Free Media Bulletin, Issue 1, [December] 1969

The rare first and only number of this artists' periodical edited by Jeff Wall, Duane Lunden, and Ian Wallace; an assemblage which combines appropriated texts from William S. Burroughs, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Trocchi, Paolo Soleri, Jean Toche, Richard Huelsenbeck, Arturo Schwarz, and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, along with Jeff Wall's very first published artists' book, the illustrated photo-conceptual essay “Meaningness” - which proceeds the publication of “Landscape Manual” - and works by Ian Wallace, Bill Vazan, and Duane Lunden.

A seminal publication in the history of conceptual art in North America, Free Media Bulletin was printed using the Intermedia roneograph machine, and laid the framework for the Four Artists exhibition at the UBC early the following year, for which “Landscape Manual” was produced, and which featured Wall, Lunden, and Wallace along with Tom Burrows.

William S. Burroughs’ “The Literary Techniques of Lady Sutton-Smith” is reproduced here directly from the pages of Astronauts of Inner-Space: An International Collection (Stolen Paper Review Editions, San Francisco, California, US, 1969), from which it was reproduced directly from The Times Literary Supplement (TLS), London, 6 August 1964.

Published in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada by Intermedia in approximately December 1969.

This copy was acquired from Adam Davis of Book & Tackle (Port Orford, Oregon, US), and I thank him for his assistance in acquiring it and for providing some of the descriptive text above.

Bibliographic Information: 

• Not in Maynard & Miles
• Not in Shoaf
• Not in Schottlaender
• Raven 19691200FMBU.0.1

Contents: 

• Antonin Artaud: "Revolt Against Poetry" (translated by Jack Hirschman, from Antonin Artaud Anthology, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1965)
• William S. Burroughs: "The Literary Techniques of Lady Sutton-Smith" (from Astronauts of Inner-Space: An International Collection, Stolen Paper Review Editions, San Francisco, 1969, which is from The Times Literary Supplement, London, 6 August 1964)
• Marcel Duchamp: "Readymade Notes from The Green Box 1912-1923" (from The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even by Richard Hamilton, George Wittenborn, Inc., New York, 1960)
• Sir Charles Lock Eastlake: "The Gem-Like Quality" (from Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters, Dover Press, New York, 1960)
• Richard Huelsenbeck: "Dada Lives! (1936)" (unattributed on copy, yet from The Dada Painters and Poets, Robert Motherwell, ed., Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., New York, 1951)
• Duane Lunden: "The Locator"
• Ad Reinhardt, "The Next Revolution in Art" (from The New Art, by Gregory Battock, ed., Dutton, New York, 196^)
• Arturo Schwarz, "Toward a Poetic of the Readymade" (from Marcel Duchamp: Readymades, Etc., Editions Arturo Schwarz, Milan, 1964)
• Paolo Soleri: "How Things Look to Me" (from Stolen Paper Review, Tempe, Arizona, 1963)
• Jean Toche: "Hostile Art"
• Alexander Trocchi: "A Revolutionary Proposal: Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds" (from City Lights Journal, issue 2, San Francisco, 1964)
• Bill Vazan: "from 'Ste Catherine st. Walk Line, June 7/69, Montreal'" and "A four-foot invisible line, Aug. 2/69"
• Jeff Wall: "Meaningness"
• Ian Wallace: "A Literature of Images"
• Laura West: photographs

Publishing Information:

• Editors: Duane Lunden, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace