2010 (prod. 2010 – 2017) edition of 30 (20 outside series)
19 ½ x 13 ½”. Codex. Hand sewn to polyethylene drip lines for cords. Tight-back covered and partially encased in calfskin attached to oak panels with titles of steel letters. In three of the book sections, fired bullet slugs have been set into niches carved into pages. About 1,000 pages (varying depending upon bullet-vault depth). Inserts include turkey oven bags, grocery bags and sections of a variety of soil and soil supplement bags. chronic freedom is offered only to approved collectors.
chronic freedom contains four parts beginning with an introductory essay, “Against Dialogue: and for speaking only to ourselves”, followed by three sections, each on the lives and deaths of three young men, all children of the hippie generation. The third part is comprised of several chapters of original writings and interviews and reproduced newspaper accounts on the hip hop music and scene made by peers of the dead men.
The fourth and last part, “Hippies & Weed: Southern Humboldt County 1968 – 2010,” reproduces a survey of local and national media—including entire books, community newsletters, private journals and play scripts, often printed in micro-tiles that require magnification, sometimes accompanied by commentary and altered by graphic interventions.
Framing the assembled reproductions and other traces are impressionistic (and other) texts by Scott Holmquist that run alongside original vignettes outlining a history of Southern Humboldt hippie life by Douglas Fir. Interviews, by Holmquist, of adult children of the 1960s and ’70s back-to-the-land settlers and with settlers themselves about raising children in the hills, among other assorted interviews, make up another large part of this section. All interviews are reproduced verbatim with words struck out by request from interviewees. These barred words remain as blacked-out gaps within the text.
Collections: UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library; Rare Books Collection, U.S. Library of Congress; Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts, Wits Art Museum – South Africa; Don E. Wirtschafter Collection; Special Collections – Humboldt State University – California.