En buena salud

Abstract

Responding to an invitation from Felipe Cussen and Riccardo Boglione to examine the state of “conceptual writing” in 2021 for the journal Tenso Diagonal, Morris tackles the framing of conceptual writing on Wikipedia which cites Johanna Drucker, who claims that the movement is “probably over now, even in its newest iterations.” He responds vigorously by claiming, far from being over, the movement is “in rude health” and cites three examples of recent conceptual writing and a new interdisciplinary journal as evidence of its continued investigations. He also uses the space to critique the idea that North America is the epi-centre of activity for this movement and hopes that future histories will remember the work that has taken place across the globe. Morris points out, like any cultural movement that presents a body of new ideas and radical thinking, there are some brilliant works; some average works; and some works that are just awful. In the illustrated essay, Morris tracks his own contributions as well as detailing the distinction between conceptual works that use an excess of information and those that use erasure and other procedures to work on the edge of perceptibility, in the space of the infrathin.