SOLACE AND PERPETUITY, a life story
Hardcover book, folded paper book, aluminum print, linen wrapped book
8.25 x 5.25 in
2016
An algorithmically rendered, partly fictionalized autobiography of an artist. As in a medieval Book of Hours, various genres of original writings are represented: diary entries, dreams, academic papers, fictive prose, poetry, plays, and video and installation scripts. Numbered and fragmented into their indigenous paragraphs, they have been subjected to a scrambling coded algorithm, providing a kaleidoscopic reading of potentially 100’s of 1000’s of possibilities. The artist’s character seeps through a text where every paragraph is a subtext. The book consists of four objects: a hardcover book, two “obscured” volumes; one “mummified” and one with folded pages as well as a “scrambled” portrait of the artist, which uses the same algorithm to scramble the text. Only one of each volume exists, with completely unique folds, and algorithmic configurations of text.
Photos by Arden Sklar and Magdalena Kmiecik