ARTIST STATEMENT
Manuscripts bear witness to the processes of creation, transmission, and ruination. They preserve the shifting truths of language and endure in library collections. My work seeks to further preserve and explore language through a conceptual, philosophical, and visual détournement of archived manuscripts.
My process of deconstruction begins with a digital file of a manuscript held in a private library collection. Using digital processes alongside historical archival materials, I construct a new composition. In this process, I examine how language and information have shifted within our digital landscape, and reflect on how the digital multitude has altered our understanding of what it means to be human. In this sense, my work becomes an archive of language’s shifting truths: a hijacked illumination that transmits the ruins of the past while bearing witness to the ruination of the present.
contact: benwpatrick@gmail.com