Manifest Installation
While the performances of Minoru Manifesto were one-time only events, I'm very happy that the Richmond Manifests: Self & City scroll, created from dozens of Richmond citizens and the beautiful hand lettering of Martin Reisle (Mr. Scripsit), is currently on display at the Brighouse Library. If you can't visit the scroll in person, read on for photos and details, and check out this lovely article in the Richmond News.
I typed the hand written lists from my collection of index cards, doing my best to preserve unique capitalization, punctuation and spelling, and then alphabetized and lightly edited them down (mostly to get the Self list and the City list to have the same number of items). The editing process was harder than I expected; I wanted to preserve the repetition and frequency of certain objects (phone, wallet, keys, jewellery) without eliminating the specificity or variation. I then handed these very long lists over to Martin who wrote them by hand on the 10 meter (30 feet) long paper.
A strange sort of poetry emerged from the lists and, with the introduction of a third person (original writer, me, Martin) came the additional opportunity for variation ("underwear" became "underware", for example). I see these transformations as key to the piece, a translation across time and space where the message is clear to the reader, even if the letters are a little off.
The Richmond Manifests scroll is on display through April 10, 2020 at the Brighouse Branch Library (100-7700 Minoru Gate). Pop by, grab a book, and take a look!
Over the life of this project I gathered "mini manifests" on Self and City from visitors to the Chapel, at pop-up events, walks, board meetings, and during creation rehearsals for the Minoru Manifesto performance. I knew from very early on that I wanted to work with a calligrapher in some way, though I wasn't quite sure how, and in the last month of the project it dawned on me that creating a giant, collective manifest would be perfect. Luckily I had been corresponding with Martin over several months and even more lucky, his schedule allowed him to squeeze in this massive project.
I typed the hand written lists from my collection of index cards, doing my best to preserve unique capitalization, punctuation and spelling, and then alphabetized and lightly edited them down (mostly to get the Self list and the City list to have the same number of items). The editing process was harder than I expected; I wanted to preserve the repetition and frequency of certain objects (phone, wallet, keys, jewellery) without eliminating the specificity or variation. I then handed these very long lists over to Martin who wrote them by hand on the 10 meter (30 feet) long paper.
A strange sort of poetry emerged from the lists and, with the introduction of a third person (original writer, me, Martin) came the additional opportunity for variation ("underwear" became "underware", for example). I see these transformations as key to the piece, a translation across time and space where the message is clear to the reader, even if the letters are a little off.
