Leandro Katz (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1938)
Self Hipnosis
New York: Viper’s Tongue Books, TVRT Press, 1975
Pages: [18] p.
Dimensions: 25 x 20 cm.
Edition size: unknown

On each page of this book one of eighteen identical photographs of a single billboard in Curacao advertising “Hipnotismo” is laid out next to a Mayan numeral and its Arabic counterpart. Beneath these visual pairings runs a text composed when the artist was back in New York under the influence of Severo Sarduy, Roland Barthes, Guy Debord, Charles Ludlam and especially Raoul Vaneigem.

“The photographs for this piece were taken in a period of thirty-six seconds during a trip to the island of Curacao, where Papiamento – a tropicalization of cold-weather languages – is spoken. There I read the work of Sylvanus G. Morley, whose obsession with the American past I swear made me scribble Mayan numerals in my sleep off the ground and into the night very possibly after a cabalistic formula to be used the next evening in the local roulette. […] ” (L.K.)

imagens: http://daskunstbuch.at
site do artista: http://www.leandrokatz.com/