Jason Lazarus and Martha Rosler, 202-456-1111, Visual Studies Workshop: Rochester, 2018

the screen printed envelope holding both the accordion
and accompanying book

This is a really powerful publication that takes direct aim at the current administration in the White House.  I'll let Jason Lazarus explain what this accordion and accompanying booklet, with a wonderful and timely text by Martha Rosler, are about.

"Since the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States, I have been creating photograms. The text that repeats throughout these images, 202-456-1111, is the White House phone number, which began the current administration Disconnected.

I'm not sure if photograms is the exact term for these works. A friend called them chemigrams, but after looking it up, I learned that chemigrams are made in full light.

These are made quickly, like a protest sign, and in the dark. They are made with arms and standing on legs that have a rare congenital condition, arthrogryposis, the same one that NY Times reporter Serge F. Kovaleski—who 45 mocked on November 25, 2015—lives with.

The repetition of resistance requires very close scrutiny. The lives of the targets of this administration are infinite, complex, and irreducible. When we become students of these lives, as well as our own, the multitude of details we discover implores us to become fully formed and in formation with each other."

This is dynamite stuff, and combined with Rosler's pointed text, both the accordion and the book leave no doubt as to where this artists' outrage is directed. 

10 pages, double-sided, 10"(h) by 8"(w), when opened 6ft 8".

the accordion with envelope

the accordion

Martha Rosler's text takes up the whole reverse of the accordion

The 44 page book accompanying Lasarus' accordion reproduces Rosler's text as well as a series of works by Lazarus' centered around the telephone number of the White House, which is the title for this both this book and the entire work "202-465-1111."