Description

“Good morning and good evening! The words you’re reading were written in graphite, the mineral, by the artist Jimmie Durham. They were faxed (sent using the method called facsimile). Therefore, they aren’t exactly my words. (…) Could they be yours? Or perhaps they’re words, drawings, made by a machine with our collaboration.”*
With this declaration, Durham himself provides the guidelines for his contribution for Peep-Hole Sheet #10, consisting of a selection of his correspondence of old faxes, which he defines as a slice of pre-email art life from his side.
Drawn from the archive entrusted by the artist to Bart De Baere and M HKA in Antwerp, the faxes published here constitute an example of the archaeology of communication, revealing a personal yet lucid vision of the world, Durham’s artistic approach and the dynamics that inspire him, and others that instead affect him and lead to specific positions. Above all, they offer a detailed analysis of the very nature of language and its limitations, within the underlying pattern of constant irony often based on wordplay.