My altered book summarizes the reason why people censor different forms of media, and what this censorship does to the artist. Censorship reveals a larger instinct of human nature to shut out whatever they don’t agree with. The censors merely act on this instinct. In the process, they assign their own ethic to others, assuming these people share the exact same values they do.
The book has three different “pages”, which I have created by gluing dozens of pages from the source material together. One design is printed on each page with black and brown relief prints, adding small amounts of gouache for color and emotion. Cutouts of short phrases from the book decorate each page, enforcing the idea. I describe the thoughts and actions of the censors using a modified version of the three wise monkeys as a metaphor. The events on each page use the monkeys to describe the process that leads to media censorship. The surroundings these monkeys react to are offensive, just as the majority of censored art rubs people the wrong way.
Altered Book: Final Statement December 9, 2008
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