I published the essay under these various titles: “Was ist Los”, “Decor Holes”, “Akademische Graffiti”, “Depletion”, “Unique Source/All Natural Suicide Gang.” The text was written between 2003 and 2005 but updated and retitled for different contexts.

“One of the ways in which the Conceptual project in art has been most successful is in claiming new territory for practice. It’s a tendency that’s been almost too successful: today it seems that most of the work in the international art system positions itself as Conceptual to some degree, yielding the “Conceptual painter,” the “DJ and Conceptual artist,” or the “Conceptual web artist.” Let’s put aside the question of what makes a work Conceptual, recognizing, with some resignation, that the term can only gesture toward a thirty year-old historical moment. But it can’t be rejected entirely, as it has ...

For a Friend (Excerpt), 2007-2008 To accompany the audio piece “8-4, 9-5, 10-6, 11-7” (2007)

A meal in three courses, by Martha Rosler, 1985 by Seth Price, 2004

On the occasion of his first solo show, at Reena Spaulings Fine Arts in 2004, Seth Price made a piece called Digital Video Effect: “Spills.” He borrowed some video footage shot by Joan Jonas around 1971, featuring Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt and Jonas herself, talking with dealer Joe Hellman. Price subjected the archival material to an invented digital video effect that made the footage appear to alternately spill across the black video screen and then itself be entirely obscured by oozing blackness. Displayed on a new TV/DVD player still in its own cardboard packaging, the work was like an ...

I made the music in 2002. A Sequential Circuits and a Korg. In ’04 I recorded Fia Backström singing some lyrics adapted from the song ‘Sister Ray,’ cut up her vocals and added them to the track in a way that sounded OK. That was supposedly for a Reena Spaulings record, but it never made the cut. Added it to the Army Jacket LP when I reissued it.

1. Ritualized Unknowing People keep trying to get a handle on what’s happening. There’s a fear that others are hastening to make startling connections among the raw material, tracing lines between points we didn’t even know existed. Exacerbating this anxiety is the fact that despite its supposed insistence on the consolidation of knowledge and the worth of information, the Internet produces ritualized unknowing. You could say, however, that this is a good thing, for it provokes a desire to remystify the frenzy of technological change through ritual, through a personal and allegorical rehearsal of what is perceived to be a manic ...

A short book produced to accompany Seth Price’s Wrok Fmaily Freidns exhibition at 356 Mission in L.A.