I Cancel All My Works at Death - James Lee Byars

Titled after James Lee Byars' famous proclamation, Triple Candie's I Cancel All My Works at Death posits that Byars and his work are better misremembered than reexperienced. Triple Candie is a fugitive institution operated by two art historians that produces exhibitions about art but devoid of it that are realized without the involvement of artists. This book includes documentation of the exhibition as well as two recollections (by the artist's teenage sweetheart and a late-life acquaintance), essays on creative reconstruction and Byars' relationship to Detroit, a conversation between Triple Candie and a lawyer on the legal ramifications of artistic cancelation, and an assortment of quotes by Radiohead, Ivor Cutler and others that have nothing and everything to do with Byars and this show. The book is available in two different dust jackets.