meta-meta: book of instructions
Including correspondences with: Harrell Fletcher, Hannah Higgins, T. Jean Lax, Raphael Rubinstein, Alexandro Segade, and Constantina Zavitsanos.
Misha Ilin’s meta-meta: book of instructions (2023) delves into the artist’s utilization of instructions as a medium, tracing its evolution from his initial explorations of strategies of care through his ongoing research into human responses to environments of excessive authority and control. The book, which functions as both documentation and a game manual for future activations, consists of a curated selection of 70 (out of more than 800) instructions, arranged variously by theme, affect, and project through a Table of Contents that mimics the design of a periodic table.
This arrangement showcases not only the morphological changes of instruction within Ilin’s practice as it traverses through the book, drawing parallels to the tradition of artist instruction books such as Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit (1964) and more contemporary endeavors like Hans Ulrich Obrist’s and Boltansky Brothers’ Do It project (1993 to present). It also situates itself within the broader artistic canon exploring how instruction-based practices, while employing conceptual developments of the Fluxus movement, continue to evolve in response to contemporary discourses.
In this respect, the book’s inquiry extends beyond documentation and game play. It shows how instructions can be effectively employed in projects that scrutinize the relationships between hosts and guests, immigration bureaucracy, issues of censorship, and formation of knowledge, revealing the complex nature of power imbalances in various contexts. It also traces the evolution of instruction-based artworks, from a simplistic means of audience engagement caught in the dichotomy of submission and control, to a potent form of personal resistance and reclamation of agency in response to the inherent tension within this duality. Furthermore, it explores the linguistic capacity of instructions to serve as forms of knowledge and experience, thus articulating the emerging relevance of this medium as a main means of communication with language models and machine interfaces.
meta-meta: book of instructions is annotated with edited transcripts from a series of correspondences and conversations between Ilin and experts in various fields, each exploring different topics relevant to the artist’s interests in instruction-based work. These experts include artists Harrell Fletcher, Alexandro Segade, Constantina Zavitsanos, poet and writer Raphael Rubinstein, curator T. Jean Lax, and critic and scholar Hannah Higgins. These exchanges cover a range of topics, mapping the field of instruction-based practices from its historical connections to artistic movements, and exploring its role in performance, power dynamics, political manifestations, and pedagogy.
