'Read: Past, Tense', is about the very ordinary experience of blushing. The book uses heat-sensitive ink that relies on the reader's inevitable contact with the page. At first sight the book contains a text that is reversed out of the red ink background but as the reader handles the book and their warmth comes through the page, a more private and intimate text is revealed between the lines (this book will not work with the cold reader). The reader literally has to feel their way around the text and embrace the book in order for the book to reveal its secrets. Text such as "I always hoped I would grow out of it. But I don't suppose I have. So now I tend to avoid things I know will bring it on, like public speaking or performing" covers the subtext of "Searing terror surges to the surface, imprisoned and paralysed, dragging beacons of alarm in its wake. Life and death battle their last while fear, strangled and mute, demands escape." In this book I am more concerned with using the interaction of materials to inform the process of reading and the unravelling of a specific narrative with reference to notions of subtext and ‘reading between the lines’.
Inkjet, silkscreen thermochromic ink. Cloth-bound.
Heather Weston, 2000
ISBN: 0-9546942-3-6
Open edition
