Will Holder (designer)

Will Holder (born 1969 in Hatfield, Hertfordshire) is an English designer, artist, writer and editor based in London (UK). His work investigates the gap between language and object and the transformative processes at play in the act of publishing. His work take the forms of books, various publications, public performance, curating and writings. He has self-published and co-published several books: Tourette's (a series of publications on writing and the arts, with Stuart Bailey), A Long Time Between Suns (with The Otolith group Kodwo Eshun#The Otolith Group), written essays for several magazines (Dot Dot Dot (magazine), Metropolis M ) and is editor of FR David, a bi-annual journal concerned with the position of writing in the arts; published by, De Appel Art Center (NL) , since 2007.

Practice

Holder's practice takes many forms, and his work includes printed journals and dialogues with other artists, as well as live readings and social events. In these various formats Holder interrogates the relationship between language and the object, exploring how text in all its forms can manifest in three-dimensions, and how the fixed nature of objects can be destabilised through linguistic interpretation. Holder's biannual journal FR DAVID, edited with Ann de Meester and Dieter Roelstraete, provides an experimental space in which to discuss these relationships, and in which to explore the use of language in the service of the visual.

The script is a recurrent framework for Holder, providing a structure that presupposes a transition from written text to spoken word through performance. Through such enactment the written text is inevitably opened up to change and adaptation, as well as to the slippages of meaning that occur in the space of translation. In recent performances Holder has appropriated existing texts and used them as scripts for readings, resulting in pieces such as Indeterminacy (2008) and The Making of Americans (2007), based on eponymous works by John Cage and Gertrude Stein. Holder sets up a mise en abyme whereby texts that examine the materiality and mutability of language are self-reflexively performed.

External links