March 14, 2014, Friday evening -- Reading Colonel Balck

On Friday evening I was at a lecture by Rick Prelinger, organized by CCA.  He talked about archives and working from pre-existing materials - this idea (as I interpreted his lecture) that future art can honor past art and that is one of the purposes of archives. In the background of his talk there was a slideshow in  which one of the pictures showed boxes of media (films? books?) that were just sitting in room.  I feel a kinship with his idea that archives should be used/accessed instead of boxed away.  It's one of the reasons I do my blog - to appreciate a book being read at a moment in time.  The moments a book is actually being read in its entire "lifetime" are, I think, few. 

In the spirit of appreciating pre-existing work, this blog post continues from the work of Dennis Oppenheim, whose photograph hung in the gallery where Prelinger gave his lecture:

On Jones Beach, reading Tactics: Vol II, Cavalry Artillery, by German Colonel Balck

Oppenheim's print reads:  Reading Position for second degree burn. Stage I, Stage II. Book Skin, Solar Energy. Exposure Time: 5 hours. Jones Beach.