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Incomprehension 1

Item date(s): 2016

Karin Basel


Medium: Found medical dicitionary
Pages: Variable
Technique: Cut pages
Edition: Unique

Sub-type: Altered book
Theme(s): Incomprehensible texts and their frustration. Reading

Place publication: Johannesburg
Publisher: The artist
Exhibition 2017

Reference note:
A medical dictionary which has been altered so that the pages spiral out of the book and can no longer be read.

We use words to make sense of the word. The book that I have made is a way of physically representing what happens when a person is unable to comprehend the words in the text that they are reading. To comprehend a text the reader must be able to decode the letters to form words and then make associations with those words to create meaning. The words help to create concepts in the reader’s mind. If there are too many words that the reader cannot comprehend while reading, she is unable to create concepts and so is unable to comprehend the text. Without comprehension the reading experience is meaningless and the reader becomes confused and often frustrated.

This book is a metaphor for the state of frustration and chaos a person feels when they cannot comprehend a text.



Exhibition notes:
‘Booknesses: Contemporary South African Artist's Books’.

FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg.

Curated by David Paton and Eugene Hon.

24 March - 5 May 2017



Ref: DP/17041









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