editors:

Craig Dworkin (b.1969) is a poet, literary theorist and art critic. His work over the past decade has involved some of the most strenuous examples of ‘conceptual writing’ as well as some of the most giddy sound-scapes to come out of the practice of phonetic translations. Dworkin takes seriously Wittgenstein’s axiom that “there are no gaps in grammar, that everything is already there if we will only see the connections.”

He is the author of Reading the Illegible (Northwestern UP, 2003) and four books of poetry: Signature-Effects (Ghos-Ti, 1997); Dure (Cuneiform, 2004); Strand (Roof, 2004); and Parse (Atelos, 2008). He has edited Architectures of Poetry (Rodopi, 2004); Language to Cover a Page: The Early Writing of Vito Acconci (MIT, 2006); The Consequence of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics (Roof, 2008); The Sound of Poetry/ The Poetry of Sound (with Marjorie Perloff, Chicago UP, 2009); and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing (with Kenneth Goldsmith, Northwestern UP, 2010). He curates two on-line archives: Eclipse and The UbuWeb Anthology of Conceptual Writing, and is Professor of English at the University of Utah.

Simon Morris (b.1968) is a conceptual writer and teacher. He understands his role as an artist is to create a theoretical space that others feel comfortable working in and to erase his own ego in order to stimulate desire in others. Morris works to create a space of transference where linking and connecting can take place – a shared space of encounter wherein non-meaning allows the reader to construct their own meaning – and has engaged extensively with models of collaboration, digital technologies, performance writing, psychoanalysis and art history, though he describes his engagement with all such areas as being “poetic rather than logical.”

His solo exhibitions include presentations at The Freud Museum (London, 2005) and The Telephone Repeater Station (Catterick, 2003). He participated in ‘The First Festival of Media and Electronic Art’ (Rio de Janeiro, 2005) and EAST International (Norwich, 2005), plus numerous other group exhibitions internationally, including shows at The VOX Centre for Contemporary Image (Montreal, 2009), Art Metropole (Toronto, 2004) and Printed Matter, Inc. (New York, 2002). He is the author of numerous experimental books, including bibliomania (1998); interpretation [vol. I & II] (2002); The Royal Road to the Unconscious (2003); and Re-Writing Freud (2005). He is an occasional curator and a regular lecturer on contemporary art, and also directed the documentary films sucking on words: Kenneth Goldsmith (2007) and making nothing happen: Pavel Büchler (2010).

Nick Thurston (b.1982) is an artist and writer. The uses of languages and the possibilities of languages are his primary concerns, alongside the politics of property and commodities, plus the societal ethics of being artistic vis-à-vis those politics (i.e. an ethics of artistic labour). Thurston works to explore modes of reading – in both literary and fine art contexts, and precisely as conceptualist performances – in such a way that all the trajectories of his work coalesce as one praxis of poetics.

He is the author of Historia Abscondita (An Index of Joy) (iam, 2007) and Reading the Remove of Literature (iam, 2006), plus numerous journal articles and artists’ pages; and is co-author of THE DIE IS CAST (with Caroline Bergvall, iam, 2009). He has performed or exhibited internationally, including presentations at Bury City Museum (Bury, 2009); Printed Matter, Inc. (New York, 2006); and the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, 2006). He was an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University from 2006-2009.

artists / authors:

derek beaulieu (b. 1973) is a conceptual writer, concrete poet, publisher and teacher who lives and works in Calgary (Canada). His work primarily focuses on the intersections between reading and writing. beaulieu uses antiquated business tools and obsessive writing techniques to create texts which demand new forms of reading.

beaulieu is the author five books of poetry (most recently the visual poetry suite Silence); three volumes of conceptual fiction (most recently the short story collection How to Write); and over 100 chapbooks. His work is consistently praised as some of the most radical and challenging contemporary Canadian writing. beaulieu is publisher of the acclaimed smallpresses housepress (1997-2004) and no press (2005-present), and editor of several small magazines in Canada. He has spoken and written on poetics internationally and is a teacher of English and Journalism with the Calgary Board of Education. Toro magazine recently wrote “using techniques drawn from graphic design, fine art and experimental writing, [beaulieu] vigorously tests the restrictions, conventions, and denotations of the letters of the alphabet.”

More about beaulieu can be found at: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/beaulieu/.

Pavel Büchler (b.1952) is an artist, teacher and occasional writer who is interested in what art makes possible to realise: both to think and to do. Summing up his own practice as “making nothing happen”, he is committed to the catalytic nature of art and its potential to draw attention to the obvious. “Like an incompetent electrician” he creates conditions in which incompatible perspectives short-circuit.

Büchler writes on contemporary art, photography, film and art education. He has co-edited several anthologies of critical writing, and is the author of Ghost Stories: Stray Thoughts on Photography and Film (Proboscis, 1999) plus numerous artists’ books. His recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include the Kunsthalle Bern (Bern, 2006); Goethe Institut (Dublin, 2006); Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, 2007); objectif_exhibitions/MuHKA (Antwerp, 2007); Max Wigram Gallery (London, 2008 and 2009); Sleeper (Edinburgh, 2008); annex14 (Bern, 2007 and 2009); Tanya Leighton Gallery (Berlin, 2009); Street Level (Glasgow, 2009); and DOX (Prague, 2010). He has recently participated in ‘Whatever Happened to Social Democracy?’ (Rooseum, Malmö, 2005); ‘Off-Key’ (Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 2005); the 9th Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, 2005); ‘The Grand Promenade’ (National Museum of Modern Art, Athens, 2006); ‘Involved’ (Sganghart Gallery, Shanghai, 2008); ‘The Human Stain’ (CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, 2009); and other group exhibitions in the UK, Europe and USA. A monograph on his work, Absentmindedwindowgazing, was published in 2007 by Veenman Publishers (Rotterdam). Since 1997 he has been Research Professor in Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Caroline Bergvall (b.1962) is a writer and artist based in London, who works across media, languages and artforms. Her projects and research alternate between published poetic pieces, audiophonic texts, ;ive performance and installation pieces.

Bergvall’s books are widely noted for their combination of performative, visual and literary textualities, and include Fig (Salt Books, 2005) and Cropper (Torque Press, 2008).  Her volume of new and selected pieces, entitled Projects for Foam, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books, NY, September 2010. Her critical work addresses questions of new literacies, plurilingualism, body politics and accented practices. This line of her work includes, most recently, the article ‘A Cat in the Throat: On bilingual occupants’ (Jacket Magazine #37, 2009).

She has presented and exhibited internationally, including projects at The Hammer Museum (with Rodney McMillian; Los Angeles, 2008-09); The Poetry Marathon (Serpentine Gallery, London, 2009); MoMA (New York, 2007); Tate Modern (London, 2010); and MukHA (Antwerp, 2008). Current exhibitions include the collaborative sound and language installation (with Ciarán Maher), Say Parsley, at The Arnolfini Gallery (Bristol, May-July 2010).

Bergvall has taught widely, in the UK and USA, and is currently an AHRC Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Southampton (2007-2010). Up to date information can be found at www.carolinebergvall.com.

Kenneth Goldsmith’s (b.1961) writing has been called “some of the most exhaustive and beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry” by Publishers Weekly. He is the author of ten books of poetry; founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb; and the editor of I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, which was the basis for an opera, “Trans-Warhol,” that premiered in Geneva, March 2007. An hour-long documentary on his work, Sucking on Words (iam, 2007) premiered at the British Library and Oslo Poetry Festival.

Goldsmith is the host of a weekly radio show on New York City’s WFMU, and teaches Poetics and Poetic Practice at The University of Pennsylvania, where he is a senior editor of the online poetry archive, PennSound. He has been awarded the The Anschutz Distinguished Fellow Professorship in American Studies at Princeton University for 2009-10 and received the Qwartz Electronic Music Award in Paris in 2009.  A book of critical essays, Uncreative Writing, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. He has also co-edited the anthology Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing with Craig Dworkin, forthcoming from Northwestern University Press.

More about Goldsmith can be found at: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith

Sarah Jacobs (b.1944) is an artist who lives and works, quietly, in London. Her accolades include being Gustav Metzger’s selection for the exhibition ‘Artists’ Favourites’ at the ICA (London, 2004).

Jacobs is the maker of numerous bookworks, including Drawn from the Work in Progress (Colebrooke Publications, 1996); A Wa[y]farer (Colebrooke Publications, 1998); After the Years of Misrule (Colebrooke Publications, 2001); The Unknown Masterpiece Drawing Book (Colebrooke Publications, 2002); Luxuriant Beauty Bears Witness (Colebrooke Publications, 2003);  Deciphering Human Chromosone 16 – From Fugu to Human (as the Fishbone Initiative) (Colebrooke Publications, 2004); Moby Dick or the Whale (as Herman Melville) (012 Free Press, 2006); and Deciphering Human Chromosome 16: Index to the Report (information as material, 2007). She is also the maker of a number of webworks and e-books, including On the Zigzag Paths (2^nd ed, Great Works, 2006); Deciphering Human Chromosome 16: We Report Here (as the Fishbone Initiative) (2^nd ed, information as material, 2007).

Her most recent work, Song of the Data Stream, that can be found at: http://www.songofthedatastream.net/song.html and its allied YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/ScanningSkimming.

Sharon Kivland (b. 1955) adopts psychoanalytic readings as an artist, writer, curator, and academic.  In all of those guises she considers herself a ventriloquist, and learnedly explores the histories, sentiments, styles and objects of psychoanalysis to lead her readers through a conceptual re-thinking and textual re-imagining of what is put at stake by the practices of art and psychoanalysis. Her own practice is one of refinement — trapped in archives, libraries, the arcades, and at the intersection of public-political action and private subjectivity.

She is the author of many books, including A Case of Hysteria (Bookworks, 1999), the series Freud on Holiday (information as material & cubearteditions, 2006+), and artists’ books such as le bonheur des femmes (Filigranes 2002); Flair and La forme valeur (Domobaal editions, 2006 and 2005). She is also editor of the ongoing Transmission series of publications (Artwords) and co-convenor of its lecture series (with Jaspar Joseph-Lester; 2000+); co-editor of the forthcoming Transmission Annual, and Viscissitudes. Histories and Destinies of Psychoanalyssis (with Naomi  Segal; University of London Press); and co-convenor of ‘Reading to Attention’ at the Association of Art Historians Conference (with Forbes Morlock; 2010).

Kivland’s recent solo shows include ‘Mes plus belles’ (Le Spinx, Paris, 2010); ‘Reisen’ (Galerie Bugdahn & Kaimer, Düsseldorf, 2009); ‘Quels seraient les meilleurs moyens de perfectionner l’éducation des femmes?’ (CIAC, Pont-Aven, 2009); ‘A Wind of Revolution Blows, the Storm is on the Horizon’(CHELSEA Space, London, 2008); and ‘Natural Education’ (Bast’art/Feriancova Contemporary, Bratislava, 2008). Recent group exhibitions include ‘elles@centrepompidou’ (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2009–10); ‘Sophisticated Boom-Boom (in b&w)’ (Domobaal, London, 2010); and ‘Parallax’ (Fieldgate Gallery, London, 2009). Kivland is a Visiting Fellow in the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London; Research Associate of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London; and Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University.

Robert Williams (b.1960) is an artist and academic whose interdisciplinary practice involves sculpture, installation, performance, film-making and writing as modes of engagement with epistemology and systems of knowledge – from the hermetic to the scientific – that question their actual and possible socio-cultural functions.

He has collaborated extensively with the American artist Mark Dion since 1998 on projects including The Tasting Garden (Lancaster, 1998), The Tate Thames Dig (London, 1999), Theatrum Mundi: Armarium (2001), An Ordinall of Alchemy (New York, 2010); and shows including ‘Down the Garden Path: Artists Gardens After Modernism’ at the Queens Museum of Art (New York, 2005); plus a series of prints for the London Underground Art Project. Williams’ latest collaborator is his 11-year old son, Jack Aylward-Williams (b.1998) and their works together include the year long Thesaurus Scienta Lancastriae (Lancaster, 2004-05; published by Unipress & iam, 2006), the film Procession (2005) for the Blind Pond Film Festival at Narrowsburg, and the project Virga et Lapilla for the exhibition ‘Stones, Circles, Landscape & Art’ at Penrith Museum (2006). Robert & Jack are currently working on long term projects about The Underworld, Dragons, Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selbourne and an evolutionary homage to Charles Darwin.

R. Williams’ decade long project, Opus Magnum: Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum will be completed in Pennsylvania during the Summer of 2010. He was Henry Moore Scholar in Sculpture Studies in 1990 and has been leader of the Fine Art Programme at Cumbria Institute of the Arts/University of Cumbria since 1998.