Bureaucratic Histories (2010)

Information has a lifecycle. Data is created, collected, processed, translated, transmitted, consumed, and forgotten. This series examines the living space of a document, not just the physical space on the page, but also the historical space that the document occupies. These drawings reproduce the clandestine histories of CIA documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The content has been removed and all that remains is the paratextual evidence of what occurred after it was written. To trace the paratextual elements of a document is to trace the bureaucratic process that surrounds it— its readings, marginalia, duplications, and redactions. The marks on the page become a portrait of the document and the bureaucracy from which it arose, and rewrite the document for a future reader.