Original scientific paper
Conceptual writing between language poetry and visual art
Dubravka Đurić
; Media and information sciences faculty in Belgrade, Serbia
Abstract
The argument deals with conceptual or non-creative writing. The term “conceptual writing” was introduced by the poet and scholar Craig Dworkin, while the term “non-creative writing” was proposed by the poet and scholar Kenneth Goldsmith, both in the context of the American experimental poetic formation situated in between the field of experimental poetry and visual art. Conceptual poets, some of them also academic artists, such as Goldmisth, or concerned with visual arts, such as Dworkin, appeared on the experimental poetry scene in the late 1990s. They highlithed the importance of the internet for writing.
They considered that the internet ought to play the function in poetry comparable to the one played by photography in the context of visual art. Drawing on the artists, conceptual poets develop the devices of non-creativity, non-originality, unreadability, appropriation, and re-contextualization, that is, of the re-framing of the found material. Like language poets, conceptual poets also implement an anti-lyrical poetic paradigm refuting expressionism and a clearly articulated lyrical “I”. They adjust avant-garde strategies to the digital age. It is why they consider of particular significance the ready-made potential of non-creative literature and highlight particularly Andy Warhol and Joseph Koshut. It is further necessary to regard the importance of conceptual art be it for language poetry or for conceptual writing, whose name has been derived from it. Scholars explain the work of the poets in terms of the notions of transmediation and re-mediation, while they argue about their paradoxical relationship to the internet. So, for example, even though Goldsmith writes about the web and digital culture, he still uses the medium of book, as if in an era of the prevalence of print culture.
Keywords
conceptual writing; non-creative writing; the internet; visual art; language writing; re-mediation/ transmediation
Hrčak ID:
304958
URI
Publication date:
29.6.2023.
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