Conceptualism

The transition from the works based around constraint into those of conceptual writing made reading these very unusual works less overwhelming. Going from Perec’s work written entirely without an ‘e’ seems vastly more logical than Craig Dworkin’s piece Parse devised entirely of the names of particles of speech. Initially trying to decode Dworkin’s work was extremely exhausting; however, after reading further into it, I found myself assigning my own words to the parts of speech he gives, essentially creating my own story. While the idea of conceptualism, especially with these examples, comes across as very disjointed, I really enjoyed trying to wrap my brain around these works. The aspect I enjoyed most about Catherine Wagner’s excerpt from My New Job is its title: Everyone in the Room is a Representative of the World at Large. The way she portrays her observations and thoughts through text is extremely engaging. I was nervous about delving into the depths of conceptual writing, but after these readings, I’m surprisingly drawn to reading and writing in this genre.