print-on-demand books by Holly Melgard, code poetry by Nick Montfort, Twitter-based work by Allison Parrish, and the use of Instagram by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Saroyan.
Stephens first sets out a theoretical framework for reading and viewing Minimal Writing and then offers close readings of works of Minimal Writing by Saroyan, Grenier, Norman Pritchard, Natalie Czech, and others. Absence of clutter, for example, the entire text of a poem by Robert Grenier, is both expressive and self-descriptive.
Minimal writing, Stephens writes, can be beguilingly simple on the surface, but can also offer iterative reading experiences on multiple levels, from the fleeting to the ponderous. (One poem by Aram Saroyan reads in its entirety: eyeye.) In Absence of clutter , Paul Stephens offers the first comprehensive account of Minimal writing, arguing that it is equal in complexity and power to better-known, more commercial text-based art.
Meanwhile, poets and writers created works of Minimal writing--visual texts generally shorter than a sentence.
Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Carl Andre, Lawrence Weiner, and others built lucrative careers from text-based art.
In the 1960s and 70s, Minimal and conceptual artists stripped language down to its most basic components: the word and the letter.
An exploration of Minimal writing--texts generally shorter than a sentence--as complex, powerful literary and visual works
