Friend,
Artist book. Edition of 5. 2014.Shortly after the new year, I began receiving a series of “spam” emails in my inbox. Usually filtration software removes them long before I encounter them, repositioning messages in a folder that becomes a kind of dead letter office, and transforming a nomadic figure into a predetermined and banal form - “spam.”
Throughout the month of January, however, I continued to receive these emails; all of them were characterized by a particular form of text in the body of the email which allowed it to “pass” as human. This text was notable for its aspirations; it was obviously algorithmically generated, but it recalled Modernist poetics, pop culture fragments, and personal epistles in its palimpsest of language and allusive beginning-to-speak. These texts passed a Turing test-- slipped past the machinic filter, proved themselves to be “human,” and claimed what Saussure called parole, or spoken language. They marked themselves as speech, and I accepted my role as listener, inhabiting a shifting and political form --— that of “friend.”
After January, the emails ceased. I have assembled and edited the text chronologically for this book, preserving the original syntax.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/86f382f64b9868e5ac090677de102f0e92d324d5ede741291806f0d758861158/friend_book2_o.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/99f458131d1326944d411a6d9159883cc76845fce21c2a3a022ef8353fce3d21/friend_book5_o.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bbdc8169d6b9d6f37d8116a817f5307afe63005a3841570f4d2c08d498c0fe6e/Friend_book1_o.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9980a768432d59a69c0164dc0d04081fef2a876c9a4a0660b2108c74dddc010b/friend_book6_o.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a7c5e5937feb1901b64cc8e964d6abe4acd755c6bed4753ac12c8fa20d1ea0b8/friend_book7_o.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d44ddfcc09a676de6e03ef371e02f7e5426755ed5c2e9e5ad0692f998e94bce3/friend_book8_o.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/beb78f966ea2ef26e0da187e42f822489de1564952553fefefcbdeda4a68d39a/VR14_o.jpg)