Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: the Art of the Art Assignment is a unique and wide-ranging anthology featuring essays, drawings, and assignments from over one hundred contributors including John Baldessari, William Pope.L, Mira Schor, Rochelle Feinstein, Bob Nickas, Chris Kraus, Liam Gillick, Amy Sillman, James Benning, and Michelle Grabner. Bringing together assignments, anti-assignments, and artworks from both teachers and students from a broad range of institutions, we hope it simultaneously serves as an archive and an instigation, a teaching tool and a question mark, a critique and a tribute.

Although it looks like it, == is not the catalogue of an exhibition. It is exactly the opposite, it is an independent project, conceived ahead of an exhibition. In fact, Matt Keegan has devised an exhibition from the publication, rather than the traditional reverse. Even more, an unlimited number of venues may be produced. Emphasizing the wall as a page, each one provides a temporary container for ==’s various parts, allowing Matt Keegan to act as the protagonist for the fictive curatorial project.

A publication is a time capsule & transmitter from here to there, from you to me. Working from this basic statement: how has your work changed since your 2012 or 2015 contribution to ==? This question and timeline could be rephrased as: How has your life & work changed in the wake of Brexit, Trump’s presidency, and the move to the right in Europe. (The majority of contributors are based in the US and this prompt is not intended to romanticize Obama’s presidency or deny repressive administrations that have come before). It is not necessary to root your response in the 1st person, ...