Fillip Index
Marisa Jahn
An index claims a certain totalizing mastery of the text that precedes it. By inverting the index’s putative objectivity and rendering it highly subjective, Marisa Jahn’s index for Fillip 9 puts forth a hermeneutics in which an awareness of contingency and a relationally defined self comprises an integral part of any “truth.” Merging snippets of discourse from this issue, Jahn’s index illustrates how memories can form around certain fragments of speech, turns of phrases, personal moments, and specific social contexts.
About the Author
Marisa Jahn is a New York-based artist whose work has been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Museum of Science, Boston; MIT Museum; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; and more. In 2000, she co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas, an organization dedicated to experimental public art. Jahn is currently editing two books about social engagement in contemporary art, Recipes for an Encounter, Western Front, Vancouver; and Byproducts, YYZ, Toronto. In 2009, Jahn is an artist-in-residence at MIT’s Media Lab, Cambridge; artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and curatorial fellow at the Elizabeth Foundation, New York.