Los Angeles-based artist Tim Youd is set to retype Ironweed by Pulitzer Prize winning author, journalist, and screen writer William Kennedy at the Albany Institute of History & Art, as part of the artist’s ongoing project 100 Novels in which he retypes novels from beginning to end in locations that are charged with literary significance in the author’s biography.
Performances are set for:
· Sunday, July 15 from 12 to 4:45 pm
· Tuesday, July 17 from 10:30 am to 1pm and 2 to 4:45 pm
· Wednesday, July 18 from 10:30 am to 1pm and 2 to 4:45 pm
· Thursday, July 19 from 10:30 am to 1 pm and 2 to 7:45 pm with a special tasting of Albany Distilling Company’s Ironweed line from 6 to 7:45 pm (ages 21+).
· Friday, July 20 from 10:30 am to 1 pm and 2 to 4:45 pm
· Saturday, July 21 from noon to 4:45 pm
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.
This event is free and open to the public. During the week of the performance, Youd will be located in different spaces of the museum. He will be stationed in the museum’s atrium and (weather permitting) on the museum lawn near Washington Avenue.
This performance is the 61st novel to be typed in the series and is one of several that Youd will undertake in the Hudson Valley during spring and summer 2018. The resulting diptychs from the Hudson Valley cycle will be presented in an exhibition in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center’s Focus Gallery at Vassar in fall 2018. For more information, click here.
To date, Youd has retyped over 50 novels at various locations in the United States and Europe.
Initially rejected by 13 publishers, Ironweed was published by Viking in 1983 and took the literary world by storm by winning the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It won critical acclaim internationally and was published in numerous foreign editions. It was included in the Modern Library’s List of the 100 Best Novels written in English in the 20th Century.
The Albany Institute of History & Art is located at 125 Washington Avenue in Albany, New York. Free parking is available in the museum’s lot at the corner of Elk and Dove Streets.
For more information, click here or call (518) 463-4478.
Photo of Tim Youd provided.
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