Instruction/Poem

INSTRUCTION / POEM is a creative work in two parts. The first part of the work is a brief text printed on an index card (which was distributed to all delegates at the 18th annual AAWP Conference along with the conference program and related materials). Within the context of the creative work as a whole, the text printed on the card is presented as the work of the fictional artist ‘Paul Allen’, although it is signed only with the initials, ‘P.A.’. The second part of the creative work is a brief fiction that takes the form of ‘speaking notes’ addressing a conference paper by an emerging visual art curator, ‘Patrick Alexander’. This second text provides an account of aspects of the work of Paul Allen, with a focus on event scores and instructions. In this piece of writing, the speaker reflects on the process of curating a retrospective exhibition of the work of Paul Allen, and discusses the way in which various texts in the form of poems, event scores or instructions for art works, might be understood as central element within this artist’s practice. In contextualising Paul Allen’s work, the work also provides a brief introduction to this sub-genre of art writing, and its place in the history of art practice and exhibition making since the 1960s.