BOOK: Misha Ilin, Meta Meta-Book Of Instruction, Washington Project for the Arts

The centerpiece of Misha Ilin’s project residency at WPA is the publication of “Meta-Meta: Book Of Instructions”, which 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 65 (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. The arrangement of the book and its contents draw 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). The book 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.-Dimitris Lempesis