Writing in Michael Asher's Practice

Of the multiple sites of knowledge production in artistic practice, writing remains elusive, despite its seeming familiarity as a form (words and language) and a genre (artist’s writings). Writing was central to the practice of Michael Asher, the American artist often associated with conceptual art and institutional critique. Most of Asher’s works were made as site-specific responses to institutions or exhibitions and seldom resulted in permanent art objects. As part of his practice, Asher wrote profusely. Most of his writing was positioned adjacent to completed works of art, from process notes, proposals, and correspondence to analyses of institutional situations or materialized arrangements. These types of writing served as sites of knowledge production that were parallel rather than subservient to realized works of art. This paper considers the production of knowledge in the critical space of writing in Asher’s research-based practice, its relation to existing historical and institutional forms, the sharing and circulation of knowledges, and the potential of writing as a public form of practice.