INDEX COMPUTER PRINT OUT – UNUSED ELEMENT FROM THE INDEX PROJECT. UNIQUE DOCUMENT. 1972

Coventry: Art & Language, 1972

Standard computer print out paper – a single continuous concertina sheet of computer paper – each fold 28 x 37cm, printed recto and consisting of c.100 pages in total.

This was one of two unused computer print-outs initially produced for the one of the early Index Projects (which were made for exhibitions in 1972 and 1973 but both created “back to back” in 1972 for shows at Documenta 5 in Kassel and The New Art at the Hayward, London. This printout reproduces in codified form of one of the wall charts for one of these two famous installations but was rejected for eventual use because of aesthetic or theoretical considerations ie the leading on the typography was disliked and it is understood the output was re-run probably with a wider spacing.

The Index projects were perhaps the most seminal of A&L’s public works – the group’s theoretical texts (additionally incorporating those from Analytical Art) were reprinted and collated within a series of specially built filing cabinets. Those texts were then annotated and deconstructed via wall charts and other methodology in such a way as to display the text’s inter-relations – sometime stressing the consistencies between the texts or the text’s influences on each other, other times pointing out logical contradictions between aspects of the text.

While this print-out is not a work in any sense it is an interesting and important documentation of the practice of Art & Language and given that the filing cabinet Index works are in public hands and not for sale this is one of few elements from these famous works available for purchase on the open market for the foreseeable future.

We held the other example of computer print out (two were made but this was the first according to David Rushton) but it was sold elsewhere. This is the ONLY opportunity to obtain an important relic and documentation from the immediate pre-Documenta 5 activities of Art + Language.