Library of Artistic Print on Demand: Collection and Research

About

Events

Library

Exhibitions

Contact

Partners

After the National Library, now on view at [Villa Stuck](https://tinyurl.com/bdza4yjn) to Sept. 15.


large_Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Book.jpg

medium_Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Book.jpg

small_Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Book.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Book.jpg

Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Book.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-01.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-01.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-01.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-01.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-01.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-02.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-02.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-02.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-02.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-02.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-03.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-03.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-03.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-03.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-03.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-04.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-04.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-04.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-04.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-04.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-05.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-05.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-05.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-05.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-05.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-06.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-06.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-06.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-06.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-06.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-07.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-07.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-07.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-07.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-07.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-08.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-08.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-08.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-08.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-08.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-09.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-09.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-09.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-09.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-09.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-10.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-10.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-10.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-10.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-10.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-11.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-11.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-11.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-11.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-11.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-12.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-12.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-12.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-12.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-12.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-13.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-13.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-13.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-13.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-13.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-14.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-14.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-14.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-14.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-14.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-15.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-15.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-15.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-15.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-15.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-16.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-16.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-16.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-16.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-16.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-17.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-17.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-17.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-17.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-17.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-18.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-18.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-18.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-18.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-18.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-19.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-19.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-19.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-19.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-19.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-20.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-20.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-20.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-20.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-20.jpg

large_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-21.jpg

medium_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-21.jpg

small_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-21.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-21.jpg

Undocumented_Press_Poetry of America_Content-21.jpg

large_Screenshot 2022-08-03 at 17-09-01 Poetry of America.png

medium_Screenshot 2022-08-03 at 17-09-01 Poetry of America.png

small_Screenshot 2022-08-03 at 17-09-01 Poetry of America.png

thumbnail_Screenshot 2022-08-03 at 17-09-01 Poetry of America.png

Screenshot 2022-08-03 at 17-09-01 Poetry of America.png

Publisher website

Undocumented Press_PoetryofAmerica.pdf

Undocumented Press

large_Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Cover.jpg

medium_Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Cover.jpg

small_Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Cover.jpg

thumbnail_Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Cover.jpg

Undocumented Press_Poetry of America_Cover.jpg

*Poetry of America* is an altered appropriation of William James Linton’s *Poetry of America; selections from one hundred American poets from 1776 to 1876*. Luca Messara took a scanned version of Linton’s book, which is fueled by racist and colonialist renderings of language. He then ran the text from the PDF through five languages in Google Translate “in the order of historical colonization of the New World” (artist website): from Spanish to Portuguese to French to Dutch to English. The resulting text was copied back into the layout of the PDF with Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Thus, Messarra’s book not only has the low quality of visual artifacts typical for Google Books’ scans such as high contrast, pages only partly scanned or showing handwritten marks and other reading traces, as well as Google water marks on every page. It also consists of changing fonts, with single characters sometimes glitching into huge font sizes or interpreting something as a character that was just damaged paper. In this way, Messarra turned Linton’s *Poetry of America* into a glitched, postcolonial rendering of the original that tries to dispose of the “Anglo-standardization of both language and continent” (artist website). 

This change of perspective is also reflected upon in a quote, inserted by Messarra on the first page, that was not part of Linton’s anthology and is the only deviation apart from the logo of Messarra’s publishing house, Undocumented Press. The quote is from *Comentarios Reales de los Incas* (1609) by Garcilaso de la Vega, the first published mestizo writer, describing the moment of first contact between indigenes and Spanish colonists from the perspective of an indigenous person with a reflection on the brutal alteration and appropriation of language that already took place during the first words they exchanged.

*Poetry for America* was conceived during Danny Snelson’s 2018 class “Surveying Poetry Online Today” at University of California, Los Angeles. At that time, Messarra was working at the university’s library where he encountered Linton’s anthology. After his appropriative altering of the book, he replaced the library’s copy of Linton’s book with his version (which also imitates the format and paratext of the original), thus taking away the canonical space the original book physically occupied and changing it into a site for critical engagement with its content.


open edition

isbn

15.8 x 23.5 cm / 6" x 9"

experimental literature

education / classroom

artist’s book / bookwork

black-and-white

perfect bound

dust jacket

hardcover

translation / transcription

generative / automation

appropriation

détournement / hack

montage / remix

Lulu

canon

reading / interpretation

politics / activism

publishing / distribution

literature

google

Poetry of America

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Book.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Book.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Book.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Book.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Book.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-01.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-01.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-01.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-01.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-01.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-02.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-02.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-02.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-02.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-02.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-03.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-03.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-03.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-03.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-03.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-04.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-04.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-04.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-04.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-04.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-05.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-05.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-05.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-05.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-05.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-06.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-06.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-06.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-06.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-06.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-07.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-07.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-07.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-07.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-07.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-08.jpg

medium_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-08.jpg

small_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-08.jpg

thumbnail_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-08.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-08.jpg

large_Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-09.jpg

Montafort_Nick_Autopia_Content-09.jpg

*AUTOPIA* is a computer generated text that consists of product names for cars found on American streets and “–” as a fill character. They are arranged in such a way that they not only mimic cars on lanes but also create poetic mini-narratives due to their semantic meaning—because, as it turns out, cars are often named after animals, especially fast and strong ones (lynx, mustang, eagle), but also after fantastic birds (phoenix, firebird), native peoples of the United States (Dakota, Cherokee), and professions (explorer, pathfinder, aviator). At the same time, many names function as both noun and verb (focus, eclipse) or adjective (noble, premier). 

Nick Montfort began categorizing the car names and writing a Python script that “has rules for combining automobile names in ways that are sensitive to the meaning of these names,” to further enhance the meaning making of the headline-style sentences: “The outputs were able to suggest upper-class activities (NEW YORKER GOLFS), offer mathematical results (OPTIMA FIT MATRIX AXIOM), and even relate to contemporary issues such as immigration (AMIGOS FORD RIO)” (Nick Montfort, *Electronic Book Review*).

*AUTOPIA* has been presented in different versions such as a Java-based website, an installation, and a print-on-demand book. The web version formats the output in 2x12’ lanes, animating the text moving left (on the top) and right (on the bottom) respectively, to mimic the flow of traffic from a bird’s-eye view. The book version produces fifty-one lines of text covering every single page in its entirety, thus turning each double-page spread into a gigantic traffic panorama. Apart from 248 pages of output, the book also includes the Python script, allowing for code-based interpretation as well as recreation and altering of the potentially infinite text.

AUTOPIA