Printed Matter is pleased to host a launch event for Speech/Acts, a publication accompanying an exhibition by the same name (September - December, 2017) at the Institute of Contemporary at the University of Pennsylvania. The catalog is co-published by Futurepoem and the ICA Philadelphia.

The event will include a conversation between Dan Machlin (Editorial Founder and Executive Editor, Futurepoem), Meg Onli (Assistant Curator, ICA Philadelphia) and the poet/scholar Amber Rose Johnson speaking about the Speech/Acts exhibition and the process of translating that into a publication.

The Speech/Acts exhibition catalog features reprints of seminal texts from Fred Moten and Harryette Mullen, and newly commissioned poetry by Morgan Parker, Simone White, and an essay from the exhibition curator, Meg Onli.

The exhibition features the work of Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Steffani Jemison, Tony Lewis, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Martine Syms. The artists in this exhibition use poetics as a tool to manipulate the conceptual and structural elements of language and the social contexts in which language is employed, appropriated, and abstracted.