Over
the last four years the content of my printing has steadily changed.
The political and social upheavals that have riven this country into
splinters have slowly seeped into my work. It has not been an entirely
welcome change—I have never been a fan of overtly political artists'
books—so I have been exploring ways in which I can make
politically-inspired work that is both consistent with my aesthetics,
and meaningful without being preachy or self righteous. It is a
difficult balance to strike.
While choosing the texts for my book Character Traits
(2017–2019) I noticed that my choices were colored by the absurdity of
our President and his enablers. I was not trying to make a political
statement with the book, but the politics edged itself in all the same.
The hyper-politicization that was infecting every aspect of my daily
life could not be kept out of my work. Surprisingly, my timidity about
bringing politics into my books was absent in my ephemeral work, and I
began printing small mailings that allowed me to directly express my
frustration, anger, and helplessness.
My "LOSER" postcard sent to Donald 'Jailbait' Trump at the White House after Joe Biden's victory. Character Traits
provoked another significant realization about how my lettering and
type design relate to the content of my books. Historically, my
lettering has been divided into two distinct categories: large,
interpretative letterforms on one hand, and proper, constrained
typefaces on the other. For over twenty years I have tried
unsuccessfully to find ways for these two alphabetical impulses to merge
into some hybrid form. What Character Traits taught me was that
it was not the lettering that was preventing me from doing this, rather
it was the content of my books. The template I had been using in my work
was to isolate my interpretative or abstract letterforms on single
pages, and then write notes about them in my more traditional typefaces.
In order to merge my two lettering impulses, I had to move on from this
approach and change the content of my work.
With all of these ideas swirling in the background I began work on a new book project called Three Constitutions.
The book was inspired by the increasingly contentious conflict between
"originalists," those who view the Constitution as a prescriptive
cultural
artifact delineating American "civilization," and those who view the
Constitution as a flexible instrument conceived to adapt to the evolving
political and social realities of American "nationhood." This is a
conflict we are all familiar with, but what got me started working on Three Constitutions was that in the blaring echo chamber of the hourly news cycle, the originalists were, and are, dominating the discussion.
The
problem with these zealous, self-described Constitutional "patriots" is
not dissimilar from that of religious zealots: if (and it's a big IF)
they have bothered to read their primary document—the Constitution or
whatever their holy book happens to be—they have done so through
self-justifying blinders. How many Constitutional "originalists," for
instance concentrate on the fact that the fourth phrase of the preamble
is to "insure domestic Tranquility" or that the sixth is to "promote the
general Welfare?" How many self-proclaimed "Proud Boys" understand that
the second amendment is an amendment, and therefore provides its
own justification for being revisited and amended further? The more
likely scenario is that these originalists have not read the original
documents at all. Instead they encounter the Constitution at a remove by
relying upon the interpretation of others for their beliefs.
The
idea that developed from these musings was to print the Constitution in
three ways. One large volume would contain the actual text, but it
would be printed in a typeface that is difficult, though not impossible,
to read. This volume would be accompanied by two smaller volumes, each
of which presented an interpretation of the original text. In thinking
about the primary contemporary means of doctrinal interpretation, it
struck me that there are two: 1) party apparatchiks (President,
senators, media commentators, communities, churches, etc) and 2) the
internet/social media. One's party interprets by lopsided emphasis and
redaction, resulting in an edited version that fits their political
aims. The internet interprets by algorithm—providing you with either a
best guess version of what someone like you (or who the algorithm
assumes you are) would want to hear, or a version that is determined by
the limitations, or motives, of the person who conceived the algorithm.
For
the redacted version, I had the full text of the Constitution and
Amendments set in my Hungry Dutch type. I then went through the text and
highlighted key words or phrases to be redacted by physically turning
the type upside down. These inverted pieces of type print as black
rectangles, resulting in pages that look similar to how redacted
government documents look.
For
the internet version, I fed the original text through a series of
translations using Google Translate. It was first translated into
Esperanto, as an expression of the Utopian ideals behind the text and
the language. From Esperanto, the text was then translated into Russian,
from Russian to Chinese, and Chinese back to English. The resulting
text is something like the original, but different in subtle yet
meaningful ways. For this volume I designed a typeface that feels very
much like a digital design, using simple geometric forms.
In
the beginning of November my former student Sarah Moody moved in with
us to work on the project. Since then we have finished the internet
volume and are currently printing the redacted version. Later in the
month we'll begin work on the larger volume. Below are a selection of
photos of the process so far, mainly taken by Sarah.
Freshly cast Hungry Dutch type from Ed Rayher at Swamp Press.
Determining page breaks and corrections in the Swamp Press galleys.
Breaking the type into pages.
Galley proofs marked up for redaction.
Redacting the type by turning it upside down.
Proofing the redacted type.
Correcting the redacted galleys.
The redacted galleys and spread.
Proofing a spread from the Google translate version.
Checking position.
Making ready a spread.
Checking ink density.
Striking a page as printed in the dummy.
Paging through a gathered finished copy.