My Place: The Problem of Reading

Thursday, January 11
Moyra Davey's "The Problem of Reading"

The first day of My place... brought a selection from Moyra Davey's series of photographs of her own book collection, which visitors to TART viewed just as Moyra sent them to Anne, each loose in a little portfolio. Below is Moyra's statement:

"The Untitled series appears in the book The Problem of Reading, and all the photos are related in some way to that theme. Some document the transformation and ultimate dismantling of a corner bookshelf over a period of 5 years, others show close-ups of the books with accumulations of dust and small household objects. Book stacks constitute a kind of collection, and the dust, the longer it piles up, becomes a collection as well. The image of burying books with dust describes the relationship of time to our collections, where the object, a contained knowledge, gives way to the sediment of time, until time is the thing collected."

Among the visitors on day 1 of the project was SF artist and writer Jordan Essoe, who wrote the following in reaction to Moyra's work:

"Moyra's unframed handful of photographed bookcases and busy shelves escort you through a nonhierarchical circulation of personal property, and aptly summarize the expectation of what any participant in chit-chat brings to the table: a discharge of symbolic information. Whether randomly assimilated or intentionally harnessed, any assemblage of collected valuables is strangely dehumanizing and of questionable biographical value. On the other hand, as with the mental records of conversation, it inevitably invites attention, curiosity and conclusions: a sundry of detritus, deliberately set in upright rows, but scattered. A well prescribed catalyst and touchstone for 'My place Between 12 and 2' on its inaugural day."