Hi Clara, Matthew here.
First meaning being the most relevant of what you are bound to or what you choose to bind yourself to
the second is very complicated
experienced many potentials and differences in the performance of unbound pages
of unbund non pages almost every itertion of the book object
i have not
the existence of glue or other material that organizes material in a fixed way
isn't as interesting a meaning of binding as the first one
it's like deciding to talk about the weather or the snow
the glue or fixity of a spine is important and has many effects
one of hundreds of design decisions made that will affect the future of the text or the object or the digial file of the many objects
first feels
emotional relation to it
i know what it feels like to be unmoored
fear the undoing of the bond
imagining and engaging with physical objects
pages that have been unbound
platforms i don't have up to date equipment
img will not download
but text will download that describes the img that is absent
tender center
textual description of the missing images
peculiar
a compositional space intended for the machines
enter
human
could be that someone does that
there's someone human that does that
probably backs into the world
of the mechanical turk database of descriptors
enormous labor in the background
to move in athletic ways
mind is swift with metaphors with great effect
use of these metaphors in he middle of working
mind is sparking as well
space of reflecting on work
slightly different
crucial
almost all we are doing
object of study
thruogh via metaphors
i drew attention certainly not to discourage the speed and fluidity
but to simply bring some language
at play
speeds feel
with people it can feel pretty good
organism created by our conversation
making it goether with others
in the most extreme example of entering the institution
im ere and im working
that organism is bound to have tensions
but the engine of speed is deliriously it's been crucial
momentum was just movement that desired a move
feel a positive sense even
one more aside
and i had an experience very much like what u escribe
of ur metabolism within the institution running at a speed
it's like you arrive and you're already going
in 2009 when they started or i first saw etherpad
it turned me on without an off siwtch
you could have a space of textual copisiton that was going overboard
abundance
pouring out
series of games writing games
to be on the same page
through sheer party energy make the textual space suddenly be a book
just there's etherpad at 6 and if enough ppl are in there it's so exciting
totally ansxiety producing to everyone you ever told about it
anyway
i love structured writing games no end to discoveries and fun and shifting everything can change
yeah
event i mentioned was probably forty of fifty people in 3 diffrent cities event where we
had opeining for mediamatic in ams that they called a biennial that wasnt a biennial and it happened once
ppl in beirut ams and portland doing it at once
in portland they printed it and bound it as a book
all the anxiety kicked it
it wasnt a book
it was crazy riting
is it edited
ISBN number was given
the partty part was awesome and then the fact of it being called a boook
it didn't survive
it was a problem
an ugly
did u print out the scroll
patricia no running the studio
transferred it into in desgin laid it out and it was basically a5 half letter
it took her maybe an hour to go from etherpad scroll to a bound book with ISBN
i was so excited but it was then the site of great anxiety and great criticism
and i don't mean peope were mad
it's arrival was problematic
parallel kind of anxiety
claim made by a spine is similar to the claim an institution wants to make
to set an order
i remember is you mentioned getting books that had to go on a ship on a pallet
you were bringing over here sufficiently large that the only possible way was pallet of packed boxes that arrived in the RDM harbour
if i remember when i learned that i was just at the point that my books were in a ship that was still in canada saint laurenxe seaway puzzle of when the ship lands in RDM near my house i don't just go there and pick up my books, the transport of the books a crucial stage it had to cross a border process was specialized that you needed to handle someone like a lawyer port manager businesses 100 m over to the west of me a bunch of them manage the processing of cargo when i talked to you the books i thought were aimed straight to my house would stop at the harbor, my reaction became intense bureaucratic relation like lawyers money that enabled passge of books to the border so they could go from the harbor to my house not as much as shipment but big hunk of change normouslycomplicated trauamtic stress flashbackds to what do you do when you face an incomprehensible system for which you can only be legible if you hire and expert most legal systems are like that you dont show up as yourself yo sit there piwerless the transit of my library a tiny fragment of it that meant everything to mewas going through the same process happy ending the guys i worked with wer great i wanted to show you pictures
the night that they finally a truck pulls up close to midnight and there is an enourmous thing on a palet 17 boxes of 700 books that i took pictures of as they came out of the truck as they came into my house adding 700 books fills the whole house it was a bidning to go back to first use reuniting reestablishing of a bond that i stillfeel visecerally in my body spent my life accumulting books that were imposrtant to me and my thinking lived amidst about 7000 books that were limited most by what size of dwelling i could live in reached this stage i do all my thinking by walking around in the books i think by looking at the spines and making piles read and unread books incredibly dense archives into sepifci sbjects surrounde dby a thin thin surface of generality and hwen i decided what i could afford to bring here about a tenth of what iwas severed from 8 years ago i chose all of my books about logging i grew up in seattle the whole history of eu contact to the time i live in really turned around the extraction idsutrsy of logging prelogging what was a trade economy around furs was dominated by indigenous tribes that had alsoready been doing sphosticated trade across the region until the exahustion of that and its ocnversion into indsutrialiexed tree farming history of the palce and cultrue that i grew up in i think about what i try to understand or try to write about i have an unusual library of texts because i bought lots of things that were not made as bound books majority of this history was written by those couldnt get publsihed memoir for family interview for historian diary these kinds of thing wre accessble to me back where i grea up largely becau eof aplace called shoreys lasted in seatle collecting stuff that would mostly disappear living inthe pile of this accumultion that is my body thes thigns came to me one by one in my hands i loked at them and decided tot ake them home with me and for many years i had no contact and the arrival of the pallet was an
emotional cognitive event unlike any other i've had
selection of books i did at a distance i can remember every book in that house a friend of mine went into the house and show me what was in the boxes and i would say yes and now, recognize yourself alive in a house in this house is evocative i remember that feeling part of the cognitive experience of the reunion iwith my books was i recognize myself again, look at all kinds of things, am i still this person where is that life what ot bring it could only begin by seeing yourself you were here and alive and housed that process really moved forward for me when the pallet of books arrived that is how i recognize my living existence i am an organism constituted by these histories
i would have brought twice ten times as many if i could have
remarkable, i mostly stuffed 800 books in a small bedroom i basically fit a bed and a desk in there and then lined the walls with shelves made a place for when i sleep or wake i am breathing the salty air of decaying books three walls of ceiling to floor just seeing them and in that oxygen tank i can breathe and i can feel life and connection plenty of books continue to think until i die i still liked finding new books was amazed that that size instead of being a fragment of something else feels like an integrated whole thing
one more question
since that shipment that first pictures of you pitting up shelves have you been tempted to or do you think you will have a second shipment
i remember that amidst your books there are fragile and unique printed things that in fact the wall of spines that one would imagine it's not the case there is the unbound its the softly bound
just in the usage there are things which are in a fixed order other things that fall apart or are meant to fall apart the distinction i was trying to make is softly bound
what felt the most anchoring and sprecious as it arrived has been the softly bound fragile unique things that look like a slip of paper an envelope of cards object remembering that the weight and achoring isnt from the heavy leather spines of the lawyers office its from the delicat elittle thigngs that have delicate histories tied with softly bound
its abeautiful system
one object made my anne focke 1969
real interesting writer form seattle in 1969 exhibition with lucy lippard titled with number of ppl resident in seattle 538000 something and something
small manila envelope
in it
index cards
one per artist
20 or 30 for the apparatus that the curator wanted to add
presence in my hands means more than any of the big heavy books