Book one is done: It's ready now to be buried deep in the State. With ceremony. So, I never thought it would be so difficult working on something and letting it go: I never thought it would be part of this.
Its a new uncharted level of this project. It took time to create now it will be out of my hands.
The pages are bamboo, red grass, locally dug clay, and a school schedule. Each element represents different decades of my life and particular memories.
Note: This is part of an email I had with my professor which explains some of the thought process when dealing with these books:
My Epitaph Books are a visual interpretation of this theme expressing personal conflicts left unresolved and embattled. Pages in the book will be highly representative, vague by design, and mean nothing to anyone but me. I am toying with the idea that during the ceremonies, participants will either be blind-folded or faced away from the hole when the books are lowered, in effect, not witnessing the placement of what will be destroyed within a decade.
What these books are not is a symbolic burying of problems from the past. I am not ceremoniously covering conflicts to forget about them or tritely say "hey those issues are now buried." On one level these books are a direct confrontation of unresolved issues, but ultimately these books are a statement of the conflict in relation to the limited time we have left to live and the disappearance of all conflicts due to the disolvance of all those involved, human and otherwise. The amount of time spent creating and ceremoniously burying, “witnessed” by blindfolded participants and turned away audiences, and ultimately, the disappearance of the physical piece itself, all crescendo and manifest in the internal struggle of existence and ultimate failure of self-perseverance.
These pieces are the embodiment of the theme of Man vs. Self.
I like the idea of burying this one by a highway so people watch without really seeing.
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