The Notepad

The Notepad

The Notepad is an act of protest and commemoration disguised as a stack of ordinary yellow legal pads. When the pages are magnified, each ruled line is revealed to be microprinted text enumerating the full names, dates, and locations of each Iraqi civilian death on record over the first three years of the Iraq War.

In 2010, a printed edition of one hundred notepads was covertly distributed to US representatives and senators. As a form of Trojan Horse, the effort injected transgressive data into the halls of power and put the pages into circulation around Capitol Hill. Eventually, many of these sheets will be memorialized in official archives where the names of Iraqi civilians will also find historical recognition.

TED Talk: Matt Kenyon A secret memorial for civilian casualties

Exhibitions: Media X, 1708 Gallery, Richmond Va. Beyond Boundaries, International Digital Media and Arts Association, F.U.E.L Gallery, Philadelphia. Secret, Science Gallery, Dublin, Ireland. PAPER/WORK, ROCKELMANN&, Berlin, Germany. TED Exhibition, Vancouver, Canada. Across Voices, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA), Displacements, Renmin University of China, Beijing. FILE Prix 2014, Centro Cultural FIESP, São Paulo, Brazil. ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art, Dubai, State of State of Emergency, Van Every Gallery, Belk Visual Arts Center at Davidson  College, Davidson, North Carolina. Re-New Digital Arts Festival, PB43, Copenhagen, Denmark.Required Reading: Printed Material as Agent of Intervention, Center for Book Arts, NYC. Iraqimemorial.org, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, alk to Me: Design and the Communication Between People and Objects, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), New York, NY .Intimacy Issues, Reed Gallery, The University of Cincinnati. Subtexts, Multimedia Gallery, University of the Arts.