2011 ASAP Book Prize Winner: Kenneth Goldsmith

We are pleased to announce that the 2011 A.S.A.P. Book Prize is awarded to Kenneth Goldsmith for his book Uncreative Writing, published by Columbia University Press. Goldsmith is the author of ten books of poetry and is a founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb. He is the co-editor of Against Expressions: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing and the editor of I'll be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews. Recently an hour-long documentary of his work, titled "Sucking on Words," premiered at the British Library. He teaches what he calls "uncreative writing" at the University of Pennsylvania in the US and is a senior editor of Penn Sound, an online Poetry archive.
Uncreative Writing was praised by prize committee members for its clear and engaging prose, its theoretical savvy, and its unique and riveting perspective on teaching creating writing by turning to the internet and digital environments that allow students to practice and analyze the implications of techniques such as cutting and pasting, databasing, identity ciphering, and programming. Goldsmith uses sources as diverse as courtroom testimony, robo-poetics, and Twitter to teach students fundamentals of poetic form. As noted in book commentary, Goldsmith substitutes for authenticity a method of appropriation, which he says deals "a knockout blow to notions of traditional authorship." It does not, however, deal a knockout blow to art: the results are in fact astounding, and book prize committee members noted the sophistication of the formal lessons the author was able to draw from his radical artistic practice that connects writing education to theory and praxis by Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Andy Warhol, and others. ASAP offers congratulations to Kenneth Goldsmith, winner of our 2011 Book Prize!
   
   
2011 ASAP Book Prize Honorable Mention
We are pleased to announce that Honorable Mention for the 2011 A.S.A.P. Book Prize is given to Terry Smith for his book Contemporary Art: World Currents (Prentice Hall, 2011).
Smith is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, US and the author of numerous books concerning contemporary art. Contemporary Art: World Currents is a beautifully produced book that theoretically elucidates, and specifically illustrates, global art. Presenting an analysis of the shift form modern to contemporary in the plastic arts, Smith defines and differentiates what he calls "continuing modernities," "remoderisms," "transitional transnationality," and "contemporanities" as specific phases of art existing in conterminous relation today. His examples range through Western, East and Central Europe, North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East. The committee noted that the book was both a sophisticated theoretical treatment of its subject and a wide-ranging and instructive history of post-WWII art. (The book has also received a citation from the College Art Association for the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism.) ASAP offers congratulations to Terry Smith, Honorable Mention for our 2011 Book Prize!
   

The 2011 A.S.A.P Book Prize Committee members were Amy Elias (chair), Andrew Hoberek, and Melissa Lam.

You can see more information about A.S.A.P. book and other prizes HERE.