S O M E B O O K S U N R E A D

In being asked to respond in some way to Ray Johnson’s History of Video Art, I looked
at my bookshelves to confront a multitude of books on video and video making that I’d
mostly never read. A couple I’d thumbed at distractedly, shortly after purchase, with
some I’d read the introduction, and in extremely rare cases I had even read whole
chapters, but I remember these experiences as sedative. I would fall asleep with the book
cradled in my hands. The vast majority remain unread and it puzzles me that I should
have acquired so many in view of my clear lack of interest. It is perhaps now time to
donate them to the Julius Deutschbauer Library of Unread Books. The population of
artists now working with unread books is possibly so large that it outnumbers the books
themselves. I recall a video work by the French artist Pierrick Sorin in which a stack of
books comes clattering down onto his head. They fall in periodic cascades delivering a
series of hard knocks to the skull.