poetic modes of the officially sanctioned.’2 This is encouraging, particularly in light of what we continually hear: that poetry is powerless, useless and is so marginal and hermetic that it can't possibly engage with culture in any meaningful way. Poetry, we're told time and again, has been reduced to a hobby, a craft practiced by few, speaking to an audience of even fewer. While this one type of activist poetry has been very much on our minds lately, it's a good time to note that poetic resistance can take many forms. Sometimes this refusal involves disrupting normative modes of syntax, as in the case of many modernisms, which proposed new social orders by questioning the traditional roles of readers and writers. Encouraging, too, has been the Eco and Slow Poetry movements that have worked to engage communities, both local and global. These are but a few examples of what I would term activist poetry. While there are many others, even such a short list makes me wonder where we got the idea that poetry doesn't matter?
I'd like to focus on another destabilizing strategy, one that directly engages institutions, critiquing and deconstructing them from within. For the past half century, there's been a strain of conceptual art known as institutional critique, which takes as its subject matter the way that institutions frame and My Career in Poetry or: control discourses surrounding the art works How I Learned to Stop Worrying and that they exhibit rather than focusing on the Love the Institution content of the art works themselves. A more Kenneth Goldsmith traditional approach would be to isolate an art work and to appreciate its aesthetic values, Over the past few months, we've seen a while ignoring the context in which it is being remarkable outpouring of what could be called displayed and the factors that brought it there. activist poetry: poetry that makes things Institutional critique claims that the structures happen, poetry as an occupying force. One surrounding the works are actually what gives activist poet has framed current events in the work much of its meaning, often times historical terms, calling it ‘a powerful extension controlling the reception of a work in ways we of the role that poets have played in recent as viewers are unaware of. While institutional decades - in the civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, critique began in the museum, the practice and women’s rights movements... in the anti- evolved over time to include everything from apartheid movement of the 1980s; and in the the production and distribution of art to an more recent movement against the current examination of the corporate offices or war in Iraq.’1 And in December of 2011, the collectors’ homes where the art was hung. By poet John Kinsella withdrew from the T.S. Eliot the 1980s, it roped in art criticism, academic prize after learning that the award was lectures, and art's reception in the popular sponsored by a nefarious hedge fund. In a press. Around the same time, art schools statement, Kinsella proposed an ‘activist began offering classes in post-studio practice, poetics’ agenda based on what he terms where the studying of institutional critique ‘linguistic disobedience’, a practice concerned became an act of making art in and of itself. with ‘pushing language to work both in unexpected ways and outside the expected
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9.
So you get works like Hans Haacke's 1970 his plaster-embedded books, Broodthaers ‘MoMA Poll’, which was literally a poll which released a statement in which made explicit asked viewers ‘Would the fact that Governor his intentions: ‘I, too, wondered whether I Rockefeller has not denounced President could not sell something and succeed in life. Nixon's Indochina Policy be a reason for your For some time I had been no good at not voting for him in November?’ and provided anything. I am forty years old .... Finally the two plexiglass boxes into which the YES or NO idea of inventing something insincere crossed ballots were cast. While, aesthetically, the my mind and I set to work straightaway.’6 piece fit into the primary structures and information-based art of the period, Haacke There's something prescient about meant to shed light on the fact that Nelson Broodthaers’ practice as to much work that's Rockefeller was a member of MoMA's board, been staged in the poetry world recently. With thereby making visible the normally hidden the emergence of conceptual poetics, the play of money, power and politics behind the possibilities for critical, self-reflexive devices institution. Another tactic is to take objects have become somewhat commonplace. from a museum's collection and rearrange Broodthaers' keywords, unreadability and them in ways that highlight the biases of the insincerity, are words you often hear batted collection. For instance, in 1993 the African- around poetry today. In fact, you could say American artist Fred Wilson critiqued the that two recent movements - Conceptual Maryland Historical Society's collection in Writing's unreadability and Flarf's insincerity - relationship to Maryland's history of slavery. are founded upon and enact these premises. For this show, he regrouped specific objects from the museum in order to speak of ‘a Perhaps the most relevant work of institutional history which the museum and the community critique in the poetry world to date is the now wouldn't talk about: the history of the infamous Issue 1. Published in 2008, it was a exclusion and abuse that African-American 3,785-page unauthorized and unpermissioned people experienced in that area.’3 Other works anthology, ‘written’ by 3,164 poets, whose have focused on the physical institution itself. poems were actually authored not by the Andrea Fraser, acting as a docent, led false poets to whom they were attributed. Instead, museum tours, not of the works on the walls, the poems were generated by computer which but of the security systems, water fountains, randomly synced each author with a poem. and cafeterias. In 2003, Fraser performed Stylistically, it made no sense: a well-known what was perhaps the ultimate work of traditional poet was paired with a radically institutional critique: a collector paid $20,000 disjunctive poem penned by a computer and to sleep with her, ‘not for sex,’ according to vice versa. Fraser, but ‘to make an artwork.’4 Yet it wasn't so much the stylistics that raised And yet surprisingly, institutional critique has eyebrows, it was the mechanics of it - the its roots in poetry, or rather a poet's distribution and the notification - which riled disenchantment with his career trajectory. In the contributors. The work was stitched into a 1964, Marcel Broodthaers, an impoverished massive PDF, which was placed on a media poet associated for many years with the server late one evening. Many people found radical left wing of the Belgian surrealist about their inclusion first thing in the morning, movement, took forty-four unsold copies of a when finding that the Google Alert they had book of his last volume of poetry and set for their name had notified them that they embedded them in plaster and re-presented were included in a major new anthology. them as sculpture in a gallery. With this one Clicking on the link brought them to the gesture, he symbolically annulled his career as anthology where upon downloading it, they a writer by rendering his already economically found their name attached to a poem they worthless books now completely unreadable didn't write. Like wildfire, reaction spread and, at the same time, by recontextualizing through the community: Why was I in it? Why them as art, gave license to magically wasn’t I in it? Why was my name matched transform them into commodifiable art with that poem? Who was responsible for this objects.5 By prioritizing cultural context over act? Some the ‘contributors’ were delighted to artistic content, Broodthaers' gesture is be included while others were wildly angered. generally considered the first work of Speaking on behalf of the disgruntled authors institutional critique. The first time he showed whose reputations of genius and authenticity
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9. were sullied was blogger and poet Ron fame, the market in cultural capital and Silliman, who said ‘Issue 1 is what I would call symbolic goods, and the construction of an act of anarcho-flarf vandalism .... Play with status might find disconcerting ... other people’s reps at your own risk.’ Silliman Goldsmith distances himself from the went on to cite a lawsuit in which he and a idea of the text-as-art-object, and group of authors won a great sum of money moves toward the effect, the stimulation involving copyright infringement back in the of thought, and the generation of 70s, suggesting that such a gesture might be conversation about the object as the a good idea for those scammed by Issue 1. real medium of his art. It's not quite the Striking an ominous tone, he stated, ‘As I artist's career as the artist's medium, certainly did not write the text associated with but it is a step in that direction .... It's a my name on page 1849... I don't think you direction I personally see as a bit — wrote your work either.’7 what? — I suppose 'destined to produce unhappiness for those who take it' is the As there really wasn't much to discuss about phrase.8 the poems - in regard to everything else going While I’m curious as to how a perfect stranger on about this gesture, they seemed pretty might be able to predict my future mental irrelevant - we were forced to consider the state, Archambeau's skepticism is typical of conceptual apparatuses that the anonymous the unexamined reaction that the poetry world authors had set into motion. With one gesture, often falls back upon when they suspect like Broodthaers, they had swapped the focus poets of engaging with institutions on any from content to context. level.
Similarly, Vanessa Place has been producing A more nuanced – but equally suspicious – what she calls her Factory Series, works reaction was generated by Dale Smith, written by others but published under Place's founder of the Slow Poetry movement, during name. She writes, ‘Andy Warhol used his a public conversation that he and I had: Factory to train others to produce art 'by Andy Dale Smith: By bringing Conceptual Warhol' that looked like Andy Warhol’s art. Poetry to the Whitney earlier this year, Vanessa Place’s Factory Series is a series of don't you feel as though you betrayed chapbooks 'by Vanessa Place' whose content the radical impulse behind the avant- has been dictated by other artists/writers, garde? Or perhaps I've fallen for the who, in turn, have appropriated content from performative gesture, and in my dismay other artists/writers .... No longer unique, no over the carrying over of Conceptual longer limited in edition, no longer touched by Poetry to the Art World Institution, I've the authorial hand, bearing no necessary simply fallen for a scheme to generate relationship to the writings of Vanessa Place, discussion around Conceptual Poetry? the Factory series simply preserves the place Kenneth Goldsmith: Honestly, Dale, if of poetry.’ Place also has been for some time the Whitney wanted to do a night of appropriating her own day job of writing legal Slow Poetry, would you really say no? briefs into gigantic contextually-based poetic DS: In the context of Slow Poetry, I works such as Statement of Fact and would have to refuse, though I would Statement of the Case. lose sleep over it. Or, perhaps, I'd pull a Marlon Brando, and send someone else In April of 2011, the critic Robert Archambeau to collect the trophy — use the wrote of my work: opportunity — put it toward some other There are points, especially lately, purpose. I might ask for the money to where Goldsmith seems to be going in a document some other kind of event — direction that (like a lot of what he in a nursing home or something. It does) has been taken before in the art would be difficult, and I realize the world, but has been less common in the pressure involved, but that's how it is. poetry world. It's a turn to the idea of KG: Wow! That's amazing. Tell me the career itself as the most important more! Why would you refuse? I'm medium of the art. There are plenty of fascinated! ways to do this, but the way Goldsmith DS: It has to do with Slow Poetry. It seems to be going is one that people doesn't belong to me. And there's who are critical of the apparatus of nothing to promote. And I don't want to
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9.
be responsible for institutionalizing most prominently articulated by poet and anything in that sense — slipping under blogger Linh Dinh, who claimed, ‘To be a the Museum's covers. I would rather minstrel for a mass murderer is nothing to be send Jack Collom or Sotère Torregian or proud of... This just heightens my contempt Joanne Kyger. Or a homeless person for the state of American poetry. Did Bertolt dressed up as me saying whatever they Brecht dance for Hitler? Future generations wanted to say — that would be an will look back at us and retch. Very sad.’10 And interesting conceptual gesture, I would yet, the institution – in the form of Al Filreis of think. Kent Johnson has proposed that The University of Pennsylvania (my employer) ‘the poetic politics of [Flarf and – leapt to my defense with a nuanced and Conceptual Poetry] begin where those moderate argument. He responded to Dinh: of Language poetry ended.’ I wonder if I don't disagree with you about war, by this he means that the new poetic that's certain, but obviously I do avant-garde is inside a ‘building’ that's disagree about what Kenny has been primed to receive ‘art works’ of the specifically said yes to. Michelle Obama kind you are offering. These has been doing a few good things in the installations want to be provocative, but arts, but this project (series) they're inside a kind of museum, that's unfortunately hasn't so far been one of been ready-made for them, if you'll them; her people asked the usual pardon the pun.9 suspects (e.g. Billy Collins) and someone in her office had the fairly Kent Johnson's comment about Language unusual idea of trying something poetry is correct in that it was a movement different, aesthetically, and so Kenny, that recognized that it could not survive who must have pondered the down without the support of the institution. There is sides of accepting, decided on balance so little interest in the avant-garde in the that helping to provide some poetic general population that if not for the academy, range was a good thing to do. this work would be nearly invisible. So you Goldsmith is no Brecht (in mode or have the institution as survival strategy. In intention) and so I don't expect him to fact, for advanced poetries – meaning ones refuse in a manner that presumably that are decidedly non- or anti-populist – if Brecht would have, even in your this work is not received in the academy, it's imagined analogy; and while Obama has not received at all. I, for example, owe my been to me and many others I admire career to academies and institutions; if my (including you, by the way) a work is not being taught or written about, it disappointment (and, in war policies, doesn't exist. With this historical knowledge, worse than that), I don't consider him a over the years, as the various mainstream Hitler (I've thought about totalitarianism institutions reached out to support it – Ivy a good deal).11 League universities, well-funded literary and academic journals, major museums, even the In regard to my considering the downsides of White House – I said yes. But with a caveat: I the invitation, I realized that this would couldn't be censored and had to be allowed to provide a rare opportunity to put radical poetic say what I needed to say in the way that I theory and practice into institutional play; in needed to say it, however distasteful it might fact, what it would reveal about the surprising be to them, or I would walk away. Shockingly, structure of that particular institution – as I'll they all agreed and to this day, no major get to later – would prove to be more valuable institution has even attempted to tone down than the blunt warnings against participating what I say or do. And believe me, I have at all. But I did stop to consider the invitation: made some very provocative claims. So an when I was invited to read, I wondered aloud engagement with an institution can be like to a colleague whether if, asked by the G.W. holding up a mirror to the institution, a limit Bush administration to read, would I have test to see what it is capable – or incapable – accepted? To which my colleague responded, of. ‘Kenny, you never would've been asked to read at the G.W. Bush White House.’ Yet old attitudes die hard. The poetry world was largely critical of my acceptance of an But let's look at what actually happened at the invitation to read at the White House last May, White House and see how it played out on
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9. institutional terms. The day was split into two told the group that ‘Only you can tell parts. In the afternoon there was a poetry your story. So if you remain true to your workshop led by Michelle Obama in the State own experience, your voice will find Dining Room and then in the evening there you!’), [Goldsmith] begins by noting, was a formal reading in the East Room. While tongue in cheek, that his own students there were eight ‘poets’ invited to read, most are penalized for any shred of originality of them were entertainers who performed or creativity they might show. As he their lyrics as poetry, such as Jill Scott, puts it in the manifesto, ‘Instead they Common, Aimee Mann, and Steve Martin, who are rewarded for plagiarism, identity brilliantly sung an Auden poem with his theft, repurposing papers, patchwriting, bluegrass band. The only other full-time poets, sampling, plundering and stealing. Not beside myself, were Rita Dove and Billy surprisingly they thrive. Suddenly, what Collins. I should mention that one avant-garde they've surreptitiously become expert at visual artist, Alison Knowles, was also present. is brought out in the open and explored In terms of the institution, when I was invited in a safe environment, reframed in to read, I was only given one rule: that I could terms of responsibility instead of not read anything political. What that exactly recklessness.’ Copying, cutting and meant I was never told. Other than that, I had pasting, downloading, recycling: these free rein to read whatever I wanted. Once I activities, Goldsmith argues, will actually had decided upon my reading, I had to submit teach students more about literature it for approval. Upon arriving at the White than the seeming 'originality' of self- House in the morning, the poets did a sound expression.12 check and ran through their short sets while Nobody blinked an eye. When discussing my handlers scurried about setting up the room entirely-appropriated book, Day, which is a for the evening's event. During this sound transcription of a day's copy of The New York check, our host, Joe Reinstein, The Deputy Times, I was interrupted by an engrossed First Social Secretary to the President, was present Lady who insisted on knowing what day I from the Administration. After my sound chose to transcribe. The lack of resistance to check, Joe made a helpful suggestion what I was saying was remarkable. In fact, regarding the pacing of my introduction. It the White House was the most frictionless was good advice and made my set flow better. place I've ever been. Nothing ever goes wrong From that time until the moment I went there. Like walking on air or being on the onstage, nobody commented upon what I was moon, there's a complete lack of gravity. Due to read. In fact, that evening face-to-face with to the most insane security, it feels like the the President, it dawned on me that as I got freest, most relaxed place on earth. It's like up on stage, there was going to be nothing everyone is on a combination of Prozac and stopping me from reading something other Ecstasy. And everything I said there seemed than what I had told them I was going to do. I to be met with big smiles and nods of could've read something political or made approval, even things that advocated breaking some sort of unexpected intervention; much to social contracts - or even the law. Strange my detractors' chagrin, I didn't. I stuck to the doesn't begin to describe it. script, which for my purposes turned out to be the best thing to do. But more about that That evening, with the President sitting five later. feet away from me, I read appropriated texts. Again, nobody flinched. I put together a short In the afternoon session with the First Lady, set featuring an American icon, The Brooklyn when I was interviewed about my practice by Bridge, and presented three takes on it, first Elizabeth Alexander in front of the White an excerpt from before the bridge was built House Press Corps, 70 high school students, from Whitman's ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’, then and dozens of bureaucrats, I wasn't vetted the bridge as metaphysical / spiritual about what I could or couldn't say. I simply modernist icon with an excerpt from Hart said exactly what I say again and again, Crane's ‘To Brooklyn Bridge’, finally finishing making my arguments against creativity and with an excerpt from my book Traffic, which is for copyleft, file-sharing, and free culture. As 24 hours’ worth of transcribed traffic reports Marjorie Perloff described it, from a local New York news station. The Against the usual admonition to ‘Look in crowd, comprised of arts administrators, thy heart and write’ (Rita Dove has just Democratic party donors, and various senators
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9. and mayors, respectfully sat through the ‘real’ I figured that The Obamas – preps to the core poetry – the Whitman and Crane – but when – would in some way recognize the paisley the uncreative texts appeared, the audience and the pastels, but be befuddled by the size was noticeably more attentive, seemingly of the paisley or the way that the pastels were stunned that the quotidian language and unconventionally stitched together. And that, familiar metaphors from their world – in fact, was the case. Upon meeting the congestion, infrastructure, gridlock – could be President, the first thing he said to me was, framed somehow as poetry. It was a strange ‘That's a great suit! You know? I'd wear a suit meeting of the avant-garde with the everyday, like that. But my staff would never let me.’ To resulting in a realist poetry – or should I say which I replied, ‘Mr. President, this is one hyperrealist poetry – that was instantly instance where it's better being an artist than understood by all in the room; let's call it being the President of the United States: radical populism. artists can wear anything they want.’ And then he glanced down at my saddle shoes and Now let's take a moment to parse the famous exclaimed, ‘You're wearing golf shoes!’ Which suit I was wearing and examine how that in part was true, that being the genius of played into institutional critique. John Stewart Thom Browne, to take something familiar and speculated that it was improvised at the last recontextualize it to the point of it being minute, quipping that the afternoon before I ‘wrong’, which is exactly what I aimed to do went onstage I glanced at the wall and asked, with my performance, straddling tradition and ‘Hey, does that wallpaper come off?’ An UPenn radicality, being both and, at the same time, alumnus, writing in the Penn alumni magazine being neither; embracing contradiction, commented, keeping them guessing. Kenneth Goldsmith is pictured standing at a podium dressed somewhat like the Now where this intersects with theory is clown he apparently wishes to be. But interesting. Jacques Derrida stated that alas, he is not at a circus; he is an What [the] institution cannot bear, is honored guest at the White House, for anyone to tamper with reading his 'work' at an ‘Evening of language…It can bear more readily the Poetry’. most apparently revolutionary But the suit was actually made by Brooks ideological sorts of ‘content,’ if only Brothers, the same outfitters that supplied the that content does not touch the suit that The President himself was wearing borders of language and all the that evening. My suit was designed by the juridico-political contracts that it avant-garde designer Thom Browne under his guarantees.13 Brooks Brothers' owned Black Fleece label, As evidenced by the recent Occupy Wall Street who does pretty much what I was doing at the protests, institutions were – at least in the White House: taking the traditional patterns beginning – remarkably adaptive and flexible, that Brooks Brothers is known for – in this often sympathetic, to protesters. The modes case paisley – and pushing them way too far. of discourse, although radical in their political Similarly, during the day session with the First sentiments, were expressed in a common Lady, I wore a Thom Browne pastel suit, language (Derrida's ‘contract’), one that was which references the insane pastels of the well-understood and mutually agreed upon by preppy Newport set. For the suit I wore, both parties. Ideological differences – agree- Brown actually created a pastiche or to-disagree – are a given, but formal patchwork of traditional preppy colors and challenges to language prove to be a harder literally made a remix of them. It was clear pill to swallow. An example of this happened that Brooks Brothers needed to revitalize their when an artist showed up at Zuccotti Park brand, shake up the staid traditions, hence with a sign that read, ‘Gucci. Do The Dishes.’ they called in Browne to bring Brooks Brothers He was nearly run out of the occupation by into the 21st century, replete with self- protesters who attacked his language for lack conscious winks and nods, engaged with remix of clarity. They didn't know what to do with culture, and to add a big dose of impurity. poetic sentiment. Clearly, ambiguity broke the Clearly that meant not ditching their classic linguistic contracts. Yet Occupy Wall Street's line, but spinning off another line based on overarching genius has been to exploit these what they became famous for. exact precepts by developing what Brian Eno calls an ‘oblique strategy’, jamming norms by
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9. refusing to make a list of demands – adapting readership outside the academy. This is an attitude of ambiguity – breaking the a condition that preceded my arrival contract, leaving the institutions unsure of onto the writing scene, fostered by exactly how to respond. Brilliant, really. numerous cultural conditions in the Derrida's ideas were formulated in the wake of States, as well as the warm reception of May 68, where Situationist-inspired slogans – Language Poetry by the academy. As "Sous les pavés, la plage," "Ne travaillez such, I simply take it as a given that this jamais," or the sorts of linguistic détournement is where the readership and study of my that occurred during the Prague Spring, where work occurs. But it's not all bad news. street signs were painted over so as to At the University of Pennsylvania, where confuse the arriving tanks – similarly were I teach, we are given free rein to teach able to jam normative discourse by breaking in unconventional ways. For example, I the contract due to their oblique, poetic teach classes in uncreative writing qualities. The lesson: by taking a rigid position where we encourage the students to – either / or – one makes oneself an easy plagiarize, appropriate, plunder and target. Occupy Wall Street is a product of the sample. They are demerited when they digital age: distributed, non-specific, nowhere show signs of originality or of and everywhere at the same time. Such conventional thinking. The university strategies are nuanced and complex, causing supports this agenda, so you see that befuddlement in a binary-based black-and- perhaps the academy is not what it white culture. used to be.14 The fact that I am not only permitted but What happened in the White House was that encouraged to explore this in a university radicality was clothed in the nearly identical classroom – in plain sight – is a fact that I still linguistic garments of normative discourse find remarkable. And yet I continue on, as I familiar to the institution. And because it was have done for nearly a decade. But it's not just fed to it on its own terms, the juridico-political the University of Pennsylvania who has contracts were held in tact, thereby going permitted this: a host of other institutions unnoticed. In fact, one could say that most of have also signed on. In 2010 I was awarded those in the room were talking heads, daily the Anschutz Distinguished Professorship in spouting words written by others. It's no American Studies at Princeton University, wonder they felt akin to appropriative and where I also taught uncreative writing. In fact, uncreative writing. So what we're seeing with in my application for the award I had to much new conceptual work is the inability of propose a class and syllabus, so there were no institutions to muzzle those who tamper with surprises: they knew exactly what they were language because – unlike disjunctive getting. Furthermore, a once-staid university modernisms – it is unaware that it is being press, Columbia, just published a book of my tampered with. essays called – you guessed it – Uncreative Writing. The Chronicle of Higher Education – And this cloak of invisibility has affected and that standard bearer of academic institutions opened up certain institutions in ways that in the United States – recently published my even a few years ago, was unheard of. entire introduction to the Uncreative Writing – Recently, I was interviewed by a European all 8,000 words – in both print and on the academic journal and was asked a question web. And in 2009, I edited a 40-page portfolio I've been asked many times before: of Flarf and Conceptual Writing for Poetry, Interviewer: The programme of which is consistently derided in certain circles Language writing seems quite congenial for its inability to recognize and publish to what you do. They as well felt the ‘innovative’ work. Think again. This litany is need to react against poetry as it was/is not about bragging: what I find remarkable is taught at universities. Many language these institutions' embrace and acceptance of writers, however, are currently working what they're most often accused of dismissing at a university (and so are you). Isn't and ignoring. This is not to say that there there a contradiction in this? hasn't been pushback and anger from the Goldsmith: It's a fact that in the United public; particularly in the journals, there have States, the primary reception of been dozens of harsh responses, shocked that innovative literature happens in the such ‘proper’ institutions would even entertain university; there really is very little such ideas, much less unapologetically publish
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9. them. But in Derridean terms, this is all part of legitimacy means (or more specifically, to the juridico-political contract of commonly perform a critique of what Adorno terms the agreed-upon language. ‘culture industry’.) Once again, invoking insincerity and superficiality, in 1965 the artist Yet as recently as December 2011, The New blatantly spoke of desiring status and power: York Times published this astonishing In art exhibitions I often mused .... sentence: ‘Publishers are extremely sensitive Finally I would try to change into an art to charges of plagiarism, considered among lover. I would revel in my bad faith .... the gravest sins in the literary world, and in Since I couldn't build a collection of my some cases are quick to respond.’15 own, for lack of even the minimum of Conceptual writing began with legitimizing financial means, I had to find another plagiarism as a literary practice but, having way of dealing with the bad faith that thoroughly exhausted that terrain – need we allowed me to indulge in so many appropriate the entire internet? – has moved strong emotions. So, said I to myself, I'll on to explore non- or anti- writing. Plagiarism be a creator.18 is still concerned with traditional literary By creator, he meant founder, curator, and notions (the play between the original writer director for a newly created institution he and the re-writer, and of course, is deeply called The Museum of Modern Art, Department engaged with a readership, either duped or of Eagles, 19th Century Wing, which opened in complicit) and is still codependent upon the his street-level apartment in Brussels in 1969. role of the author. We're far beyond the death Contained in the ‘museum’ were postcard of the author; now we're talking about the reproductions of paintings adorning the walls death of literature. and sealed shipping crates strewn about the room. For a man who couldn't afford the real While there are pockets of resistance – some things that museums showed, his museums very large ones – it appears that by and large would have all the trappings of the museum – the battle has been won. So what happens the scaffolding and structures of the museum when the institutional critique is so easily – minus the objects. Over the years, his absorbed by the institution, that it moves from museums reappeared in various cities in a ‘critique of institutions to an institution of Europe, spontaneously re-opening with newly critique?’16 We've seen this already in the art installed works. And they got more complex: world where performative acts of institutional by the time he was done, his project was critique are regularly commissioned by the resolutely and self-reflexively museological, institutions themselves. Andrea Fraser, with a complex, invented system of arcane perhaps addressing her own practice, writes, and functionless collecting and naming, How can artists who have become art- resulting in a 'pataphysical institution, one that historical institutions themselves claim proposed imaginary curatorial solutions to to critique the institution of art? .... imaginary curatorial problems. Today, the argument goes, there no longer is an outside. How, then, can we Broodthaers’ trajectory makes us aware that in imagine, much less accomplish, a any extended artistic practice, there is an critique of art institutions when museum inevitable pull toward institutionalization. At and market have grown into an all- age 40, after having transitioned from poet to encompassing apparatus of cultural artist, and now finding himself with the title of reification? Now, when we need it most, Museum Director, Broodthaers wrote, institutional critique is dead, a victim of Of course I now have a job, and I'd its success or failure, swallowed up by have a hard time getting out of it. In my the institution it stood against.17 naïvete, I actually believed that I could put off choosing a profession until my One way out of this impasse might come from demise. How have I been trapped? . . . Marcel Broodthaers. After his initial act of Yes, now, like all artists, I'm an integral institutional critique – embedding his poetry part of society.19 books in plaster – he entirely sidestepped the Broodthaers confesses that his fate is his own need to discourse with official institutions by doing, understanding that it is the price one inventing a series of false museums, ones pays to play. which ran parallel to the world of official culture, thus calling into question what cultural
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9.
The other alternative is not to play at all, as poetic practice into Lasky's dreaded arenas of advocated by Dorothea Lasky, in her widely business, law, science, medicine, and art: discussed 2009 essay, ‘Poetry is Not a Project’. In it, she claims, Kim Rosenfield has been taking ideas The term ‘project’ comes from the visual from conceptual poetics focusing on art world. And other worlds too, like fraudulent notions of authenticity & science, business, and education. But meaning and mapping them onto especially from the visual art world. And psychoanalytic theories that, in turn, if there is one thing that poets would are being published in professional like to be today, it’s visual artists. Why? psychoanalytic journals. Because visual artists have all the money .... A poet with a project (who Christian Bök's Xenotext project -- a can name his project and talk about it) poem constructed entirely in a shows that everything was all set before laboratory -- is being received by the he even started. A poet with a scientific world, with lengthy articles nameable project seems wise, and about his endeavors featured in that better than other poets with an field's prominent journals such as New unnameable one. But this kind of Scientist. thinking strikes me as BS, because I don’t believe that’s how poetry works Darren Wershler and Lisa Gitelman .... I would argue that a poet who has a have been injecting technology-based project that he can lucidly discuss is a poetic ideas into the worlds of media pretty boring poet, at best. I would & communication studies which are argue that a poet with a project might juicing that field with poetry in ways not be a poet at all .... I think the term that haven't happened since Marshall ‘project’ has nothing to do with poetry McLuhan. .... The notion of a poetic ‘project’ may actually be very toxic to poetry .... Let's Vanessa Place use the forms and be special for once. In the context of languages of law to question the bankers, lawyers, scientists, painters, morals and ethics of its professional musicians, we're poets. Let's have a practices. little pride. And let's be gentle when describing our skills to the outside Robert Fitterman’s consumerist world, so that they can understand us landscapes boldly employ the hollow better and we can give each other what rhetoric of shopping malls and we need.20 catalogues, giving him the ability to Lasky's pose strikes me as contributing to the critique global late capitalism by stereotypical notions of poetry's appropriating the brutal language of powerlessness. At a time when poetry is going business on its own terms. out of its way to be confrontational and aggressive, Lasky tiptoes about, asking poets My own theorizing of conceptual to ‘be gentle when describing our skills to the poetics have been published by and outside world, so that they can understand us included in the forthcoming better.’ She begs poets to ‘have a little pride’, Documenta 13 have forced the art but as far as I can see, poets today are filled world to take notice of what’s going on with pride, filled with rage and don't feel the in poetry instead of the typically need to be gentle about anything. I find her inverse situation. use of the term ‘outside world’ to be equally problematic, when so many have been Inspired by the complex projects and working so hard to break down such long- sophisticated attitudes of Broodthaers, there's standing divisions, to the point where poetry nothing ‘gentle’ about these gestures and has become a regular part of occupational certainly nothing that condescends in order to discourse. make the ‘outside world understand [them] better.’ Instead it's the opposite. Darren Similarly, poets involved with institutional Wershler claims that ‘poetry has left the critique are directly inserting poetics and building.’ And he's right. We're peeling radical poetics off the page and marching them into
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9. the science lab, into the court of law, onto the 9 The Tortoise And The Hare: Dale Smith and Kenneth psychoanalyst's couch, and into the East Room Goldsmith Parse Slow and Fast Poetries Monday, July of The White House, forcing poetry to become 6, 2009 – Saturday, July 25, 2009, Jacket 38, 2009.
1 Yang (Ghent), 2006.4 "MAXIMALE http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/3307/travis_hollo VERVANGBAARHEID"http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/go way_performing_art/ 2 ldsmith/Yang_Goldsmith_Interview.pdf>, Accessed John Kinsella, "Keeping poetry outside the comfort November 21, 2011. zone," New Statesman, 13 December 2011 15 Julie Bosman, "Is It Plagiarism? Publisher Says No"
Text copyright Kenneth Goldsmith. First published in Enclave Review, Spring 2011, pp. 7-9.