The Unexpected Guest

Hospitality is the welcome we extend to strangers, an attitude and a code of conduct, and a metaphor encompassing issues of the body, territory, politics, ecology and the hosting of data. Published on the occasion of the seventh Liverpool Biennial, The Unexpected Guest hosts an array of artists, writers and thinkers from the four corners of the globe, in a complex anthology of newly commissioned writing, artists’ projects and creative texts. Artists have been invited to make a contribution that reflects upon a particular aspect of hospitality, or to invite a guest to occupy their space. Kenneth Goldsmith has invited 29 fellow poets to compose works on two key areas of relevance to the subject: technology and geography. Commissioned essays by leading scholars from Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia consider hospitality from multiple perspectives, including colonial history, spatial politics and the ethics of the host–guest relationship.