Exhibition publication for U.F.O. Marking.
"In a browsing library, when a book leaves their spot, there is a brief moment of space waiting for them to go back to. Library workers who are shelving books often quickly push the stacks of books back without any gaps, having the bay not look like a gigantic child with missing teeth.
In a special collection, and specifically here, in Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection (JFABC), most materials’ existence carved out a sense of belonging for themselves and items around them. When an item leaves their spot, there is a space– a box, or an archival tag, or a hanging file, or a folder, waiting for them to go back to. You won’t find a printed Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress call number label brutally slapped on their spines. Instead, you will find a pencil-written accession number (usually) at the back of the publication; politely, softly, quietly, marked there.
It’s not uncommon to hear witnesses or people involved in a UFO case, mentioning a marking– on their body, on their lawn, on their cattle’s hindlimbs…or “No marking!” they will exclaim to you. This ephemerality of evidence, with the displacement of looking, are elements this exhibition is speculating with these selected publications, artists’ books, and zines (or however they evolved to identify their nature as different mediums).
The nature of materials at JFABC refuses to be catalogued: our desperate desires for titles, footnotes, bibliographies, colourful photographs, extensive arguments, compelling linear narrations, are confronted by the absence of them, or an overwhelming amount of them. We find ourselves residing our impulses in resonance and allure instead. Crushing on “bad boys” only taught me one thing– the more aloof they are, the more attractive they seemed to be. But as times went on, aloofness stopped being a bewitching quality. In lieu, the sincere presentation of absence and/or abundance is what resonates in any relationship. Similarly, in a relationship with an artists’ book or a UFO case, what we are willingly dwelling on is often the resonance as materiality.
With resonance as materiality, marking is what my role as a special collection assistant and an artist is doing here. An exhibition of publications behind glass is the tool to perform this marking of resonance– in a library where reading is both a private consumption and a public performance, the curatorial work and display shelves displace the function of the text. The publications are portrayed as objects with potential consumption and performance; they are austere, aloof and replaceable at that present. Mimicking a UFO marking, this exhibition demurs the spectator’s looking. The publications demand to be consumed tout de suite through their honesty in the opacity of information.
My presentation of these publications is a reverse of reading in the library– simultaneously a public reading and a private performance. *I* knew what happened to me. When one speaks (writes) of their UFO experience, their invitation is received through the reader’s resonance. *You* knew what to you.
There are four markings at play here:
the marking of these publications as unique editions living in JFABC,
the marking of their presence as texts that take up physical space,
the marking of the artist’s attempt of identifying resonances as an exhibition,
and the marking of the spectator’s untraceable reading through glass display shelves.
All of these markings contain both the quality of the pencil and the UFO. They are inherently ephemeral, and longing to be recognised and made sense, through their occupancies by making a tangible or intangible mark in their own grammar that could be easily erased and overlooked.
Now that I have tried to make a mark…: all in all, spectators should also feel comfortable saying, “No marking!”."
