Amant envisions a publications program unfolding at a slower pace and over longer timelines than our exhibition and residency programs. Its intent is to move from one form of communicating to another: from the more informal oral tradition of storytelling to the more formal, structured oratorical style of speechifying and, finally, to writing itself.
Inasmuch as it follows our first four seasons of exhibitions and residencies, Amant views its publication program as something akin to a “fifth season,” once described by the ancient Roman poet Albucius as undefined and movable time devoted to reflection and integration of the past into the present. Through storytelling and narration, our publication program will use unofficial public stories from the past as an exercise in “projective imagination,” a prefigurement, if you will, of the type of society we would prefer to live in now, if we could, not in some distant future. One of the enduring strengths of the literary imagination is its ability to rearrange and reorganize time/space coordinates at will, thereby creating a new “disposition,” where the presently prevailing consensus that capitalizes and underpins our lives can be questioned and perhaps refuted.