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Marcel Broodthaers, Carte du Monde Poetique, 1968 

The Los Angeles Contemporary Archive is pleased to announce the release of Scott Benzel’s untitled collection of poems. This event will include a book signing by Benzel from 2:30-3pm. 

From 1:30-3pm, the even will open up an ‘open mic’ reading of art writers’ work, featuring Benzel, Andrew Berardini, Catherine Wagley, Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, Steve Kado, Suzy Halajian, Carol Cheh, Martha Kirzsenbaum, and many more! Art writers and critics are invited to sign up ahead of time or on the day of to read up for up to 7 minutes. 

To sign up, email: info@wendyssubway.com

About the book:

Art dealer Seth Siegelaub's campaign throughout the late '60's to have the new conceptual work of his stable of artists understood and accepted, through the creation of catalogs, exhibitions, and entreaties to leading art writers and magazines to review the work, resulted in the still-operatal thesis that the content of much contemporary work is interpretable only through written material created by critics and other writers. This untitled collection of poems was composed by rearranging reviews and publicity materials into mostly metrical, unrhymed lines of blank verse and by removing any form of attribution, systematically 'blanking' the subject as well as the author(s) of the works and poems. The poems are credited as being 'after' a number of well-known critics and art writers, presumably the writers of the originary texts.