Ordinal Solid installed at Cecille R. Hunt Gallery, Webster University, St. Louis, MO, 2018.
Ordinal Solid is the third exhibition of a body of work based on the library as a curated, collaborative and performed space. Previous iterations were exhibited as Babel Unbound in Cork, Ireland and Babel Revisited at Space Gallery in Portland, ME. Photographs, large-scale digital prints, and vinyl text paginate the gallery walls referencing over-sized pages from a book. Pieces of text and abstracted, symbolic images loosely connect threads of research and meandering thoughts on the library. A compass-like instrument, an archive of sorts, firmly positions itself central in the space. Objects, such as magenta finger-cots, a chunk of magnesium carbonate, 3D printed totems and a meteor fragment tell a story rich in materiality and lost in contemplation.
Performing the Book, a single-channel video, explores both the tactile handling of loose pages, while bound, and references the magenta-fingered scanning process at Google Books Library Project. With the book in motion, relationships emerge and dissipate within seconds, making the magic of browsing visible and highly aesthetic.
The video, Performing the Book, is available for viewing on Vimeo.