Warren Brodey
with
Institute for Computational Vandalism & Karin Nygård
She was a person I wanted to tell. I told her what I was thinking. She wrote it down. It was 1963. The text was substantially prepared.
In 1971 I showed Victor Gioscia the text. That’s how it came to be published.
Judy Johnson played with the print and spaced it out to her liking. She is a weaver.
Andrew Poynor and I went to Ireland to find what would happen if we added pages of collage 1973 to text 1963. I was surprised.
In the time since I spoke, the words became experience.
I wonder if this experience has rooted itself in others.
Let me know.
Warren
In 2021, we reached out to Warren to ask if he would like to read Earthchild together with us.
We were surprised to learn that he didn’t think of the book as a past project. His own copy had several layers of handwritten revisions. He also showed us a typescript of a revised (but unpublished) version of the book. Dated 1980, it had the new title Learning to Learn from Children — A Time Journey and included a new preface under the heading “Forward.”
Our reading circle became a loop in time, spiraling back to 1963, 1974, 1980 to move forward. The reading sessions were recorded. Karene Lyngholm, Warren’s wife, was there together with us. On December 1, 2021, we read Chapter 1 in their home in Båstad. On February 16, 2022, we read Chapter 3 at the Løkentunet nursing home in Askim. On March 22 and June 8, 2022, we read Chapters 4 and 6, respectively. Both sessions took place in Båstad. We still have two chapters to go.
Early in the process, Warren proposed a new kind of sound book, and we discussed printing a new edition. Instead, however, we decided to make a digital interface presenting Earthchild as an open-ended process rather than as a finished product.
István Virág photographed the book, with and without Warren’s revisions. Michael Murtaugh built the interface.
You are invited to play with the different layers of information in time. The work is still in progress.
Karin Nygård & Ellef Prestsæter, May 2024
P.S. We would like to express our gratitude to the people who have
helped us along the way: Dušan Barok, Marianne Ertl at the Department of
Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, Judith Johnson, Nora
Joung, and Evgeny Morozov.
P.P.S. For further reading, visit Monoskop.
Produced with support from Arts Council Norway. First presented as part of the exhibition Warren Brodey – A Time Journey at Guttormsgaards arkiv, 2024.
