"Minds Over Matter" proposes an alternative history to conceptual and performance art in the 1970s by thinking through their co-emergence with a rising public interest in telepathy and telekinesis. What happens when we rethink dematerialization to consider the very rearrangement of matter using the political powers of collective imagination?
Julia Bryan-Wilson is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of California, Berkeley and the Director of the Berkeley Arts Research Center. Her recently published book Fray: Art and Textile Politics (U Chicago Press, 2017), was named a "best art book" of the year by the New York Times.
Image: Robert Barry, Telepathic Piece, 1969; Conceptual artwork. Courtesy the artist.