Like Explication, Testimony was inspired by my inability to process news articles about the shooting deaths of young black men.  Testimony consists of newspaper articles containing the victim’s mother’s testimony, hand-copied in iron gall ink, the text of which, through a process of accelerated oxidization, eats through the paper. The text is newspaper articles containing accounts from Samaria Rice, Lesyley McSpadden, Wanda Johnson, and Sybrina Fulton. 

For this project I have been researching caustic, paper-eating inks. I stumbled upon iron gall ink (the focus of many academic studies, as it has caused deterioration of important ancient manuscripts). Gall ink is made by creating a tannic liquid from fermented, oak tree galls and adding ferrous sulfate and gum arabic. The excess of iron sulfate in many folk recipes for this ink makes them unstable.  Through a process of iron oxidization and eventual cellulose deterioration, the inked areas of the paper loose tensile strength and disintegrate, leaving holes in paper. This resulting lattice-like excisions are similar to that of hand-cut paper.  Following months of research, I’m accelerating the disintegration process (from hundreds of years to weeks).