Those Which Are Most Common
About the Project
Installation
What was set into motion in 'Those Which Are Most Common' is the specific matrix of history and documentation, their mediation through form, and the placing of the individual in the current of historical events.
The narrative progression... is similar to that in Rothenberg's video and performance works where images operate according to iconic associations and where meaning is derived from a peculiar sensibility of accretion and accumulation. An innocuous image such as a computer bar code suddenly becomes sinister when an image of lists from Dachau is close at hand...
There is a fascination here with both the document and it's transmission device, whether it be a newspaper, TV, or an archival document. This choice of linoleum block print images alludes to earlier political usage of the graphic image, in particular political broadsides and the twentieth century expressionist woodcuts of Kollwitz, Barlach, Munch, Kirshner, Nolde, Heckel and Schmidt-Rotluff.
—Daniel Eisenberg, "Department of Correction: Notes on Ellen Rothenberg's Those Which Are Most Common”
Explorations in Handmade Paper, DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1989
exhibition history
RELATED MATERIALS
Related Publication:
Those Which Are Most Common | PDF↓
Essay by Daniel Eisenberg