At exhibition from wednesday september 27th The exhibition Call It Something Else. Something Else Press, Inc. (1963-1974) focuses on the books, projects, and activities developed by Dick Higgins' Something Else Press. It also analyses the concept of "intermedia," a theoretical notion that the publisher reappropriated to designate heterogeneous forms that challenged all categories held by the matrix of "something else."
The publishing house was created at the height of the "linguistic turn," a pivotal moment in the arts of the 1960s when artists began to use language and texts as material for their aesthetic proposals. These projects -from the production of Fluxus in the first half of the decade to the conceptual art of the second- in many cases took the form of publications: books, newspapers or magazines that explicitly opposed minority artworks and were conceived for large-scale circulation.
From the beginning, Something Else Press sought to capitalize on and embrace the emerging creative experiments of composers, dancers, writers, and artists of all kinds (many of whom were part of Higgins' circle) and give their ephemeral works the backing they needed for future projection. While the book itself is an object-a fact Higgins made clear by stating that four hundred pages are an inch thick-its support resides in the cover, paper, and binding, like the canvas and priming of a painting. Would premium paper, unusual designs, and new methods of layout give creative gestures and statements enough substance to make them intelligible? At the time, certain avant-garde tendencies avoided the object at all costs. By engaging with object-books, Higgins questioned the status of the object, which included but was not limited to the reification of the creative act and the imposition of art as an object of consumption.
The exhibition is divided into three main sections. The first section presents a cross-section of archival material covering the publishing house's entire output. The second section showcases the program of events and exhibitions of the Something Else Gallery, an extension of the publishing house during the period 1966-1972. The third and final section focuses on a selection of the publications released by Something Else Press over the course of its eleven-year life, a selection that illustrates the variety of practices that underpinned Higgins's project. The exhibition aims to help restore Something Else Press to the privileged position it deserves in the history of postwar art and to attest to the influence that Higgins's concept of intermedia exerted on the practices and discourse of advanced art.
