Plant Out of Place
Sarah Nicholls
2019
Brain Washing From Phone Towers
brainwashingfromphonetowers.com

4.75 × 8.75 in.
12 pages
Binding: French fold accordion, stitched into a cover
Letterpress and linocut
Edition of 250

Despite its unusual format, Sarah Nicholls is emphatic that her work Plant Out of Place is a pamphlet. In fact, Plant Out of Place is one of a three-part pamphlet series about weeds. In this case, weeds provide an access point for Nicholls to share the history of Red Hook, Brooklyn through the lens of contemporary issues like climate, migration and racial inequality. The pamphlet’s inside pages are constructed from a single sheet of manilla-toned paper, which is sewn into a green paper cover with a simple three-hole stitch. The structure is a French fold accordion. It has four panels with a horizontal fold creating a flap across the top half, like an awning. One must open this fold to read all the text, and doing so playfully reveals the top of a large linocut illustration that takes up about half of the front side of the inside sheet. The back side of the sheet is similarly divided between text and image.

The text guides the reader through pamphlet’s structure. The content begins on the inside cover, continues onto the recto and then traverses the flap left to right across all four panels of the accordion. Then the reader lifts the flap and the text continues on the far left and proceeds across the four columns of the now-single page. Nicholls’ prose is informal, but informational. Her point of view as a Brooklyn resident appears throughout the text, with references to “here” rather than “there,” and detours into first person. The reading experience is something like stumbling across a brand new wikipedia article that was passionately written by a single contributor and retains its idiosyncratic charm. Nicholls progresses from an investigation of ballast weeds as a trace of colonization and slavery (inspired by the artist Maria Thereza Alves) into a look at food, housing and education in Red Hook, all through its plant life. The pamphlet covers centuries of history and looks forward toward an uncertain future.

The type is set in a legible sans-serif face and letterpress printed with a kiss impression. It is not precious or ironic; Nicholls is interested in letterpress as a viable production method with various advantages that, for her project, outweigh its limitations. The text is printed in a deep magenta that pops against the green illustration.

One illustration is a tightly cropped rendering of a plant, printed in bright green behind the text on the recto of the first opening. The remaining three, including the cover illustration, are an interesting mix of positive and negative mark-making. They are not quite white line prints, and the push and pull flattens the picture plane and emphasizes repeating textures like the leaves of vines and the chain link fence that supports them. The two inside images are reduction prints, but in one case the lighter color renders the foreground while in the other image it fills the background. This reversal further emphasizes the vibrating quality of the images, which recede and rush forward in turn as the eye moves. There is a sense of urgency in the imagery that seems appropriate for the text – not only the rapid-fire style of the historical content, but also the alarm raised about the threat of future climate catastrophe.

This sense of urgency pervades the entire work. The content begins immediately on the inside cover, as if the conventions of book design (end paper, title pages, and so on) would simply get in the way of an important message. This design decision supports Nicholls’ contention that Plant Out of Place is a pamphlet, and demonstrates her ability to harness structure and composition to serve the content. The text inside and underneath the folded flap adds to the feeling that the text is simply too important to be contained. Its spread seems suitably weed-like. As each new surface is revealed, the reader finds that the text has preceded them. The reading experience is a game of catch-up, discovering the history and learning how it resonates in the present.

Another factor that contributes to the pamphlet’s intensity is that it is self-contained. There are no footnotes or sources, no hyperlinks to divert the reader’s attention down any number of related rabbit hole. Plant Out of Place is letterpress-printed from handset metal type and exists only in printed form. Reading is an act of trust, a suspension of cynicism. Sure, the imprint is named “Brain Washing From Phone Towers,” but Nicholls’ name and contact information are printed on the back cover. The pamphlet is an exercise in personal accountability in an information landscape curated by crowdsourcing.

Plant Out of Place shares this ethos with the larger Brain Washing From Phone Towers publishing project. The pamphlets are intended to interrupt the flow of daily life, to find readers through serendipity. Copies are sent randomly among members of a mailing list, a loose network of friends, friends of friends and strangers. Even the subscription model operates within the gift economy; the subscriber nominates a second person to receive free pamphlets. In place of metrics, feedback, likes and tags, the relationship between author and reader is mediated through the publication itself. Plant Out of Place shows the potential for the artist as publisher to leverage direct, focused, anonymous offline communication to address important issues and grapple with uncomfortable histories.