Dear Mairead
These suggestions may duplicate some of what John Hall has covered in his
last message, but anyway – Joan Retallack's 'Afterrimages' presents a
series of pages with a division into upper and lower sections, the lower
sections being remnants of the eroded upper;
In Issue 4 of the journal Chain, subtitled 'procedures' are a number of
examples of writers/artists working with erasure and obliteration,
including Dick Higgins' piece 'The Quarter Deck' which is a series of
erasures of a page from Moby Dick; and a sort of periodic table of
processes by Miranda Maher, a number of which include erasure/obliteration;
John Latham's work is another possible direction; and would you include
such works as bpnichols or Bob Cobbings layerings of typing where each
successive layer of keystrokes partly obliterates the layer beneath, but
all are stillpresent on the page?
This leaves the question of whether you are interested in the material
evidence of the erasure/obliteration, as in cut or marked pages, scored
through and scratched out texts, or if you include any form of borrowing or
quotation which in lifting a portion of text, leaves or erases the
remainder; or a translation which overlays an existing text in one language
with another version which might be said at least to hide or disguise the
source text;
A whole host of potential questions open up …
All the best
Mark L
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