Jordan Abel

Un/inhabited Jordan Abel

Marc Notes: Poems.; Un/inhabited is an artist book by Jordan Abel co-published by Project Space Press and Talonbooks on the occasion of the 2014 Vancouver Art/Book Fair--Colophon.; The source text was constructed by compiling 91 complete western novels found on the website Project Gutenberg. Using the Ctrl-F function of a word processor, Abel searched the document in its totality for words that relate to the political and social aspects of land, territory and ownership.; Includes an essay by Kathryn Ritter and an afterword by Tracy Stefanucci.; Includes bibliographical references and index. Publisher Marketing: Award-winning Nisga'a poet Jordan Abel's second collection of poetry, "Un/inhabited," maps the terrain of the public domain to create a layered investigation of the interconnections between language and land. Abel constructed the book's source text by compiling in their entirety ninety-one western novels found on the website Project Gutenberg, an online archive of works whose copyright has expired. Using his word processor's Ctrl-F function, he searched the compilation for words that relate to the political and social aspects of land, territory, and ownership. Each search query represents a study in context (How was this word deployed? What surrounded it? What is left over once that word is removed?) accumulating toward a representation of the public domain as a discoverable and inhabitable body of land. Featuring a text by independent curator Kathleen Ritter - the first piece of scholarship on Abel's work - "Un/inhabited" reminds us of the power of language as material and invites us to reflect on what is present in the empty space when we see nothing.