Marks of Indifference
A print-on-demand artist book individually hand-marked with a Sharpie. The images depict fragments of Jeff Wall’s oft-cited and reproduced essay, “‘Marks of Indifference’: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art,” which was first published as part of the 1995-1996 MoCA Los Angeles exhibition and catalogue, Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975.
Process
I located a copy of the original catalogue and photographed each spread of the essay after a popular, fragmented style of online documentation used for artist books—promoting the desirable material qualities of such objects over the transmission of their content.
The resulting photographs were transferred back into a book layout and printed.
For each copy of the publication, I sit down and trace over every instance of Wall’s text with a black marker.
At the end of each sitting, I record the length of time I needed to complete the marks.
In the action of simultaneously highlighting and redacting his ideas, I wanted to locate a space between the legible and the obscured, between wanting to revere something and also resist it.
This is an open edition.
