Discourse in the world, real or digital!

Any form of discourse, we could argue, has never really been produced through some neutral language with no past or no future. All our discourses in our storytelling reflect the narratives from the places, the societies in which they are used. Think today’s culture wars, nationalism, identity politics and social norms. The many ways of expressing ourselves are, after all, mirroring the ideas and behaviours of the time.

Our societies and structures are coded through our discourse reflecting our emotions, thoughts, lived experiences, and whether factual, lacking critical thinking or simply controversial. In these artist book projects I mainly concentrate on the English language, and how it is used in the discourse of the digital world compared to face-to-face interactions.

I often wonder how to translate the notion of society as systems reflecting the power of its components into an artist book’s form. Are these top-down structures with the powerful at the top and the powerless at the bottom? Or do we consider structures as systems made of different agencies, not always related but influencing each other?

Can I truly make an artist book that conveys and illustrates reasonably abstract concepts, like this idea of a society with its discourse and systems? Or can I, for example, make an artist book about those wanting to change the world and those wanting to bring it back to a mythical past using the book structure? And most of all what would this book look like?

I’m afraid at this stage I only have many questions with just a few attempts at creating books! But hey I’m patient.