Warren
Eric Lish
Warren is a newsprint publication which collects a series of diverse writings sourced from the Internet. This work is conceived as an interdependent text which is to be experienced as if you're traveling between web pages. The branching structure emphasizes relationships between seemingly isolated events, people, and ideas. Collecting symbols and passages from a multitude of topics, identities, powers, and sources I aim to pronounce the surprising relationships between things. Symbols act as hyperlinks for readers to recognize the similarities between different passages throughout Warren. Through their use initial views of these symbols’ meaning changes as the reader connects them with other symbols and passages they are tied to.
Warren fits within the tradition of artists who convey the hidden connections between disparate societal forces. In the film Hypernormalization, Adam Curtis weaves a historical narrative which connects Patti Smith to Neoliberalism to the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism. The Assemblage Theory developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari speaks of the interconnectedness which Warren reflects in metaphorical terms, characterizing our social world as a mosaic or a web. This metaphor derived from the Assemblage Theory provides the groundwork for Warren’s layout, each passage acts as a thread in the fabric of Warren as a patchwork of information. Through Warren and the systems within it, I aim to pronounce our world’s complex totality and its connections that weave it together.