Paper Road is a research narrative.
The Book
The research process and story both begin at my family's summer cabin in Marin County, California. I use houses as vessels for situating my own located experience within broader California cultural contexts and land use histories.
The book is a non-linear narrative of fragments, recontextualized image and text from private and public archives and collections. The content I assembled is annotated in first-person narrative, explaining the wild connections that emerged between everything and my own growth in the process.
Paper Road contains 450 pages of annotated narrative, an introductory essay, a conversation with archivist and independent scholar Rick Prelinger, a non-functional (but poetic!) index, and a bibliography.
PAPER ROAD is out of print!
You can find it in the “locals zone” at the Bolinas branch of the Marin County Free Library, and on the shelves at Outlet in Portland. Please contact me if you'd like to purchase a PDF version of the book.
The Installation
I also gave a visual lecture about the work, which was the precursor to the book.
Redwood, Super-8, milk crates, old paper, nostalgia, family, California, the internet
Photo
David Robert Elliot
Installed as part of No End In Sight, 2016-17 Headlands Graduate Fellowship Show at Embark Gallery, Fort Mason, San Francisco