by Michael Dumontier (Artist)
Call Ampersand Response is a collaborative artwork made through an exchange of images via email. Between 2011 and 2017 Canadian artists Michael Dumontier (born 1960) and Micah Lexier (born 1974) conceived this activity as a way to share with each other their mutual interest in found images, line drawings and used books. The starting image was a circle on a rectangle; every subsequent image was visually connected to the previous one. It was understood from the outset that they had to use images that could be scanned from physical items they already had at home (no images from the internet), such as children's books, technical manuals and assorted ephemera. The call-and-response nature of the enterprise can be appreciated in the pairs of facing pages that present themselves as you go through the book. This second edition, expanding on the Nieves edition of 2013, includes the entire project of 196 exchanges that make up Dumontier and Lexier's clever, competitive, meandering conversation.