New Criticals


Poet, artist and performer Kenneth Goldsmith took an interest in Library of the Printed Web in the spring of 2013. He visited the collection and reviewed each work, declaring the "dumbest" ones his favorites. By dumb he meant those works with the simplest articulation of concept, requiring no explanation. These dumb works are the most readymade-like, presenting themselves as evidence of their own thingness, as nothing more than what they are, albeit in a new context.

Goldsmith, writing elsewhere about the mapping of the digital world onto the physical, says "Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the Infrathin — a state between states — might apply here. Duchamp defines the Infrathin as 'The warmth of a seat (which has just been left)' or 'Velvet trousers- / their whistling sound (in walking) by / brushing of the 2 legs is an / infra thin separation signaled / by sound.' Like an electronic current, the Infrathin hovers and pulses, creating a dynamic stasis, refusing to commit to one state or the other … it is concerned with the expansive fusing of opposites: ephemeral and permanent, digital and analog, becoming multidimensional, flexible, and radically distributive." (Poetry Foundation, 2012).