Lost Volume: A Catalogue of Disasters
Cornelia Parker (1993)
Lost Volume: A Catalogue of Disasters continues Cornelia Parker’s preoccupation with destruction. Following on from Cold Dark Matter, where − with the help of the British Army − Parker exploded a garden shed crammed with objects, Lost Volume: A Catalogue of Disasters uses the intimate form of the book to present several flattened objects that − through the use of trompe-l’oeil − appear to have been squashed between the pages of the book.
Parker crushes these selected objects in a press between sheets of heavy paper, creating embossed indentations and reducing the objects to two-dimensional representations of their former three-dimensional selves. The selected objects are seemingly unconnected; a contents page that includes objects not flattened in the book confuses matters further. The book is perhaps best read as a way of seeing objects − and the world − in a new light.
