Continuous Project Altered Daily
Another minor disaster to add to the Catalogue of 2013 Destruction (see post #126 26 November 2013).
I’m not sure if since I’ve been studying rubbish, things have been becoming rubbish more often or whether I’ve just noticed them more.
The latest fatality is my signed copy of Robert Morris’ Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris (1994, MIT Press). (I didn’t actually know it was signed when I bought it off ebay years ago. It’s says; For Michele Cone, on condition….! R Morris 2/5/94).
A few months back I moved all the precious art books up to the top bookshelf whilst babyproofing the house from the now-crawling Toby. The bookshelf is structured according to importance; art books on the top shelf, theory and reference on the middle shelf and fiction on the bottom (obviously with some slight overlap). The shelves are also cluttered with other stuff; a small Che Guevara portrait, a ceramic squashed tin can (opened), Toby’s poster paints, a ukulele, a tambourine, a conical flask, a banana shaped hip flask, binoculars, some pram toys and a trailing plant which has gone a bit bonkers in the dark warm shelf.
The plant at some point has been over-watered. Being on the top shelf, I didn’t notice this until today when I went to get my Martin Kippenberger book down to reference and noticed a dubious tidal mark about an inch up.A small section of precious art books have sponged the excess water up and now have an ugly tidal mark throughout their pages. They are all still readable and not too badly damaged except my Robert Morris book.
Mould covers the water damaged areas and the pages are glued together, still damp. Trying to extract the pages apart results in them ripping and the hardback cover’s black dye has been leached out spreading through the affected pages and book jacket.
Clean up operation begins with wiping the mould off with a sponge, but this results in disintegrating the sodden paper into little soggy twists of paper pulp. It’s pretty ruined. The book is drying out on the radiator now.
The little paper twists remind me a little bit of Threadwaste (1968) which I’ve been studying (through pictures) and also made me think of Michael Landy’s Breakdown (2001) where he destroyed everything he owned.
I don’t think of myself as that materialistic but I do really value books (despite destroying a fair few intentionally as art). The condition they’re kept in is also really important to me. Bent corners and notes in margins are absolutely no-go. And although I research a lot online and appreciate that information is readily accessible and global through online pdfs and the like, I also prefer to access information through physical books.
The accidental damage of a particularly relevant book such as Continuous Project Altered Daily is starting to make this spate of destruction seem all a bit too uncanny.
Last year I collected and catalogued every item of rubbish generated through my practice for HOARD and any waste became art in the form of this collection. Now I’m no longer collecting any waste associated with my practice, there’s no need to save, or do anything with these small scraps. Maybe this is another reason I’m noticing these things more too.
However, I think on this occasion I will save the soggy little Continuous Project Altered Daily remnants. They will act as a reminder to not over-water the plant on the precious-art-book top shelf but also I can ponder on the thoughts they have raised.
Footnote: It took me 3 attempts to write this post in a doc as my software kept crashing and when I went to upload it to a-n, their website was down. Then replying to @an_artnews, twitter wouldn’t let me send a tweet several times due to ‘internal error’. I’m not superstitious but apparently it’s Friday 13th.
