The research seminar “Textualités Numériques et Contemporaines” (Paris 8), the research project “Poets and Critics” (IUF/ Paris 8/ UPEM / Paris Diderot), Double Change and Michael Woolworth invite you to a seminar with Marjorie Welish (May 31 5:30-7:30) and a reading with Marcel Cohen and Marjorie Welish (May 31, 7:30) at Atelier Michael Woolworth:
« Thinking criticism: textuality, words and images”
A discussion and seminar with Marjorie Welish, from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
When on a Fulbright to the Edinburgh College of Art to lecture on the situated nature of art criticism, Marjorie Welish toured the Inverleith House, she said to its director Paul Nesbitt: ‘I could diagram this.’ What she meant and he understood did come about in some form. She proposed to create art to capture the changing function from 18th-century residence to 20th-century project space for art. PUSH BAR TO OPEN is the short video component of this project.
Our discussion will be based on a video of hers PUSH BAR TO OPEN, in which text and image are simultaneously questioned in relation to the history of an art space and an art exhibition. We will approach the topics of how to rethink criticism in relation to textuality. If everything has become textual how to think criticism and pedagogy? How do the word and image modalities affect textuality in our contemporary moment? And how do we talk about the assumption that signage activates space? In the same way, does language activate anything at all?
(contact : vincent.broqua@univ-paris8.fr)
The seminar will be followed by a reading with
Marcel Cohen
and
Marjorie Welish
Both events are open to the public. The seminar is conducted in English, the reading will be bilingual.
Address:
Atelier Michael Woolworth
2 rue de la Roquette
Passage du Cheval Blanc
Cour Février
75011 Paris France
M° Bastille
Biographies :
Artist /critic / poet Marjorie Welish received her first solo show thanks to Laurie Anderson, then curator of the Whitney Museum Art Resources Center; she has exhibited most recently in New York, Paris, Vienna, and Cambridge, England. She received many grants and fellowships, including: Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, The Fifth Floor Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Trust for Mutual Understanding (supporting an exchange between the International Studio Program, New York and the Artists’ Museum, Łódź, Poland). In 2006, she received a Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellowship to teach at the University of Frankfurt, where she also worked on a limited-edition constructed art book, Oaths? Questions? in collaboration with James Siena, published by Granary Books in 2009 (in the collections of the Beinecke Library at Yale, Columbia University, Getty, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art); in 2010 with a Fulbright, she was at Edinburgh College of Art. In 2015 she was nominated for the award Anonymous Was a Woman. Writing on her work may be found in Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish (Slought Foundation, 2003) compiles papers given at a conference on April 5, 2002, at the University of Pennsylvania: https://slought.org/resources/store#of_the_diagram_the_work_of_marjorie_welish Welish’s book of art criticism is Signifying Art: Essays on Art after 1960 (Cambridge University Press, 1999). More information on Welish may be found at http://marjoriewelish.com/Home.html. Her poetry books include: Isle of the Signatories (2008), In the Futurity Lounge / Asylum for Indeterminacy (2012), and So What So That (2016).
Marcel Cohen
Often regarded as a prose writer by poets and as a poet by fiction writers, Marcel Cohen is the author of nine books of short texts with no mention of their genre. They were published by Éditions Gallimard. Over the last few years, Marcel Cohen published a trilogy: Faits, Lecture courante à l’usage des grands débutants (2002), Faits, II (2007), Faits, III, Suite et fin (2010), as a manifesto against any form of fiction.
In Sur la scène intérieure (2013), he gathered the rare recollections he has from his family, who was deported during the war. It was published by J.-B. Pontalis in his series « L’un et l’autre ». Le Grand-paon-de nuit, followed by Murs, and Métro gather extremely short texts published previously by Gallimard and other publishers.
In 2017, he published Détails (Gallimard) and Autoportrait en lecteur (Eric Pesty), which is entirely made of quotations.
His books were translated into eight languages and, among others, in the USA by Cid Corman (The Peacock Emperor Moth, Burning Deck), as well as by Jason Weiss (Mirrors, Green Integer), and by Brian Evenson and Joanna Howard (Walls, Black Square Editions). He was also translated by Raphael Rubinstein (In Search of Lost Ladino), published by Editions Ibis in Jerusalem in a biligual version.
Marcel Cohen also published a book of interviews with Edmond Jabès, translated by Pierre Joris as From the Desert to the Book (published by Station Hill Press in the USA).
In 2013-2014, he was awarded the Wepler-Fondation La Poste prize, the Jean Arp prize, the Roger Caillois Prize, the Bernheim prize awarded by the Fondation du Judaïsme Français, and the Eve Delacroix prize awarded by the Académie Française.
