About the name of this blog/project
I first came across the phrase āMatter vs. Spiritā in 2003 in the verses of Saul Williams from the epic Blackalicious track āReleaseā. At the time, I was working on my Masterās thesis, āDialogue and Dissident Self-Publishingā at the London College of Printing and I included his lyrics in the first issue of the zine I published. They felt like some of the most potent poetry I had heard/read and his words became the jumping off point for work in subsequent issues.
Williams was vocally opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, working with the Not In Our Name coalition to release āthe Pledge of Resistanceā, a powerful statement and music track condemning the Bush administration and American imperialism, significantly shaping the conscience of the anti-war movement. The track spread widely through multiple remixes, with several versions produced by DJ Spooky. Spooky (Paul D Miller) was emblematic of the experimental hip hop remix culture of the time and notably contributed to its theorizing and discourse with his book Rhythm Science. This fit perfectly into my thesis work, where I explored and argued for the radical potential of typo/graphic āremixingā as a method for articulating collective voice.
In 2019, I was honoured to be part of a project called Fronds with poets Kaie Kellough, Tawhida Tanya Evanson, and musician Jason Sharp (which would later become FYEAR) that opened for Saul Williams in Montreal as part of the Suoni per il Popolo Festival. The typographic projections I did for FYEAR, shaped around Kaieās writing, were in many ways a culmination of the work I was exploring back then as a student.
Williams has also been deeply committed to solidarity work with Palestinian resistance and loudly and consistently denounced the genocide in Gaza and American/Western complicity. When I was invited to speak at the encampment at McGill university, I decided to recite his verses from Release. These cyclical returns to his words over decades feel both significant and grounding.
Though the phrase āMatter vs. Spiritā points to a universalist philosophical dualism, in the context of Williamsā verses, there is a poignant resonance with design processes and ethics:
āI am a blankness, the contained center of an "O"
The pyramidic containment of an āAāā
āI have seeded a forest of myself.
Little books from tall trees
On bended knee.
Prostrate before an altered tree
I've made the forest suit me.
Tables and chairs
Papers and prayers
Matter vs. spiritā
Matter vs. Spirit became an apt name for this project, neatly encapsulating the theoretical framework of New Materialism while also pointing to its dialectical or oppositional political intentions. It took me a while to actually understand this framing, largely shaped by reading and bringing together Anna Tsingās Mushroom at the End of the World and Kathy Fergusonās Letterpress Revolution.
On another level, the name points to the sheer accumulated weight of all the printed matter Iāve produced over the years and my desire to think through it. How much lies in a name?