Gotta admit we don't know what to think about this, but if you see a guy typing on old-school typewriter outside the Albany Institute next week...
Performance artist Tim Youd will be at the museum Sunday and Tuesday-Saturday retyping William Kennedy's Ironweed as part of an ongoing project to retype famous novels in locations that are somehow significant to the author's work. Press release blurbage:
Employing the same make and model typewriter used by the author, Youd types each novel on a single sheet of paper, which is backed by an additional support sheet. The artist loads the two-ply paper through the typewriter repeatedly, until the entire novel has been retyped. As the typing progresses, the top sheet becomes saturated with ink and perforated from overuse, while the sheet underneath becomes embossed from indentation. Upon completion, the two pages are separated and mounted side by side as a framed diptych, recalling two pages of an open book with the words obscured. The diptych remains as a relic of the performance that embodies the novel, even though it is completely illegible.
