Interpretation Vol. I

Simon Morris

Contributors: Liz Dalton, Forbes Morlock

Price £15 oop
ISBN 0953676528
Year 2002
Edition 250
Pages 140
Binding softback
Illustration text only
Dimensions 225 x 160 mm

For this, the first volume in a two book series, Simon Morris invited two literary theorists, Liz Dalton and Forbes Morlock, to each write an essay on a topic of their own choosing with fully referenced footnotes. Morris, the artist, then collected their respective essays and erased their titles and main body text, leaving only the floating footnote markers in place in the main body area and the footnotes themselves (in full) in place at the bottom of each page. He then sent Dalton’s erased essay, as an unaltered constellation of footnotes, to Morlock, and vice versa. In what has been wittily described by Sharon Kivland as “an academic blind date”, Morris asked the two theorists to try and write a reconstruction of one another’s essay, with only their own interpretation of the other’s footnotes as a guide. Interpretation Vol. I is the result.

This book features the original essays (constructions), the footnote constellations (erasures), the interpretative essays (reconstructions), plus notes by Morris contextualising the process of the collaboration and profiles of each contributor.

Working mischievously in the margins – and extending the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg,  herman de vries, and Michael Camille – Morris invites a process of re-interpretative collaboration that brings a marginalised point of reference (the footnote) to inversely bear directly on the centre of the text and makes it central to the reconstruction of new texts.

This book was designed by Peter McGrath of Groundwork Design (UK). It was launched in 2002 at Printed Matter, Inc., New York, with an accompanying exhibition. Summative information on the second volume in this series can be found here.