Susan Howe (b. 1937, USA)
That This, 2010

This belongs to my guilty pleasures. It’s just sooooo beautiful. If I had to choose which I appreciate more – the materiality of letterpress print or delicacy of typography – I would not be able to. And I love how the words and letters are rendered mainly as elegant well-considered shapes and visual intensities rather than symbolic signs of language to be decoded…

As to connections to my particular works, I can certainly relate it to some pieces from my Artificial Ignorance Choir where words become just sonic material. It also relates to a project “How much for a poem?” consisting of commissioning of a poem on the aforementioned topic from a local busker-poet and re-presenting it as an etching as well as a sound piece. The words remain the same, but their function and character shifting with each re-incarnation.