The Critical Proximity of Memory

Today I am posting a selection of pages from a 30 page un-bound book I created. I choose not to bind this book because I wanted it to be a text that could be read in any order and be endlessly recreated by its reader. This book structure is inextricably linked to its narrative, both are conceptually structured around the complexities of remembering and the possibility of recovering memory.

The materials I used for the project, both for the writing and the book as a physical structure, are all recycled or as I like to call them, "waste-language" materials. I made the book from language that people normally throw away, for example, pages of photocopies that come out incorrectly so people throw them away and things like receipts.

I collected text-paper-rubbish and other such waste materials that engaged with language. A lot of collage was involved. I alternated between using the actual words themselves (cut them out and pasted them on the page), copied some text directly from the source material or deviated from the source material by interpretation and extension, to create 'original' text.

This project illuminates the impossibility of making decisions for multimedia writing projects in advance, prior to the making, regarding form, structure and the use of materials, and also decisions about writing (although it is difficult to separate it from my use of materials) that is the process of writing and the physical words that end up on the page. The narrative actually evolved and established itself as I created each page singularly.

I hope to do more projects using "waste-language" materials.