The phrase “I is for Institute” is at once a declaration, a prompt, and a position. When ICA celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013, we considered our next chapter by digging deep into our archives and reflecting on the many individual artists, curators, and exhibitions that had shaped our history. Taking a step back from these granular investigations, we then began to ask more general questions: Why were we initially formed as an institute? Has the definition of an institute been stable throughout our history, or has it taken on different meanings and inflections over time? What does the notion ...

This year’s Annual is published in tandem with a long-term installation of The Serving Library’s collection of (mostly) framed objects at 019, an artist-run exhibition, performance and work space in a former welding factory in Ghent, Belgium. Apparently, the sole common denominator of the objects in the collection — which range from paintings, photographs, and record sleeves, to a can of green paint, a German car license plate, and an ouija board — is to have appeared as illustrations in an issue of The Serving Library Annual or one of its immediate antecedents, Bulletins of The Serving Library or Dot Dot ...

Consistently skating the line between I and we, Carter Mull’s Typist opens up a space for the artist to act as a producer of his own context. Playing with and blending the formats of artist book and artist monograph, Mull invited individuals and businesses that not only populate his personal and professional networks, but his quotidian routines, to author texts and advertisements through the lens of his own visual poetics. By engaging authors that range from critics and curators to the pizza place by his studio, Mull emphasizes the multiple cultures and economies that inform his work. The publication, edited in ...

Words Without Pictures was originally conceived by curator Charlotte Cotton as a means of creating spaces for discourse around current issues in photography. Every month for a year, beginning in November 2007, an artist, educator, critic or curator was invited to contribute a short unillustrated essay about an aspect of emerging photography. Each piece was available on the Words Without Pictures website for one month and was accompanied by a discussion forum focused on its specific topic. Over the course of its month-long “life,” each essay received both invited and unsolicited responses from a wide range of interested parties. All ...