Abstract
From the 1960s until his death in 2021, Lawrence Weiner developed an art practice operating in language, which he described as being that of a “materialist.” This paper examines the scope of Weiner's career to determine what he could mean by that term—to derive the specific characteristics of his linguistic materialism. Differentiating his work from existing materialist paradigms in poetics and linguistics, this paper argues that the matter of language for Weiner was not reducible to the visual character of the signifier or to the physicality of the referent. Rather than attempt to define language as such, Weiner's materialism set into motion the infinite social uses of words within the “stream of life.”
Author notes
∗ I would like to thank Anders Gaardboe Jensen for his editorial feedback and for his generous permission to publish this essay in October in advance of its appearance in his catalogue for CLOSE TO A RAINBOW, forthcoming from the Holstebro Kunstmuseum in 2022. I'm grateful to Hal Foster and Adam Lehner for their work bringing this text to October. Thank-you to Alice Zimmerman Weiner, Carsten Juhl, Lone Mertz, Susanne Ottesen, Mark von Schlegell, and Anders once more for the conversations in Holstebro.