Ian Wilson | Section 34

Ian Wilson

Section 34

Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole/David Bellman, 1984

68 pp., 21.3 x 14 cm., softcover

Edition of 500

Years ago, I curated an exhibition of Jenny Holzer Books and Multiples at Art Metropole: things we had in stock, things I tracked down, things sent from the Holzer studio (“Schlock,” one of her assistants called it, completely misunderstanding her practice). 

We also had a monitor playing a Jodi Foster movie in which she plays an artist on the run from a mob boss played by Dennis Hopper, who also directed. The film is sometimes called Catchfire and sometimes Backdraft, because Hopper disowned it and took his name off it (the credit went to the common pseudonym Alan Smithee). Foster’s character was an artist who made LED text works, all of which were provided by Holzer. 

At one point in the film, Hopper’s character is trying to get in the head of the woman he is hunting down and picks a book from her shelf. He reads it aloud: "The known is unknown and unknown and known. That it is unknown is unknown and known and unknown” and then throws it down and shakes his head. 

When this scene came on, our friend Alex (then a summer intern, while still in high school) exclaimed “We published that book!” He rushed to the shelf, pulled down Wilson’s Section 34 and found the passage. 

Each page of the book contains variations on the statement “The known is unknown and unknown and known. That it is unknown is unknown and known and unknown.” Section 34 is one of several books in the Section series. 

“Wilson has also produced a number of artist books, each simply titled Section followed by a number. The word ‘section’ reminds me of how nations organize their constitutions according to ‘acts’ and ‘sections.’ […] Linguistically, a section also always implies a pre-existing whole. A section can only be derived from a whole. Chapters have a different connotation in that they are like building blocks toward a whole. After all, a chapter can be incomplete while a section is always complete to the extent that it is a section. As such, naming his artist’s books Section followed by a number is homologically related to Buddhist or Hindu sutras, collections of canonical texts that were then assembled into a book of teachings.”

– Ken Lum