Archivio Conz

Emmett Williams (1925 Greenville, South Carolina, USA – 2007 Berlin, Germany) was an American poet and performer of experimental poetry. In 1962, he took part in the “Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik” in Wiesbaden and since then regularly participated in Fluxus concerts and events. The later unconventional autobiography My Life in Flux – and Vice Versa (Stuttgart: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 1991) brings together documents and anecdotes from Williams’s journey between the United States, Europe, and Asia, providing precise and unique documentation of his participation in the Fluxus movement. Returning to the United States in 1966, he became editor-in-chief of Something Else Press until 1970, collaborating on some of the publishing house’s most essential works, including Claes Oldenburg’s Store Days (1961), and editing the outstanding Anthology of Concrete Poetry (1967). In 1982, while living in Berlin with his wife Ann Nöel, Williams had an exhibition at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, titled Schemes and Variations, which was attended by Francesco Conz and members of Fluxus. The relationship of sincere friendship and mutual esteem between Williams and Conz resulted in unique works produced in Asolo and Verona over the course of almost thirty years of collaboration. Williams' works have been exhibited in numerous international museums, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1983), the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin (1996), and the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund (2005). Emmett Williams’s archive is currently part of the Getty Research Institute.