Absence (2004)

A “monument” to the Absence of the Twin Towers, this is a poignant work of book art by J. Meejin Yoon, architect, designer, educator, Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  A simple video demonstrating the work appears here at the site of the Otis College of Art and Design. This book|object was published by Printed Matter, Inc. and the Whitney Museum of Art in 2004 when Yoon was an Assistant Professor at MIT.

As you hold this small white brick of paper and turn its thick pages, a small pinhole appears on the page. Then two larger square holes emerge, one of which falls over the pinhole. Page after page — 110 pages for each floor of the towers — the two square holes repeat, creating two small dark wells in the field of white, until on the last page they take their place in the cut-out schematic footprint of the city blocks and buildings surrounding the Twin Towers. What you hold in your hands at the end is an object of art and book of memorial prayer.