The Baltimore Fiche
This piece (untitled, but dated Thursday, 29th September, 2006) is comprised of one side of a French index card measuring 14.8 x 21cm, extracted from an archive of several thousand cards of a type I have used for the last 20 years. The cards contain a wide range of jottings, scribbles, doodles and diagrams, including quotations from friends and acquaintances, lists of things to do, spontaneous remarks, puns, title-suggestions. ‘phone numbers, diary entries, citations from the radio, mnemonics, lecture prompts, anagrams, and extracts from books. The plans of the interior of a London apartment on the present card were drawn by Helen Couchman.
The card (together with a photograph of the kind of pen used upon it) was included in the exhibition Penned, curated by Gary Kachadourian et al, Pinkard Gallery, Baltimore, USA, July 2008 and tour.
The cards have also been exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions in London, Athens, Bregenz and in the Scottish Highlands. The first of these shows, Museum of the Vexed Text (solo) was held at Redux, London (2003-2004), and contained 718 cards. Most recently (2008), eight of the cards were included in Concrete Now!, H-I-C-A, Loch Ruthven (Scotland). For reproductions of the London and Athens installations see Peter Lewis (Ed.), Merz=, Bregenz Kunstverein, Bregenz (Austria), 2006, pp. 98-105.
Peter Suchin
