Envoy: Angel of Post-History
Artist pages for South as a State of Mind consisting on documentation of selected works from the Envoy series. The works are based upon throwing specific books at chosen locations across the globe.
South as a State of Mind #8 [documenta 14 #3]
Fall/Winter 2016
Edited by Quinn Latimer and Adam Szymczyk
The edition included a new Envoy work produced in Athens as part of the development of works for documenta 14 in Athens:
Thomas More’s Utopia thrown into the Mediterranean Sea, Piraeus, March 11, 2016
Other works from the Envoy series featured in the publication included:
Collected Works of Marx and Engels thrown from the Dvortsovy Bridge, Saint Petersburg, August 1, 1998
Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly thrown into the North Sea, October 20, 2000
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World thrown into the Vuorján River on the Norwegian-Russian border, August 29, 2001
The Destiny of the World: A sealed package thrown from a Norwegian postal ship into the Barents Sea, August 29, 2001
Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams thrown at dusk into the Gulf of Finland, August 25, 2001
Remy de Gourmont’s The Natural Philosophy of Love thrown from the Suomenlinna-Helsinki ferry, September 3, 2001
The I Ching thrown into the Yellow Sea, March 28, 2002
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s What is Philosophy? thrown into the Seine, Paris, May 4, 2004
Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time thrown into the Abyss, Grand Canyon, November 13, 2012
Rainer Maria Rilke’s To Music thrown into the Rhine, Dreiländereck, January 13, 2014
Package delivered to Dominic Hislop, Glasgow, July 30, 1998
In the documenta 14 Daybook, Adam Szymczyk writes: 'Birrell’s ongoing project “Envoy” is critical thought performed as gesture. A book—usually of certain historical weight—is thrown into a body of water or a ravine; most recently, it was Thomas More’s Utopia thrown into the Mediterranean Sea, in Piraeus, on March 11, 2016. The book reaching the apex of its short flight and the thrower standing on firm ground are captured in a photograph. Every project (from the Latin: projicere, to cast forth) is a throw, and there is always an abyss gaping ahead.'
https://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/12797/ross-birrell
