Spiva's On the Other Side

Josie Mai
City of Joplin News Archive May 23-June 13th, 2011
cut paper and sticky-tak

This installation is composed of headlines from the following website: http://joplinmo.org/newsArchive.cfm
I hand-wrote the headlines onto an overhead transparency and projected them onto white roll paper and traced my own handwriting with pencil. I then cut out each line of text with scissors and affixed them to the wall. The bottom line represents the first news headline after the storm. The headlines are continuous and meant to be slightly illegible. They represent the media storm that followed the actual storm, a cacophony of meaningless words as we struggled to find relevant, essential information through the shockwaves. To me they are fragile, temporary, and an homage to information that we still can't comprehend.