7.1.06

V&A, Foer, V&A.

The 20th century department in the V&A is a strange place, if it weren't for the salmon pink boom box, I'd despair instead of chuckle at the unacknowledged gaps. Actually no, I'd still find it funny. The salmon pink boom box has some sort of magnetic effect on me. That alone is funny.

Anyway, the V&A is a place for 16th century textiles in cabinets (room 100, always empty). Not stuff shoved together in cabinets under such headings as: "These objects were made between the period of 1920 and 1940". If museums in old buildings weren't already a thing of the past, I'd wonder what future generations will prod out of Dada newspapers next to Art Deco teapots next to Johnston.

Room 74 in the 20th century department of the V&A used to be filled with Penguin books. It's a small room, it was used compendiously. Those books are also in this book, but it was warming to see them all in one place.

The Illustration Awards are now in that room. These awards are silly, but they had some spreads of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close on show. It's a great book, I don't usually carry hardbacks around with me. The first chapter can be read online but it's not the best one, by far.

I've tried to locate the pictures inside the book but all I can find is lots of red hands. This is disappointing. The pictures in the story were found on the internet by the boy in the story, the action itself being integral to the story and the boy and the pictures. This whole thing should be overtly cyclical. Where are the pictures?

Jonathan Safran Foer recently made a libretto: Seven Attempted Escapes from Silence. With 7 composers. It's about prisoners who lose the power of speech. I want to hear it but knowing the idea will be ok for now.

He's also written about empty paper. I collect empty paper, but mostly they've never been owned before. Some good friends who know give me nice graph paper, I guess that counts. When I started throwing things away this was the hardest part; deciding what size makes a piece of paper a scrap and not a potentially useful piece of paper. Calculating the probability of what could then happen with a piece of paper is so pointless that I still have dedicated drawers.

There's a conference about paper coming up at the V+A called Ascribing Value: The Production and Collection of Architectural Drawings. There's some interesting headings like: Design & Collection: The New Fluid Dynamic Between Design and Electronic Retrieval Systems and If the Architect is Dead can the Connoisseur be Far Behind?: Connoisseurship in the Digital Age. It's £16 a student-day. There's seminars in the lunch break. The lunch break takes place in the new RIBA/V&A architectural collection, I think the days are some sort of celebration.

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