© 2014

by Karen Bleitz

The Mechanical Word is an extended essay on the eponymous five-volume artwork by the London-based artist Karen Bleitz, a founding member of the ARC collaborative that grew out of Ron King’s legendary Circle Press.

“Whenever asked to talk about The Mechanical Word I begin by saying, “The Mechanical Word is a series of books in which I constructed a mechanical language composed of cogs, cranks, levers and gears…” I have learned, however, that as soon as I say ‘mechanical language’ I am immediately bombarded with a thousand questions such as ‘What’s a mechanical language? What does it look like? How does it work? What is it for anyway?’… At the time the project began I had been looking at the various properties of language. I was particularly interested in its power to define, and through definition create the things, people, and events that take place in the world. In the hands of the media I could see that words had the power to turn a cloned sheep from a miracle, to a monster, and back into a miracle within the space of a page.”

ISBN: 978-0-9817914-9-4   24 pages