RECANTING EM

cyclical reading. where the ends lead back to the beginning. inspired by 18th century plate illustrations, i was thinking of fairy tale books or the etching works of gustave doré.

i made the book using a brother copier. with it i would draw in pencils or ballpoint pen, copy that drawing, draw on top of the copy, copy some more. so on and so on until i let go of all the detail that mattered, until the machine was doing most of the talking.

the text and the drawings moving at a different pace.

the book itself is printed in a much smaller format than the inspirations i looked at. typically we anticipate these 18th century "plate" books to be lap books and not pocket books. the amount of pages in recanting em makes the spine very stiff, and with tight margins the content is hard to reach.

i wanted to let the text fall into the spine, make it illegible in some sense. as the text itself surrounds the recursive rhythm of deceit in relationship , and the abuse that follows, it was useful for it to have a reading experience proportionately aggrivating.

i wanted the persistent reader to have to break the book apart to get to the obscured words. i remember distinctly disliking the experience when it came back from press. it had worked. the book is very frustrating to read. it's also the one people seem to gravitate to the most..

plates ii & cxliii

plates v & cxl

plates ix & cxxxvi

plates xix & cxxvi

plates xxvi & cxix

plates xliv & ci

plates lxxi & lxxvi

the pages in the book are up-right and upside-down. the content folds into itself. the beginning is as available as the end from the onset. the reader keeps diligence trying not to peak at the later moments of the book, until it is clear that there is only repetition to look forward to. looking ahead is just looking at something you've already seen.

the whole book is on the mmyope website, mm-019 to mm-027.