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Michael Maranda
Artist's Statement
A large part of my studio practice has consisted of refiguring canonical texts from the western tradition in visual form. Important to my practice is that the work I produce is a secondary text, written ‘over top’ of existing texts. The refiguring of these texts is done through various devices of distanciation. The execution of this work is as necessary as the pre-figured thought that goes into its planning. Like many contemporary conceptual artists, I view the embodiment of the physical work as a necessary aspect of my practice.
For example, in “History [aufhebung],” I obsessively wrote to illegibility the word ‘aufhebung’ (a key term in Hegel’s philosophy of history, which in turn is the basis of modern historiography) on 1540 sheets of paper with the intent of underscoring the rigid structure which limits historical thought. “The Theory of Irregular Verbs” entailed typesetting Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution on a single strip of paper approximately 6.5 km long. In arranging it in a fairly compact pile, the complexity of the events recounted is mirrored, to a certain extent, in the literal intertwining of the text. In a similar manner, I invoked the relationship between two seemingly disparate texts in “Invisible Hand.” By writing the key chapters of Adam Smith’s apologia for the (capitalist) market on the top of rubber-tree leaves and similar texts from Darwin’s theory of evolution on the underside of the same leaves, I highlighted the rhetorical similarity of contemporary economic thought and the natural sciences, which have been brought into seeming conflict in current agri-business practices of genetic modification. “Decoy” consists of two hand-made harpsichords with speakers integrated into them from which emanates the opening aria to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, as recorded by myself. Also included in the installation were drawings of the score, and non-functional headphones. This piece, investigating notions of genius and reception, relies upon my ineptitude as both woodworker and keyboard player.
My most recent bookwork, Wittgenstein’s Corrections, consists of a reproduction of all the notational marks and corrections in Wittgenstein’s manuscript of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, absenting the text itself in order to underscore, pace Wittgenstein, that what is most important is often that which is not written. (Of relevance to the development of my work, this was the first time I found myself working not against a text but, rather, fully alongside it.)
Work currently in development emerges from my interest in the authority of texts, but with a shift away from the printed page. Instead, I am looking at the decidedly unnnatural text of natural selection. This work comes out of issues at play in my “Invisible Hand” project, and investigates the adoption of market discourse in agricultural practices. While the results of this work are still in formation, my first crop of container-grown heirloom wheat is ready for harvest and my seed collection grows weekly.