Canadese kunstenaar erodeert Encyclopedia Britannica

Na 244 jaar wordt Encyclopedia Britannica niet meer uitgegeven als papieren naslagwerk. De Canadese kunstenaar Guy Lamarée (die al heel wat meer book art op zijn palmares heeft) gebruikte dit gegeven om een uitgave tot een berglandschap te maken. Laramée’s idee is namelijk dat ongebruikte kennis erodeert, maar daarmee de ontwikkeling ervan juist ten goede komt. Uit zijn artist statement:

The erosion of cultures – and of “culture” as a whole – is the theme that runs through the last 25 years of my artistic practice. Cultures emerge, become obsolete, and are replaced by new ones. With the vanishing of cultures, some people are displaced and destroyed. We are currently told that the paper book is bound to die. The library, as a place, is finished. One might ask so what? Do we really believe that “new technologies” will change anything concerning our existential dilemma, our human condition? And even if we could change the content of all the books on earth, would this change anything in relation to the domination of analytical knowledge over intuitive knowledge? What is it in ourselves that insists on grabbing, on casting the flow of experience into concepts?

En wat later:

My work originates from the very idea that ultimate knowledge could very well be an erosion instead of an accumulation. So I carve landscapes out of books. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply is. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.

bron: This Is Colossal