What we wrote about the event at the time: Who: Conceptual writer, critic and author, Vanessa Place. Co-founder of Les Figues Press, described by critic Terry Castle as “an elegant vessel for experimental American writing of an extraordinarily assured and ingenious sort.”

What: Vanessa will talk about conceptual writing, conceptual art and allegory as the foundational notion of conceptualism (an allegory being something that builds towards an idea).

Why: Vanessa has, in her book (co-written with Robert Fitterman) NOTES ON CONCEPTUALISM, erected the first critical framework for the radical practice of conceptual writing. On NOTES ON CONCEPTUALISM, Mary Kelly wrote: “I learned more about the impact of conceptualism on artists and writers than I had from reading so-called canonical works on the subject.” Kenneth Goldsmith has called Place’s work “arguably the most challenging, complex and controversial literature being written today.”

As part of the Instal10 programme one of the leading conceptual writers of today, Vanessa Place, will be performing, and for The Friday Event Glasgow School of Art has invited her to talk about her practice as a writer.

Vanessa Place is a writer and criminal appellate attorney practicing in Los Angeles. She is the author of Dies: A Sentence, a fifty-thousand-word, one-sentence prose poem; the post-conceptual novel La Medusa; and, in collaboration with appropriation poet Robert Fitterman, Notes on Conceptualisms. Place is co-founder of Les Figues Press, described by critic Terry Castle as “an elegant vessel for experimental American writing of an extraordinarily assured and ingenious sort.”

Hosted by The School of Fine Art, The Friday Event Lecture Series is The Glasgow School of Art’s flagship public lecture series, and brings major international speakers (including artists, architects, designers, historians and cultural theorists) to the city of Glasgow.

Vanessa Place was interviewed in The Scotsman in advance of the event.