The "Matter of Words"

What if there was some kind of modern exhibit on the effect, influence, and meaning of print over the years? What if it was in a museum on our campus?? Well, you are in luck because at the Museum of Art, the main exhibit is called “Matter of Words” with 46 contemporary works of art by artists Adam Bateman, Harrell Fletcher, and John Fraser. 

83,000 lb sculpture made entirely from books

You cannot walk into the room without noticing an enormous stack of books—it’s the elephant in the room. It stands 14-foot tall, weighs 83,000 pounds (the equivalent of 30 to 40 cars) and resembles a geological cross section of the Earth. The floor had to be reinforced before the sculpture could be put in place. Then thousands of books were stacked one on top of the other, only gravity holding the sculpture together. It is entitled “The Fourth Thousand Years”.  The curator Jeff Lambson said this about the collection: “Language can be thought of as a landscape of codes that we negotiate in order to understand or express a particular world or personal view.” As we can see with the medium of print, it changed the understanding and outlook of most people, especially the common people. It made possible the ability to individualize and interpret knowledge. Language became more standardized and literacy more popularized.  In this instance, print became a “landscape of codes” in which people’s view of language, knowledge, and learning altered irrevocably. Lambson expounded on this idea of the sculpture as a landscape by saying, "When they are all stacked together it is really beautiful, it looks like a cutaway of a hill or a mountain. Even though all the books are these geometric forms, the patterns are not geometric at all. The books get squished, they wave, they curve, they take on this very beautiful organic feeling, and it really feels like a landscape." Bateman, the main artist, wanted to use books, a medium that we are attracted to and predisposed to, in order to show the relationship between something artificial and something natural.

Veda Epling's highlighted bibles

The next most curious thing about the exhibit was the highlighted bibles, the work of Harrell Fletcher. During Fletcher’s residency at Artspace in San Antonio, he met and befriended Veda Epling, a homeless woman then living in a church’s doorway. The artist noticed that Epling had a curious habit: she obsessively highlighted Bibles, imposing her own code upon pages of scripture.
 [Sidenote: I found it interesting that her name was Veda, like the ancient sacred scriptures of the Indians that Rachel researched]
Fletcher provided Veda with several Bibles and colored highlighters and commissioned her to create these new works. “Veda worked obsessively to communicate her idiosyncratic vision through the medium of the printed pages of her scriptures. Her Bibles are an example of the use of a restricted language code, as she is the only person who can understand her color-coded communications between herself and God. Her landscape is the landscape of communication.” I think this too is a reflection on the influence of the printed word. The religious atmosphere changed greatly after the printing press was invented. The Bible became much more available to the masses, and therefore had the potential to be misused or misinterpreted by the masses as well.  Religion became personalized and individualized, as seen with Veda’s highlighted Bibles. Her own secret code is a symbol of the personal relationship she has with not her priest or religious of advisor, but between her and God, with no intermediary.

Lastly, I wanted to mention my favorite part of the exhibit. Behind the huge book sculpture, there is a projection screen that shows a 32-minute long looped video of Bateman putting books into a front-loading washing machine, inserting quarters, letting the cycle run, and then removing the pulp. It is entitled “A Reduction of Meaning: Admirals in Collision”.  I stood staring entranced at the video as the washer turned and the books started to be tossed around, disintegrating, being stripped of their material elements.  About the piece, Bateman says, “ The work has many meanings, beginning with the treatment of books as signifiers, of language as objects…” The books themselves are just placeholders, symbols, or the physical manifestations of the abstract concept of language. I think printed books especially came to symbolize knowledge for the masses or the dissemination and dispersion of knowledge to all people. Print undermined authority and promoted the individual. It challenged social ideals while also standardizing them.  Bateman further explained “The name of the artwork is a play on linguistic theories and deconstruction, emphasizing that the meaning is derived from the deconstruction of the objects, but also, that all the physical properties remain the same, just in a different form. The amount of glue, paper, cardboard, and ink remains constant; it has simply been reorganized, so the content theoretically remains the same.” So I guess if you can take a 30-minute long video of books getting shredded in a washing machine and call it art, then book burning really isn’t that strange.