Simon Morris
Simon Morris (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, 2004) 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).
Works
- Books, pamphlets
- editor, with Helen Sacoor, bibliomania 1998-1999, 1999, 120 pp; vol. 2 as Morris (ed.), bibliomania 2001-2002, York: information as material, 2002, 620 pp. [1] [2].
- Morris, et al., interpretation, 2 vols., 2001-02, 140 & 132 pp. [3] [4]
- The Royal Road to the Unconscious, York: information as material, 2003, 80 pp. [5] Video. [6] [7]
- Re-Writing Freud, ed. & intro. Craig Dworkin, York: Information as Material, 2005, 752 pp. [8]
- An Intolerable Piece of Writing: Pedagogy As Performed Absence, /ubu Editions, 2007, [87] pp. Composed in 2000.
- with Nick Thurston, Spinning Vol, II: DeCentering the Self, York: information as material, 2008, 24 pp. [9]
- Getting Inside Jack Kerouac’s Head, York: information as material, 2010, 324 pp. [10]. Review: Nufer (Am Book Rev).
- Pigeon Reader, York: information as material, 2012, 300 pp. [11]
- with Craig Dworkin and Nick Thurston, Do or DIY, York: information as material, 2012, 18 pp.
- Do or diy: Do it yourself, autoedición, apropiación recontextualización y plagio, trans. Carlos Soto-Roman, Santiago de Chile: Das Kapital Books, 2013, 43 pp. (Spanish)
- Do or DIY. Zur Geschichte und Praxis des Selbstverlags, trans. Annette Gilbert, Cologne: Salon, 2013, 26 pp. [12] (German)
- "Vydaj si sám", trans. Kristína Pavlovičová, Kloaka 3, Bratislava, 2014, pp 47-52. Trans. of excerpt. (Slovak)
- editor, Reading as Art, York: information as material, 2016, 113 pp. Catalogue. [13]
