The Halifax Conference Book Launch

Craig Leonard
The Halifax Conference
Vancouver/Los Angeles, Canada/USA: New Documents, 2019
184 pp., 12 x 19 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown


This book just arrived in the mail today from New Documents, and launches tonight at Art Metropole.

"Adapted" by Halifax-based artist Craig Leonard, the book is the transcription of a notorious conference held in October of 1970, at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Organized by curator Seth Siegelaub, the Conference was conceived as a means of bringing about a “meeting of artists…[from] diverse art making experiences and art positions…in as general a situation as possible.”

Participants included Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Gene Davis, Jan Dibbets, Al Held, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Murray, Iain and Ingrid Baxter of N.E.Thing Co., Richard Serra, Richard Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, and Lawrence Weiner. The event was held in the college’s 6th floor boardroom, while around 500 students, faculty and other curious parties crammed into the gallery to watch the proceedings on a video monitor.

The conversation soon devolved into farce, both because of the poor sound quality of the live feed, and because of some opposition to the event, from both spectators and participants.

Reports at the time, and the subsequent mythological status of the conference, all indicate that several of the artists refused to allow NSCAD to record or transcribe the event, so I'm not yet clear if Leonard's "adaptation" is fictional or not. Publisher New Documents have also released some previous titles that blur the line between art history, investigative journalism and artists' books (such Walter Benjamin: Recent Writings and Bas Jan Ader Discovery File).

Find out tonight between 7 and 8:30pm at Art Metropole.