Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 (2015)

“Over the past forty years, Finnish artist and technology pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi (1941-2017) was a composer of electronic music, experimental filmmaker, computer animator, roboticist, inventor, and futurologist. Kurenniemi was a hybrid—a scientist-humanist-artist. Relatively unknown outside Nordic countries until his 2012 Documenta 13 exhibition, ”In 2048,” Kurenniemi may at last be achieving international recognition. This book offers an excavation, a critical mapping, and an elaboration of Kurenniemi’s multiplicities.

The contributors describe Kurenniemi’s enthusiastic, and rather obsessive, recording of everyday life and how this archiving was part of his process; his exploratory artistic practice, with productive failure an inherent part of his method; his relationship to scientific and technological developments in media culture; and his work in electronic and digital music, including his development of automated composition systems and his “video-organ,” DIMI-O. A “Visual Archive,” a section of interviews with the artist, and a selection of his original writings (translated and published for the first time) further document Kurenniemi’s achievements. But the book is not just about one artist in his time; it is about emerging media arts, interfaces, and archival fever in creative practices, read through the lens of Kurenniemi.”

Edited by Joasia Krysa and Jussi Parikka
Foreword by Erkki Huhtamo
Publisher MIT Press, 2015
ISBN 9780262029582, 0262029588
xxviii+340 pages

Reviews: Amanda Egbe (Leonardo, 2016), Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2016).

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Film Culture, 43: Expanded Arts (1966)

This special issue of 1960s New York’s avant-garde film quarterly is an all Fluxus tabloid newsprint issue featuring George Maciunas, Jonas Mekas, Henry Flynt, Ken Dewey, Gerd Stern, Stan VanDerBeek, Robert Whitman, et al.

From the Introduction: “The purpose of this Special Issue of Film Culture, EXPANDED ARTS, is twofold: a) to give to our readers and idea about what’s going on in the avantgarde arts today, and b) to serve as a sort of catalogue or index to the work of some of the artists involved.

This issue started as an index to the artists working in the area of Expanded Cinema. Only as we went along, our original conception changed and we decided to include all the other arts. EXPANDED ARTS – we intend to come out with other issues–will eventually include all areas of expanded performing arts. This issue, however, is dominated by the Expanded Cinema, Expanded Music, Expanded Gags and Readymades, and some Happenings. And not all of the artists working in those areas are represented. Some of them were simply too bnusy to get the necessary information in time. Many are missing; such as Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Ken Dewey, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Al Hansen, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Ben Van Meter, Robert Whitman etc.”

Contents:
Introduction … 1
Expanded Cinema: A Symposium N.Y. Film Festival 1966, panel members: Ken Dewey, Henry Geldzahler, John Gruen, Stan VanDerBeek & Robert Whitman” … 1
Interview with Ken Dewey by Fred Wellington … 2
USCO. Interview with Gerd Stern by Jonas Mekas … 3
The Blue Mouse and the Movie Experience by Sheldon Renan … 4
To Be Alive! and the Multi-Screen Film by Maxine Haleff … 4
Notions on a New Dance Program by Gregory Battcock … 4
Triptape: An Interview with Richard Aldcroft by Gordon Ball … 4
Mock Risk Games – A Psychological Exploration (June 1961-1966) by Henry Flynt … 5
The Images of Robert Whitman by Toby Mussman … 5
Expanded Arts Bourse … 5
Fluxfest … 6
Expanded Arts Diagram by George Maciunas … 7
Movie Journals by Jonas Mekas … 10

Edited by Jonas Mekas
Publisher Film Culture, New York, Winter 1966
Design George Maciunas
ISSN 0015-1211
12 pages, 56 x 43 cm
via Walker Art Center

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The Record as Artwork: From Futurism to Conceptual Art (1977) [EN, FR]

Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held at Fort Worth Art Museum, Texas, 4 December 1977 – 15 January 1978; Moore College of Art Gallery, Philadelphia, 3 February – 8 March 1978; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal, 7 September – 22 October 1978; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, no dates listed.

Text by Anne Livet and Germano Celant. Artists include Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Hugo Ball, Jean Dubuffet, Yves Klein, Raoul Hausmann, Jean Tinguely, Allan Kaprow, Billy Kluver, Lawrence Weiner, Eliane Radigue, Jan Dibbets, Joseph Beuys, Dick Raaijmakers, Braco Dimitrijević, Antonio Dias, Sarkis, Michael Snow, Topor, Jack Goldstein, Art & Language, and others. Includes discography, index of record producers, and list of works.

Edited by Germano Celant
Publisher Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1977
121 pages

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