“When I look at the many shelves of books in my library and focus on the section of books and catalogues in which my work resides, the title and covers all look interesting in their own way, yet I continue to search. I don’t find what I’m looking for, it hasn’t been made, yet I can imagine something other than what I’m finding. I return to the manuscript of this book you now read. I think about the vast breadth and varying depths of the events and encounters throughout my life as an artist and as a writer as I select what to give you at this time.”
Renée Green. Other Planes, Different Phases, My Geometry, Times, Movements
For more than two decades, Renée Green has created an impressive body of work in which language is an essential element. Published by Duke University Press, Other Planes of There: Selected Writings gathers for the first time a substantial selection of her writings.
According to art historian Huey Copeland: “The publication of Other Planes of There is a major intellectual event. Given Renée Green’s stature and influence, both in the United States and abroad, her writing can be surprisingly hard to track down.”
Written between 1981 and 2010, Green’s selected essays initially appeared in publications in different countries and languages, publications like Texte zur Kunst, October, Multitudes, Sarai Reader, Transition, Collapse, ACME Journal, Spex or Springerin; the availability in this volume makes Other Planes of There an essential read for those wanting to follow Green’s artistic and intellectual trajectory.
In her introductory essay “Remarks on the Writings of Renée Green,” art historian and ACT Research Affiliate Gloria Sutton writes: “In this collection of her diverse writings–criticism, commentary, essays, films, scripts, working-process documents and reflections, fictions, and polemics–into a distinct volume in 2014, Green’s expansive and continually expanding practice as a visual artist at the forefront of her generation’s more socially and politically engaged and project-driven art production within contemporary art over the past two decades also becomes a subject for reconsideration.”
Other Planes of There immerses the reader in three decades of contemporary art and cultural discourses and illuminates Green’s role in shaping those conversations. Popular culture, sound, cinema, technology, literature, time-based media, and the relationship between art forms and other forms of knowledge are just a few of the matters that Green takes up and thinks through.
A lavishly illustrated volume–with 64 pages of color plates and interspersed black and white images throughout the book–Other Planes of Therefeatures a new visual essay by Renée Green, as well as a comprehensive bibliography, in addition to an exhibition and publishing history.
Poet and philosopher Fred Moten remarks that “more than a collection of an artist’s writings, Other Planes of There is also a rigorous meditation on the question of why artists are compelled to write. Along the way, almost incidentally as it were, readers are offered a self-conscious survey of the most advanced thinking in the artistic practice of an artist who not only dares to represent herself but also to put herself forward, in that representation, as representative.”
In her introduction to the volume, Green writes: “I don’t think of this as the definitive book of my work, as I’m still alive, writing and working, “wondering as I wander,” yet there are some combinations and words I’d like you to be able to read, which I haven’t read elsewhere. For these reason I feel compelled to give you these words.”
Contributors: Gloria Sutton, Renée Green
Language: English
Links
Read an excerpt on Artforum’s website
