Binding Ties (dismembered World) - from Cheryl Penn

[Marie Wintzer]

I was so eager to see what was inside the envelope that I slaughtered it, sorry Cheryl. I think I'll ask for a letter opener for Christmas.
:-o
Each of Cheryl's art books is a world in which I could get lost for hours. Even when dismembered (what she did with The World is a Town art book) there is still an abundance of Towns to explore. Cheryl's art is very tactile, I think that touching is an important part when exploring, because the textures are so amazing: rough paper, photography paper, string and... wax, I believe.
The World is a Town, dismembered yet still tied, and I feel that I'm somehow part of it.
Thank you Cheryl!

[Marie Wintzer]

Yes, I think it's great too. Making art with a piece of history, digging it out, binding and then dismembering again. Quite cool.

[De Villo Sloan]

Hi Marie, I've been looking at this post for some time - I think it's a fantastic piece by Cheryl.

Cheryl - I greatly appreciate the Novgorod Codex commentary. It's certainly not blah, blah, blah to me. This was yet something else I didn't know about. And - Cheryl - you know my fascination with overlaying in vispo. This is an example going back in history that just has tremendous resonance for the present. Just wonderful stuff here.

[cheryl penn]

Sorry there were two postings - inept fingers and computer challenged. I suppose the mind is a hyper-palimpsest too?

[Marie Wintzer]

No no, it is not too much. I find it fascinating too. Now I remember reading about it on your blog (or was it De Villo's?) and checking wikipedia after that. I have such a bad memory. I remember the word "hyperpalimpsest" catching my eye.
I feel very lucky to be in possession of such a special piece of art, the use of wax is quite genius!

[cheryl penn]

Take two!
Thanks for posting such great photo's Marie - good photos do amazing things to work! I hope this is not too blah blah blah.... A large part of this comes from the work done by the Russian Linguist Zalizniak and can be found on-line at the Oxford University Center for the Sturdy of Ancient Documents.
The Novgorod Codex,is the name given to a set of three wooden tablets containing four pages filled with wax found on 13th July 2000 in Novgorod. The tablets were held together in the form of a codex by means of holes on one edge through which wooden pegs were inserted. The codex can be dated back to the 11th century “and is the only medieval object of its type from the entire Slavonic world, and one of the very few from Europe as a whole” (Zalizniak, 2002). Once the wax had been removed for conservation, on the wood under the wax, faint traces of earlier writing, created by the scratching of the stylus onto the wax and consequently through onto the wood had been preserved (Zalizniak, 2002). Because of its multiple layers of superimposed text, the Novgorod Codex is termed a ‘hyperpalimpsest’. t Zalizniak (2002) wrote that “trying to disentangle all the layers and decipher the texts on the Novgorod Codex is… like trying to disentangle and decipher the layers of text of an old and much used piece of carbon paper”. The task is also made difficult by the fact that there is one author with one particular style of writing superimposed to create the palimpsest.

Phrases from the Novgorod Codex are very interesting as the writer echoes the pessimism of postmodernism. A few lines from the Codex read:
The world is a town in which heretics are excluded from the church... The world is a town in which innocent people are excluded from the church… The World is a town in which people not deserving of this exclusion are excluded from the church…

This 10th century view of the global village concept, the layering of thoughts and the resultant illegibility of the writing has created an encoded series of glyphs (pictographs) which render the original narrative redundant echoing the rejection of the grand narrative. This textural attack on the discourses of power appears to be in defiance of notions of authority and reliability; the maintenance of a skeptical attitude on which a great deal of postmodernist theory depends. Too much??? But I find the whole thing fascinating - I would LOVE to be a person researching/restoring ancient manuscripts..... Some days at least!!

[cheryl penn]

Hey Marie - The Novgorod Codex was discovered in Novgorod in The Novgorod Codex, (11th AD) is the name given to a set of three wooden tablets containing four pages filled with wax found on 13th July 2000 in Novgorod. The tablets were held together in the form of a codex by means of holes on one edge through which wooden pegs were inserted. The codex can be dated back to the 11th century “and is the only medieval object of its type from the entire Slavonic world, and one of the very few from Europe as a whole” (Zalizniak, 2002). Once the wax had been removed for conservation, on the wood under the wax, faint traces of earlier writing, created by the scratching of the stylus onto the wax and consequently through onto the wood had been preserved (Zalizniak, 2002). Because of its multiple layers of superimposed text, the Novgorod Codex is termed a ‘hyperpalimpsest’. The Russian linguist Zalizniak (2002) wrote that “trying to disentangle all the layers and decipher the texts on the Novgorod Codex is… like trying to disentangle and decipher the layers of text of an old and much used piece of carbon paper”. The task is also made difficult by the fact that there is one author with one particular style of writing superimposed to create the palimpsest.

Phrases from the Novgorod Codex are very interesting as the writer echoes the pessimism of postmodernism. A few lines from the Codex read:
The world is a town in which heretics are excluded from the church... The world is a town in which innocent people are excluded from the church… The world is a town in which people not deserving of this exclusion are excluded from the church…

This 10th century view of the global village concept, the layering of thoughts and the resultant illegibility of the writing has created an encoded series of glyphs (pictographs) which render the original narrative redundant echoing the rejection of the grand narrative. This textural attack on the discourses of power appears to be in defiance of notions of authority and reliability; the maintenance of a skeptical attitude on which a great deal of postmodernist theory depends (Butler 2002:13).

[Marie Wintzer]

Cheryl, I forgot to ask, why is it Novgorod?