”Blank” presents a sterile assembly line in which the reassembled sounds of mechanical printing presses accompany the process of turning blank sheets of crisp white paper into bread. The studied, methodical steps call into conversation not only the relationship between consumption and waste, but also the value of the printed word and the spread of information. In these repeated gestures, the necessary elements of printing since its origins – paper, water, and heat – become the ingredients for a kind of cooking tutorial that reflects on the void of content in much of what we consume.
This work emerged from the 2019 project ”Economy goes culture” promoted by the Südtiroler Künstlerbund in which the I had the unique opportunity to collaborate with the historical printing house A. Weger in Bressanone, Italy.
Anna Rose (b. 1982, Massachusetts, USA) has lived and worked in Florence, Italy since 2004. She received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2014. Her work spans video, photography, and installation with a sensibility towards the relationship between body and environment, entering into conversation with historical, psychological, and cultural mythologies of place.
Image credit: Jürgen Eheim for Südtiroler Künstlerbund