VOID OF UNKNOWABLE NIGHT
A Work by M Kitchell
To go straight to purchase options, click here.
I started writing VOID OF UNKNOWABLE NIGHT in 2013 while working at a greeting card store in San Francisco's Financial district. I didn't realize it at the time, but over the next 13 years I would consistently return to the text I had generated, tweaking it, refining it, shaping it into something that it wasn't before. Throughout those 13 years, I also underwent a major change in my personal life which can largely be characterized as returning to my body.
While there have been other texts that have popped out since then (though only released as chapbooks; all "perfect-bound" book releases have been largely edited and collected and formed texts written before I began work on VOID OF UNKNOWABLE NIGHT, the exception being HOTEL, which I wrote the final third of in 2019), I have been holding onto this work as a sort of rock that has pinned me down, incapable of moving fully forward. I felt at an impassse: I knew I had to stop tinkering with the text, but I also knew that as it stood, the work was not complete. I had always intended that the work include a sort of performative/photographic element--the coming into my body that accompanied the work on the text needed to be accounted for beyond the abstract. But the idea of having to create such a comprehensive body of performance-based photographic work before I could even begin to put the book together felt like yet another impasse.
I shared the text with a friend, and we met for coffee to discuss it. He offered me no answers, but a lot of what he said lead me to the place where I needed to be to come up with my own answer: and that answer has thus become the form of this project. In emails I sent out privately back in March, I stated the following:
At this point I am a quarter of the way through the production (the 7th chapbook is finished but not yet released), and while I had somewhat of a rocky start, I have finally arrived at a point where I am comfortable and confident with where this work is going, so I am opening the project slightly more publicly. The work will not be released in its current form ever again. If I choose to republish it later, it will be as a mass market book that echos the form the individual works are taking. Paper stock, new printing technologies, and manual painted inserts are all elements that have already made their way into the project thus far, and I have no idea what else is to come, but I know it will be cohesive and informed by the text that guides the project.
An Edition of 20+1 Copies
Never to be reproduced in its current form
PayPal links below have fees baked into them. If you prefer to pay directly & without fees (via PayPal F&F, Venmo, or Zelle), please email me. Similarly, for international options please inquire.
SUBSCRIPTION in the US. Vol 1-4 Shipped Immediately, remaining volumes shipped as they release. Includes Hardcover BEFORE AN EMPTY SKY photobook upon cycle completion. $250 + Fees
VOL 1-4 BUNDLED, shipped in the US. $100 + Fees
INDIVIDUAL ISSUES shipped in the US. Choose Vol from drop-down menu below.$35 + Fees
an opening...
return to TOPOLOGYOFTHEIMPOSSIBLE
A Work by M Kitchell
To go straight to purchase options, click here.
I started writing VOID OF UNKNOWABLE NIGHT in 2013 while working at a greeting card store in San Francisco's Financial district. I didn't realize it at the time, but over the next 13 years I would consistently return to the text I had generated, tweaking it, refining it, shaping it into something that it wasn't before. Throughout those 13 years, I also underwent a major change in my personal life which can largely be characterized as returning to my body.While there have been other texts that have popped out since then (though only released as chapbooks; all "perfect-bound" book releases have been largely edited and collected and formed texts written before I began work on VOID OF UNKNOWABLE NIGHT, the exception being HOTEL, which I wrote the final third of in 2019), I have been holding onto this work as a sort of rock that has pinned me down, incapable of moving fully forward. I felt at an impassse: I knew I had to stop tinkering with the text, but I also knew that as it stood, the work was not complete. I had always intended that the work include a sort of performative/photographic element--the coming into my body that accompanied the work on the text needed to be accounted for beyond the abstract. But the idea of having to create such a comprehensive body of performance-based photographic work before I could even begin to put the book together felt like yet another impasse.
I shared the text with a friend, and we met for coffee to discuss it. He offered me no answers, but a lot of what he said lead me to the place where I needed to be to come up with my own answer: and that answer has thus become the form of this project. In emails I sent out privately back in March, I stated the following:
The biggest struggle I have had with the work, and the reason that it has yet to be published, has been the issue of publication. The text itself is so embedded within physicality that I have not been able to abandon the insistence that the book itself must do something beyond what my "mass market" books have been able to do. This had lead to many dead ends surrounding publication -- the financial costs of doing a large print run with full color images and special printing techniques for a nearly 300 page book have brought me to an impasse. But, for whatever reason, I have been incapable of abandoning the book and letting it be private, the seed of a new life. For a while I thought about printing out the MS as it is and setting it on fire after deleting all copies I have sitting on various harddrives, but I can't. For literally two years I have felt stuck inside of this problem, keeping me from moving forward with any larger serious work. And this perhaps sounds ridiculous, but having arrived here, at this point, I finally feel like I'm approaching some sort of release that will grant me freedom to move beyond.
Without as much bloviation: self-publishing a limited print run of smaller pamphlets not only gives me the opportunity to actually publish the work in the way I've always wanted to, but it also allows me to let the element of time and work play into the development of the layout and materials itself. It allows the design to be a performance mediated by temporality. I love experimentation, and the opportunity to try something, get feedback, and then try something with this new insight to me is the most valuable way of putting work into the world.
Without as much bloviation: self-publishing a limited print run of smaller pamphlets not only gives me the opportunity to actually publish the work in the way I've always wanted to, but it also allows me to let the element of time and work play into the development of the layout and materials itself. It allows the design to be a performance mediated by temporality. I love experimentation, and the opportunity to try something, get feedback, and then try something with this new insight to me is the most valuable way of putting work into the world.
At this point I am a quarter of the way through the production (the 7th chapbook is finished but not yet released), and while I had somewhat of a rocky start, I have finally arrived at a point where I am comfortable and confident with where this work is going, so I am opening the project slightly more publicly. The work will not be released in its current form ever again. If I choose to republish it later, it will be as a mass market book that echos the form the individual works are taking. Paper stock, new printing technologies, and manual painted inserts are all elements that have already made their way into the project thus far, and I have no idea what else is to come, but I know it will be cohesive and informed by the text that guides the project.
An Edition of 20+1 Copies
Never to be reproduced in its current form
VOID OF UNKNOWABLE NIGHT can be purchased in the following ways:
- As a full subscription. Get Vol 1-4 shipped to you immediately, and the following volumes monthly as they are release. This option is limited to 14 total copies, of which 11 are spoken for. This is also the only way to receive the hardcover version of BEFORE AN EMPTY SKY, a photobook collecting work from the entire series, to be published along with the 13th chapbook. $250 shipped in US.
- A collected bundle of Vol 1-4 (only one available). $100 shipped in US.
- Individual issues. 5 copies of each are made available. Vol 1 is sold out. $35 each, shipped.
PayPal links below have fees baked into them. If you prefer to pay directly & without fees (via PayPal F&F, Venmo, or Zelle), please email me. Similarly, for international options please inquire.
SUBSCRIPTION in the US. Vol 1-4 Shipped Immediately, remaining volumes shipped as they release. Includes Hardcover BEFORE AN EMPTY SKY photobook upon cycle completion. $250 + Fees
VOL 1-4 BUNDLED, shipped in the US. $100 + Fees
INDIVIDUAL ISSUES shipped in the US. Choose Vol from drop-down menu below.$35 + Fees
an opening...
return to TOPOLOGYOFTHEIMPOSSIBLE