This Saturday: Triple Canopy to Play a Beautiful Conceptualist Hand in Poems for America

Should you be in New York this Saturday, September 15, please place your intelligent body at Triple Canopy's 155 Freeman Street, at which point you may begin to revel in conversations surrounding conceptualism in art and poetry like you've always felt deeply you were meant to...it's Corrected Slogans: A Publication in Four Acts! Act 1, in which you can take part most immediately, begins with a public program, "Poems for America." The stars are plenty. More on this MUST:

Act 1: Poems for America
On September 15, Triple Canopy will host the first half of Poems for America, a pair of symposia on poetics and conceptual art. Participants for this first symposium include Michael Corris, Aaron Kunin, Margaret Lee, K. Silem Mohammad, Ken Okiishi, Katie Raissian, Gretchen Wagner, and Matvei Yankelevich. (Details regarding the second part of the symposium, to be held in late October, will be announced on Triple Canopy’s website soon.)

Poems for America will consider the ways in which acts of unoriginal composition—quotation, appropriation, transcription, and so on—create an aesthetic milieu in which certain modes of cultural production become legible, both historically and with reference to contemporary experience. How do the strategies inherited from conceptual art permit writers and artists to narrate the construction and projection of the self in relation to lived experience (rather than emphasizing abnegation of the self in favor of engagement with abstract concepts)? How do artists and poets engage with systems of language and thought to investigate the construction of historical and political identity, even while rejecting traditional modes of self-expression? How is conceptual writing and art published, and how is it shaped by changing technologies and related approaches to publication?

2:00—3:00 p.m., À Rebours
1. In the sense contrary to natural or habitual sense. 2. In a manner contrary to common sense, reason, or usage. 3. In reverse; inversely.
Aaron Kunin in conversation with Ken Okiishi, moderated by Katie Raissian.

3:30—4:30 p.m., Conceptual Art History
Black-and-white debates, gray matters, and red herrings.
Michael Corris in conversation with Matvei Yankelevich, moderated by Lucy Ives.

5:00—6:00 p.m., Commonplaces
A talk about excerption and arrangement; anagrams, buildings, and food.
Margaret Lee in conversation with K. Silem Mohammad, moderated by Gretchen Wagner.

Bios for participants can be read at the Triple Canopy site. As for Acts 2-4:

Acts 2–4
The second act of Corrected Slogans, a book generated by the symposia and designed by Franklin Vandiver, will be published in January 2013, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

The third act is a contribution by Triple Canopy to the upcoming exhibition “Postscript: Writing after Conceptual Art,” curated by Nora Burnett Abrams and Andrea Andersson, on view at MCA Denver from October 12, 2012 until February 3, 2013.

The fourth act is a series of articles in Triple Canopy’s online magazine by Erica Baum, Gareth Long, and Caroline Bergvall, all of whom are participating in “Postscript,” and whose projects will be collected in a special forthcoming issue of the magazine.