ferrum wheel: Ferrum Wheel Issue 4, January 2003

Ferrum Wheel Issue 4 was released in a limited edition of 50 in January 2003. It was hidden inside novels, textbooks, and other assorted hardbound books from a library sale. An entire brown paper bag full of books costed one dollar. These books were then manipulated to house the contents of Ferrum Wheel by cutting, burning, ripping, modifying and removing pages.

"front cover ferrum wheel issue 4"

This issue of Ferrum Wheel recycles. 50 different hardcover books have been used, drilled, cut up, glued, and defaced in an attempt to produce something more useful. This is the plastic model of how we write and otherwise carry on: the process of taking in the information and reporting it back into the world as our own. Sometimes it is altered, sometimes identical to the original. These books were, in some sense, rescued. They were bought for 10 cents a piece at a library "discards" sale. They might have been thrown out, or purchased to sit on a shelf, used to balance the air hockey table at the Genesee Youth Center. We give these books a new identity, a new audience, and a way for them to be appreciated for their newness again.

"ferrum wheels" - ric royer

Ferrum Wheel #4 is hiding. The contributors are lost inside each lengthy hardbound book. It is the reader's job to find the contributor within the book. Maybe, instead of being lost, the participators are just hiding. Right, hiding. Is hiding the same as being lost? As in hide-and-go-seek, the hiding player has made him/herself lost, that is, lost to another player. But the player is lost within boundaries and understands that there is no game if he seriously cannot be found. As always, the game-play is significant to this issue.

I know what's hiding inside of the double-bound codex. We find things, people find things, and we stick them in the editions. So many thin items that I once owned have been sacrificed to this project. I lose, you find, you keep. I fantasize about an endless on-sending of material, a loop of lost and found. The creator makes an issue using found objects and artistic contributions and then gives this creation to a reader who, in turn, becomes creator by ripping it apart, taking pieces from it and combining it with other works or objects to make another creation. This is continuing; go ahead and dismantle our work. rr.

some parasites hide, some are too small to be seen. they appear to live off of the host body, but in actuality, they are doing their own work. the blood of one becomes the blood of another. most disrupt the system of the body. most, hidden and not, are necessary. they eat the skin that we would drown in, they digest the fungus that would digest us.

some develop symbiotic relationships with the host, thereby enhancing one another. they become a functioning whole, no longer a series of organs that make up a machine, but two machines working and producing in synthesis. they eat our waste. we would drown in it. stacks are the detritus of literature. ferrum wheel eats the waste and hands it back. this is the beginning of output, this is some sort of birth. ferrum wheel is auto-cannabalism digesting in a transparent body and relieiving itself. its digests the waste of language and gives a new language back. the new language is a new detritus to be eaten and given back.

it is a parasite a modification that draws off current - a short circuit of the relationship between itself and something else. a burrowing insect laying eggs the subsequent birth of thousands of wriggling disgusting temporarities that will eat themselves soon enough. it feeds on blood and touch, lives in the space between skin and muscle. after absorbing itself it will have the strength to begin again. there is a stirring proboscis involved not so much fingernails as small clutching pliers reinforcing nourishing tools. both fed and nurtured it grows to a size equal to that of its host the body supplants the original and for one brief beautiful moment there is the illusion that the relationship between it and other is symbiotic, not parasitic. by then it is too late to burn it off. cf.