This portfolio of drawings and commentary is part of a much longer project that can be traced by to the 1970s and event drawings done in California, as well as other studies of events in graphic form that were the basis of the 1978 Exeperience of the Medium, and drawing series exhibited at the University of California, Berkeley, Wurster Hall Gallery in 1986, and subsequently. The notion of studying events by graphically enacting or performing them is at the core of the project. The images in this portfolio all came from a single set of eighteen studies, the "Particle Zoo", that was done in 2002, but studies of events comprise many of the drawing series done in the 1980s and 1990s as well. This project brought that work into a focus and condition of critical study.
The drawings were scanned on the Epson 500, and printed out on Mohawk superfine, with comments and plate numbers added.
typographic: Baskerville throughout.
imagery: Pencil drawings of particles.
graphical: Laid out like a nature album with plates and commentary.
The edition is designed to invoke associations with nature prints and albums. The purple silk and delicately colored marble end sheets have a direct relation to older traditions, but the language and images are contemporary. The project is not nostalgic or kitsch, but is a clean and direct presentation of a theoretically oriented graphic project.
Johanna Drucker
type: initiating
role:
artist
binder
designer
author
publisher: Druckwerk
dates:
publication: 2005/08/01
publication history: Only one edition of this work has been produced as of 2007.
movement:
conceptual (AAT)
process (AAT)
subject:
Theoretical visuality
themes: Drawings of events, and drawings as events.
content form:
Portfolio of drawings.
publication tradition:
album (local) A portfolio of loose sheets.
inspiration: Drawings of process, events, and of subatomic particle chambers.
related works: Experience of the Medium, Damaged Nature, Subjective Meteorology.
other influences: Weather and atmospheric studies, nature albums.
community: other Talks with Peter Ochs, Jerome McGann.
manuscript type: other
location: artist's archive
note: Drawings in various series are all related documents, so are the drawings from which the images were scanned for this project.
title note: The phrase "particle zoo" refers to observations in quantum physics.
edition type: editioned
publisher: Druckwerk
place: Charlottesville, VA
dates:
publication: 2005/08/01
edition size: Seven
horizontal: 9 inches closed
vertical: 12 inches closed
production means:
inkjet (AAT)
binding: portfolio (local)
substrate:
bookBlock: paper
endsheets: paper Hand marbled by the artist.
media:
ink (local)
general description: A portfolio covered in purple silk with a velvet ribbon tie.
format: album (AAT)
cover: Silk over boards.
color: yes Tone only
pagination: unpaginated
numbered?: numbered
signed?: signed
The particles in this project were all apprehended in the Winter of 2002. But my graphical study of events is part of a much longer, ongoing project, as is the study of particles, particulars, fragments, figments, configurations, and other specific visual traces of activity of study of remains. // EVENTS: Particle Zoo, was produced for an exhibition at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in Fall 2005. This portfolio is one of seven copies printed in a limted edition all of which are signed and numbers by the author / artist. Only three are offered for sale, one is an artist's copy, one is for archive purposes, and two are for gifts.
manuscript type: mockups
location: artist's archive
note: All production notes, dummies, trials, etc. exist.