Authors: Cara Despain, Abigail Han, Ali Kheradyar, M, Anna Knecht Schwarzer, Toisha Tucker, Suné Woods, Meital Yaniv
Publisher: nonsensical
Details: September 2017, English, 5.5 x 8.5 in, 164 pages, risograph, softcover
Design: Sming Sming Books
Link for audio version recoreded by the authors voice
About: Words on Paper is nonsensical's first guest-edited issue.
“We live between the objects we make and the pages we write.
This is about that moment when you put the brush aside, close the editing program, cover the clay with a wet towel, emerge from the darkroom, and step onto a fresh page. There is a poem resounding in your head that’s finally ready to come out.
How much color is used to overcome a letter? How many words hide beneath an object? Can a sentence be disrupted by a red string, by a shattered glass, by a gold stain? Does a paragraph have a shadow? Do you write in order to make art or make art in order to write?”
In 2016, Meital Yaniv sent the above provocation to seven artists—Cara Despain, Abigail Han, Ali Kheradyar, M, Anna Knecht Schwarzer, Toisha Tucker, and Suné Woods—each with discreet writing practices. What resulted was an exhibition of the artists’ works, which became the host and incubator for five reading events that took place at LAST Projects in Los Angeles during a brief two-week period in a tense political moment—a few months before the 2016 election.
Combined with the prompt of the reading events, the exhibition became a workshop for creating and presenting brand new writing. The short timeframe ensured the brewing of raw experimentation, forcing artists to produce largely unrehearsed and unedited pieces.
As the artists sat in a circle, taking turns reading their works aloud without prescribed order, the gallery space housing their artworks also began to house their words.
Words on Paper is a documentation of process. This book follows the dually organic and deliberate structure that the readings took. Each chapter is marked by each of the events, along with links to audio recordings of the writings, read in the artist’s own voice.
Experimentation asks for inconsistency. It asks that no singular thread be held. Instead, we invite you to sit down and join the circle.