Book of Knowledge (2016)

Photo Credit: Jessica Field

The book is blank to act as a promise unfulfilled that the practical sheets holding the cover to the pages attempt to explain but the book being so void of anything but potential focus the mind on the thought space of the two simple questions above with an answer designed for a child to comprehend. This very question shows a different time as no parent would buy a book such as this for their child as today’s educational expectations differ to what this book is attempting to achieve. It is not only about learning, it is about creating doctrine, it has a bit of Darwin evolutionary language that has been used so often to marginalize minorities, it has a strange tone of preaching morality, yet also tries to promote a child sense of wonder and imagination.

It is old so the information is not quite true to today’s standards. So then the book becomes pregnant with the flaws of knowledge and how it is used on people to influence them in both insidious and in positive ways, but is always biased to the time and voice in which wrote the book so the black pages become filled with meaning on how these sources of information should be reinterpreted and it down plays knowledge in the sense of receiving it to the bigger question of how it is interpreted by an individual.