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Edited by Marja Bloem, Lauren van Haaften-Schick, Sara Martinetti and Jo Melvin, Better Read Than Dead - described as an 'essential sourcebook on Conceptual Art's famed champion' - comprises selected writings, interviews, an extended bibliography and a chronology with scans of materials from Seth Siegelaub's archive, all of which is intended to immerse the reader in a 'deep dive' through the many projects that engaged the proto-curator throughout his life (Interview АЖ327). By utilising already existing materials, including unpublished interviews instead of commissioned essays, the book resists the impulse to follow a common thread of analysis, leaving interpretation in the hands of the reader.
The book itself is an elegant endeavour, systematically ordered and arranged, with a variety of documents that chart the evolution of several of the projects referenced in detail, from drafts or lists in Siegelaub's hand, through typescripts to items designed and reproduced in print. The editorial approach mirrors this trajectory, as outlined by Martinetti in her introductory guide, with the archive providing several entry points to particular topics, as they are re-iterated and positioned across Siegelaub's career - covering subjects such as Conceptual Art, the economy of publishing and the circulation of ideas. By exploring what constitutes primary or secondary information, the material conditions which defined the publications and exhibitions Siegelaub produced in the mid-to-late 1960s, the book subjects his archive to similarly robust categorisation. Connecting this process to the diverse projects that consumed him after Conceptual Art, from textiles, Marxism to Disney, seemingly disparate topics that, once collated and configured via one of his many collections and organisations (impressively titled structures for often one-man operations), are rendered into formats that, when viewed together, reveal just...