The Constance DeJong Reader [Constance DeJong; Rachel Valinsky]
The Constance DeJong Reader [Constance DeJong; Rachel Valinsky]
[New York Art World] [Sound Art] [New Media]
The Constance DeJong Reader
Constance Dejong, Editor, Rachel Valinsky.
Primary Information, New York, 2022. First edition. Octavo.
New stock. Bagged and signed!
From the publisher: “An influential figure of the 1970s and ’80s downtown New York writing and performance scene, Constance DeJong has channeled time and language as mediums in her work for the last four decades, expanding the possibilities of narrative form and literary genre. From the earliest work collected here—a manuscript of DeJong’s 1982 prose text I.T.I.L.O.E.—to the digital project Nightwriters (2017-18), Reader assembles a range of experimental texts by the artist. The volume includes such works as the 2013 publication and performance, SpeakChamber and the script for Relatives (1988), a duet between a television and a performer made in collaboration with artist Tony Oursler. Never-before-published works including texts created for re-engineered vintage radios, aphorisms commissioned for a Times Square digital billboard, and transcripts for sound works originally installed along the Thames and Hudson rivers are also featured in the book.”
I’ll admit that while I wasn’t familiar with the oeuvre of Constance DeJong, I found myself enthralled by her writing and art. A pioneer of the early digital age, her works appear on billboards in Times Square, as a libretto for Philip Glass, through her fiction and lifetime of intense new media works. Sound art appreciators and “noise heads” will appreciate a lot described in here. Expand your mind, seek new methods.