PRODUCTIVITY

What follows is an excerpt from an in-progress analysis/review of the artists’ book Things I Wanted To Tell You by Kristen Merola, published by Preacher’s Biscuit Books:

It is possible to put forward a metaphoric reading of the book. We could start at the title, Things I Wanted To Tell You, and assume that the illegible writing represents those “things,” and that those things have been made unspeakable, either through their own urgency or through the layered complexities of delay and time. This then, would be a book about a relationship, a relationship ended or suspended, with many things unsaid. We could put forward such a reading, if we like our books to end when we put them down. Or we could elaborate a different reading, one based in the relationship between the images and the text, the images of the text, and that reading could be extended productively, infinitely. Because we want our books to keep going after we put them down. Because we are concerned with the real book, the book in our hands, and the processes that it enacts.