bound knowledge - a series ...

Earlier in the year
I accidentally stumbled onto making ephemeral book art works
that I (rather quickly I must say) referred to as
my 'bound knowledge' series 

 the series spurred two assemblages and an initial postcard set
but mostly I shared the series over the year
somewhat sporadically and haphazardly on instagram

in case you don't do the insta -
here were a few of my favourite moments:

 

I made and uploaded the last of that series yesterday

but it struck me that aside from a few words
(and mostly from just a couple of days ago)
I haven't really mentioned much about the series anywhere

 

'Bound knowledge' - the extra bits

Regular bloggy visitors will know of my long held interests in all things booky and ephemeral art-making (often biblioclastic in nature) and that I've long been intrigued by knowledge and epistemology (the fancy word for 'theory of knowledge'): What does it mean to 'know' things? how do we learn? what are the differences between knowledge and wisdom and intelligence? what is tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, empirical knowledge? how does knowledge affect ethics? what can we learn from indigenous knowledge systems? can there be universal truths?

For this collection I took books from my (ok I admit it --- LARGE) stockpile, stripped them of their covers/identity, wrapped them in various materials; some natural and found in situ, some from my fabric stash, then I placed the bound books in the environment. I quickly settled on a simple 'cross' wrapping for most books as, for almost 2 millennia, the book, knowledge and the church were intimately intertwined or bound to each other. By binding books with and to natural elements I was interested in honouring different knowledge systems. Each time I posted two pics of the work on instagram -- an up close and personal shot and an additional image taken from a distance. Having a photo of the work in its environment allowed me to add a pithy little philosophic musing on knowledge into the mix --- Plato, Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, Emerson, Socrates, Dewey, Russell all got an outing. I am happy to admit that I don't 'get' large chunks of philosophy (all the post-modern folk just make my head hurt) but in small pieces it seems to make more sense!

The bound knowledge series unexpectedly became a highlight in a challenging year.

tomorrow I'm excited to be commencing
a daily posting of the full 'lookUP' project to instagram
(at the LookUP.project ) 

If you are on IG you might like to follow
I must say - the micro-poems of Melinda Smith are something to behold
I don't think you'll be disappointed


I'll see you on the flipside of 2016

Happy New Year everyone


xxxx