Tim Youd, represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery, will retype three novels by American author Willa Cather in Nebraska: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark and My Ántonia, some of the foremost literary landmarks of the American Great Plains. These will be the 72nd, 73rd and 74th performances from the artist’s 100 Novels Project. Youd’s performances are in partnership with the Joslyn Art Museum, National Willa Cather Center and Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Youd’s first performance, is scheduled from April 1-8 on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln campus, where he will type O Pioneers! at the site of a famous photo of Cather taken during her time as a student at the University of Nebraska in 1893. He will be outside Architecture Hall, each day from about 10 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. with a half-hour lunch break at 1 p.m. In case of inclement weather, Youd will move his table and typewriter to the Adele Hall Learning Commons. His performance is hosted by the Willa Cather Archive.
The novel will be retyped on the same make/model typewriter used by Cather. When retyping, Youd types all the words of the novel onto one page (which is backed by a second sheet) by running it repeatedly through the typewriter. The words become illegible, and the accumulated text becomes a rectangle of black ink inside the larger rectangle of the white page. Upon completion, Youd separates the two highly distressed pages and mounts them side-by-side in diptych form. This performance relic thus becomes a formal drawing, a representation of two pages of a book. The novel is present in its entirety, yet the words are completely obscured.
Tim Youd’s visit to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will include programming in collaboration with the Art Department, the English Department, and the University Libraries. A formal presentation is planned for April 5, at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Room 15.
From April 10-28 Youd will be at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, retyping The Song of the Lark, and from May 1-10, Youd will retype Cather’s best-known novel, My Ántonia, in Omaha in partnership with Joslyn Art Museum. This series of performances continue the artist’s year-long endurance performance, the 100 Novels Project.
Tim Youd (b. 1967, Worcester, MA) is a performance and visual artist working in painting, sculpture, and video. To date, he has retyped 71 novels at various locations in the United States and Europe. Residencies at historic writer’s homes have included William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak with the University of Mississippi Art Museum (Oxford, MS), Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia with SCAD (Milledgeville and Savannah, GA), and Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House (Rodmell, Sussex). His work has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions at CAMSTL, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, Hanes Art Gallery at Wake Forest University, The New Orleans Museum of Art, Monterey Museum of Art, Hemingway-Pfeffer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, University of Mississippi Art Museum at Rowan Oak and the Lancaster Museum of Art and History. He has presented and performed his 100 Novels project at the Ackland Art Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Art Omi, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and LAXART, and retyped Joe Orton’s Collected Plays at The Queen’s Theatre with MOCA London. His studio is based in Los Angeles.