Shredder

A shredding machine spews shreds of paper history cleaned out of the artist’s files, creating a conical mountain of data from bills, tax forms, personal photographs, birth certificate, report cards, memorabilia of cherished friends, broken heart times, flight logs, show invitations, and reviews and documentation of the artist’s work. Old photos were reproduced on photographic paper, report cards on cardstock, newspaper reviews printed on newsprint. The material was organized chronologically, then shredded. The shreds become reordered, like the shuffling of a deck of cards—reincarnated in a new event. It is a purposeful act; an ersatz “destruction.”

“When exhibited together with the video of their construction, [the Shredder] sculptures gain a sonic dimension: the grinding and whirring produced by the machine eating away at the mixture of highly personal and relatively generic minutiae that constitutes the artist’s life…the video component of the work is both performance and documentation…On an allegorical level, the work offers broader strokes, commenting on time and how we sit in the present, taking stock of a reconfigured past while we try to resurrect fragmented memories. In that sense, beyond time itself, the work attempts to play out the act of remembering just as we weave bits and traces of our lives into a coherent narrative that reflects the most palatable version of ourselves." - Jennie Hirsh, from “Before and After Language: The Art of Madelin Coit”