Blurting in A & L [Art & Language] (1973/2002) [English/German]

Blurting in A & L is a printed booklet whose content is a dictionary with blurts or ‘annotations’. The annotations were written by the members of Art & Language Ian Burn, Michael Corris, Preston Heller, Joseph Kosuth, Andrew Menard, Mel Ramsden and Terry Smith.

“The project began as a collaboration among Art & Language members in New York City. In weekly meetings from January to July 1973, eight participants produced written statements called ‘annotations’ or ‘blurts’ on topics ranging from the ordinary to the abstruse (art, learning, ambiguity, heuristics, stimulus-meaning). In each subsequent meeting the group would return with new statements that ‘went on’ from the last week’s annotations. In the end, through the efforts of Michael Corris and Mel Ramsden the comments were compiled in a handbook. In all, some 400 odd entries were edited and grouped according to subheadings with vague quasi-logical connectors linking them to one another.

Since the connections among the entries were many-to-many, readers could choose their own course through the material, which blurred the boundary between passive reader and active participant. This was a key ideology of Art & Language – the idea that membership was permeable or, as one participant put it, ‘a function of participation’.” (from a commentary by Chris Gilbert, Mute, 2002)

An online version installed by ZKM, Karlsruhe, in 2002 includes articles which contextualize Blurting in A & L within the activities of the group in the 1970s. Present and former members of Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Michael Corris, Philip Pilkington, Mel Ramsden) summarize and reflect on their activities. Thomas Dreher embeds Blurting in A & L within the proceedings of the discourse of Art & Language.

Blurting in A&L: An Index of Blurts and Their Concatenation (the Handbook) Constitutes a Problematic; That Is, You Can’t (at Least Not Without Deliberation) Ignore Possible Pathways Without Losing Embeddedness (Ideolects); Deliberation (Here, the Issue of Going-On Becomes a Self-Conscious Construction for the Reader) Admits Broader Reflection of a Context of Our/Your/Other Activities: Namely, the Structure of Our/Your Language/Culture and (the Prospect of) Revisability of Our/Your Language/Culture
Edited by Michael Corris, Mel Ramsden
Publisher Art & Language Press, New York, and The Mezzanine, Nova Scotia College of Art, Halifax, 1973
92 pages

Online version and accompanying publication edited by Thomas Dreher, 2002.

Announcement of the hypertext version (Syndicate, 2002)

Blurting in A & L (1973, HTML)
Blurting in A & L Online (English, 2002, HTML)
Blurting in A & L Online (German, 2002, HTML)

J.N. Adams: The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (1982)

Like other languages, Latin had a group of words which speakers regarded as basic obscenities, as well as a rich stock of sexual euphemisms and metaphors. At the lower end of the social and stylistic scale evidence for Latin sexual terminology comes from numerous graffiti. On the other hand certain literary genres had a marked sexual content.

The Latin sexual vocabulary has never been systematically investigated, despite its linguistic and literary interest. This book collects for the first time the evidence provided by both non-literary and literary sources from the early Republic down to about the fourth century A.D.

Separate chapters are given to each of the sexual parts of the body, and to the terminology used to describe sexual acts. General topics treated include lexical differences between various literary genres, the influence of Greek on Latin, diachronic changes within the vocabulary, and the weakening of sexual words into general terms of abuse.

This is a fundamental book in every sense.

Publisher Duckworth, London, 1982
ISBN 071561648X
272 pages
via Gabriela García Palapa

Review (Peter Parsons, London Review of Books, 1983)
Review (D.R. Shackleton Bailey, Classical Philology, 1985)

PDF (72 MB)

Del Close & John Brent: How To Speak Hip (1961)

“This album captures the underground comedians at their early best and manages to both lampoon and accurately encapsulate the difference between hip and square society at the time. Unlike other mean-spirited comedy takes on the beatnik craze (Allan Sherman’s ‘The Rebel’ springs to mind), Close and Brent’s satire was close to the truth because they truly were bohemian spirits. John Brent wrote poetry and honed his ‘Geets Romo’ character (also known as ‘Huey the Hipster’) while acting in a Jules Feiffer play. Del Close was an actor and poetry director at the Gaslight. And they both became well-known as being early members of Chicago’s Second City.” (from the WFMU blog)

The album comes with “an illustrated booklet of complete instructions and a Dictionary of Hip. A Thorough reading of this Dictionary will familiarize you with a number of useful Hip expressions.” (from the liner notes)

Publisher Mercury, 1961

Wikipedia
Discogs

PDF (Booklet)
ZIP (Recording, zipped MP3s)
Listen online (on WFMU blog)