In 1996, Kenneth Goldsmith created UbuWeb to post hard-to-find works of concrete poetry. It grew into an essential archive of twentieth- and twenty- first-century avant-garde and experimental literature, film, and music. In Duchamp Is My Lawyer, Goldsmith tells the history of UbuWeb, explaining the motivations behind its creation.
The Question-and-Answer interview was one of Andy Warhol's favorite communication vehicles, so much so that he named his own magazine after the form. Yet, never before has anyone published a collection of interviews that Warhol himself gave. I'll Be Your Mirror contains more then thirty conversations revealing this unique and important artist. Each piece presents a different facet of the Sphinx-like Warhol's ever-evolving personality. Writer Kenneth Goldsmith provides context and provenance for each selection. Beginning in 1962 with a notorious interview in which Warhol literally begs the interviewer to put words into his mouth, the book covers Warhol's most important artistic period during the '60s. As Warhol shifts to filmmaking in the '70s, this collection explores his emergence as socialite, scene-maker, and trendsetter; his influential Interview magazine; and the Studio 54 scene. In the 80s, his support of young artists like Jean-Michel Basquait, his perspective on art history and the growing relationship to technology in his work are shown. Finally, his return to religious imagery and spirituality are available in an interview conducted just months before his death. Including photographs and previous unpublished interviews, this collage of Warhol showcases the artist's ability to manipulate, captivate, and enrich American culture.
"In addition to explaining his concept of uncreative writing, Goldsmith reads the work of writers who have engaged in 'uncreative writing'. Examining a wide rage of texts and techniques, including the use of Internet searches to create poetry, the appropriation of courtroom testimony, and the possibility of robo-poetics, Goldsmith joins this recent work to practices adopted by writers and artists such as Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Andy Warhol. Yet, more than just a reconfiguration of texts, uncreative writing can also be suffused with emotion and offer new ways of thinking about identity, tha making of meaning, and the ethos of our time."--Publisher.
Using clear, accessible prose, conceptual artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmith’s manifesto redefines our internet experiences as productive and creative, situating them within a theoretical and philosophical framework. Goldsmith encourages a rethinking of the internet, challenging the guilt many feel after spending hours online. He argues that, unlike traditional media, the internet fosters active engagement, enhancing our social interactions, creativity, and productivity. His course at the University of Pennsylvania, titled “Wasting Time on the Internet,” garnered significant media attention, with major outlets expressing shock and curiosity about his ideas. Goldsmith’s insights resonate because they are subversive and shareable. He expands on the notion that our digital lives are reshaping human experiences; what seems like “wasting time” actually cultivates collaboration and transforms how we read and write. The internet challenges traditional concepts of authority and authenticity, placing us in a unique state of focus and flow conducive to creativity. Goldsmith suggests that this creative potential will shape narratives of the twenty-first century. Engaging, counterintuitive, and unpredictable—much like the internet itself—this manifesto offers a fresh perspective on our digital lives.
Chief Learning Officers as emerging C-Level Executives
The book investigates the emerging role of Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) within organizations and their impact on strategic learning decisions. Through a quantitative study involving U.S. learning executives, it examines the correlation between CLO leadership styles—specifically transactional and laissez-faire—and their involvement in decision-making processes. The findings highlight a significant relationship between leadership approaches and strategic participation, underscoring the importance of CLOs in fostering organizational success in a knowledge-driven landscape.
The book juxtaposes Kenneth Goldsmith's artworks with the original text of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, creating a dialogue between visual art and philosophical ideas. This unique pairing invites readers to explore the intersections of language and meaning, encouraging a deeper understanding of both the artworks and the philosophical concepts presented in Wittgenstein's work. The combination of visual and textual elements offers a fresh perspective on the complexities of communication and interpretation.
'Retyping On the Road is not only a remarkable performance – of endurance, concentration, and apprenticeship – it is also a deadpan experiment in textual literary criticism. Kerouac's original typescript was oriented toward the writer. Morris' practice collapses reader and writer, reorienting Kerouac's typescript to the digital, discontinuous unit of the published codex page. In doing so, Morris both inverts Kerouac's style of production – pecking slowly and methodically where his predecessor sped along at a reputed one-hundred-words-per-benzedrine-fuelled-minute – and he simultaneously fulfils its legend. A constrained and unexpressive homage to the era that heralded unconstrained and improvisatory expressionism, Getting Inside Jack Kerouac's Head showcases the critical power of the extended techniques of conceptually rigorous 'uncreative writing.' In the process it reclaims Truman Capote's Parthian shot as a point of pride: 'it isn't writing at all – it's typing.' And type – as Kerouac used the word in On the Road – is all about genre.' (Professor Craig Dworkin, University of Utah)
In einem Brief an Bettina Funcke, Leiterin der Publikationsabteilung der dOCUMENTA (13), verwebt der in New York lebende Dichter Kenneth Goldsmith (geb 1961) verschiedene Stränge seiner künstlerischen Tätigkeit zum Gesamtbild seines Schaffens. Am Anfang steht dabei das von ihm 1996 gegründete Online- Archiv UbuWeb: eine nichtkommerzielle Plattform, auf der er sonst meist schwer zugängliches Material aus allen Bereichen der avantgardistischen künstlerischen Produktion (u. a. Dichtung, Film, Video und Sound) zur Verfügung stellt. Die Beschreibungen seiner Arbeit an UbuWeb sowie als Autor (der bereits existierende Text abtippt), als Moderator einer wöchentlichen Radiosendung (der Musiklisten anderer DJs und Texte von Bloggern abliest) und als Professor für englische Literatur (der unkreatives Schreiben unterrichtet) verdichten sich im Zusammenspiel mit theoretischen und poetischen Einschüben zu einer komplexen Reflexion über Dichtung unter dem Einfluss der Appropriation.
This book provides a comprehensive guide to all three volumes of Karl Marx's 'Capital', with advice on further reading and points for further discussion
What are the words we use to describe something that we never thought we'd have to describe? In Seven American Deaths and Disasters, Kenneth Goldsmith transcribes historic radio and television reports of national tragedies as they unfurl, revealing an extraordinarily rich linguistic panorama of passionate description. Taking its title from the series of Andy Warhol paintings by the same name, Goldsmith recasts the mundane as the iconic, creating a series of prose poems that encapsulate seven pivotal moments in recent American history: the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and John Lennon assassinations, the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the Columbine shootings, 9/11, and the death of Michael Jackson. While we've become accustomed to watching endless reruns of these tragic spectacles-often to the point of cliche-once rendered in text, they become unfamiliar, and revealing new dimensions emerge. Impartial reportage is revealed to be laced with subjectivity, bias, mystery, second-guessing, and, in many cases, white-knuckled fear. Part nostalgia, part myth, these words render pivotal moments in American history through the communal lens of media.
