Carpenter Center presents Salad Days: Primary Information

This summer, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts launches Salad Days, a new annual summer series dedicated to publication-based projects that explore publishing as an artistic, research-driven, and collaborative practice. The inaugural presentation, Salad Days: Primary Information, is realized in collaboration with independent publisher Primary Information, which is now celebrating its 20th anniversary. 

Rather than a traditional exhibition, Salad Days centers publishing as a living practice. Throughout the summer, the Carpenter Center will temporarily transform into a working bookstore and reading space, operating as a research environment, gathering place, and site for conversation, screenings, and public programs. Visitors are invited to browse, read, and spend time with artists’ books, writings, and archival materials that foreground publishing as a mode of artistic production and exchange. 

Accompanying Salad Days: Primary Information, this summer a screening series expands on the ideas, histories, and artistic practices represented in the project. Each week, the Carpenter Center will present a film by an artist published by or connected to Primary Information, offering audiences an opportunity to encounter their work beyond the page. Through film and video, the screening program highlights the ways artists have used moving images, performance, and experimental media alongside publishing as sites for artistic inquiry and exchange.