IS IT MEANT TO BE READ

I’m interested in the agency of the material, and when it takes over the autography of the person(s) that are involved with it in some ways. In this sense, I investigate manuals as transparent utopian sources of information that afford the promise of showing us how systems work.

IT IS MEANT TO BE READ is a drawing and sculptural installation that contemplates issues of regulation and information access. It digests two categories of source material and teases out the formation of information in the act of reading, writing, distribution and archiving.

The installation is a self-destructive archive system: a transparent filing cabinet and collection of diagrammatic imagery, which was found online and selected for its tendency to bypass internet filters put in place by the Government of Iran. By painstakingly removing the negative spaces in these printed images and stacking them in transparent folders, I conflate figure and ground, creating new visual forms. The viewer is invited to flip through the collection, gathered inside a modified filing cabinet that has been made see-through with the removal of its exterior panels. From the lower drawer of the cabinet, plastic tubing administers a slow drip of anti-archival, acidic ink that will, over time, rust on the acetate and mar parts of its imagery.
IT IS MEANT TO BE READ invites active interpretation of reading manuals with their promise of transparency and sharing knowledge about how a system works from inside, despite the opacity of its facade.