Faux Ubu

A little bit back and forth from Kenneth Goldsmith about DAYS and his other projects. I am freaked out on candy hearts and Tab Energy drink.

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Don't you feel like that's totally at odds with the spirit of the book? And the way you and your publisher marketed it? I'm not trying to be a jerk: I want to understand it...and I think it's important to talk about in a larger sense. In what ways do we present our projects and what happens when we completely misrepresent them?

--jimmy


Jim,

Thanks for your insightful comments. It's a great chance to go a bit
deeper into this.

I'm not so sure it's a misrepresentation; all of my projects are based
on shifting ideas of identity, labor and veracity, which play with the
myths surrounding them -- for example, in my book "Fidget" --
'marketed' as a record of every move my body made on Bloomsday of
1997, is a work of pure fiction. It's literally impossible to record
every move one's body makes over the course of a day -- as I type
this,  my body is making thousands of movements; I'm lucky to be able
to grossly describe the clumsy movement of my fingers on the keyboard.

Or my book called The Weather, which is a transcription of a years'
worth of weather reports. But really, how accurate a portrait of the
weather is this ?-- the weather being the most complex natural system,
reduced to a one-minute soundbyte that either aids or abets your
commute. And is my transcription altered, truncated, elaborated, etc.?
There are so many fictive threads and systems running through my
projects that they're really irreducible to one singular concept
wrapped in truth.

But nonetheless, as you say, the books, because of their
preposterousness -- and often because of their size -- are given a
"marketing" tag; I prefer the concept of a "wrapper": some very simple
tag line to describe the rough concept, a shorthand so to speak. These
"wrappers" end up sticking with the books, and more often than not are
how they become known. My books are generally impossible to read so
that these "wrappers" serve as an entry into something that would
otherwise be truly unapproachable. I love the idea of *not* having to
read a book, but still "getting" it. As such, I often say that I have
a "thinkership" rather than a "readership."

I'm a Warhol scholar and in him and his work we can see a master of
the issues that you bring up. Art is really one of the few places
where we can safely explore notions of shifting identity,
valuelessness, fraud, appropriation and hoax without the fear -- as so
often happens in the political and business realms -- of going to jail
or being held to the veracity of our every move.

Hope this answers some of yr questions, Jim.

All the best,
Kenneth



Kenneth--

Thanks for your note: I think this goes beyond any wrapper. Although literary hoaxes can be fun, is it fun *after* you've bought the book? People want to believe in these projects and might feel swindled after slapping down $40 for those books--I think there is a difference in saying "I typed something" and "my mother typed it for me." My literary hoaxes haven't cost anyone a dime, I can't keep them up for long, I don't lie to people to protect them and I let people in on the joke as early as possible. What responsibility do we have to play with each other straight up? Or give each other the decency of an early and immediate response to "Are you kidding?"

xxxjimmy


Jim,

Fair enough, both ways are valid ways of seeing it.

All best,
kenneth