Boston-based artist Jason Rayles announces the release of his newest documentary project, Fair — or — an artful documentation of the final day of the 2002 Brockton Fair in video stills and stereophonic sound with attention to the dual nature of the 12-hour event.

Fair is a hand-bound edition of 40 books bound dos-a-dos (essentially two books with a shared back cover). The book is divided into two sections: DAY and NIGHT. Rayles culled video stills from the twelve hours of digital video that he taped at the Brockton Fair, which he prints here as a sort of narrative sequence with words only at the beginning of each section. Each section contains a cd of ambient sounds from the Brockton Fair that corresponds to the image sequence. The books come in custom-made boxes that are stenciled and stamped by the artist on both the inside and the outside.

The book is Rayles's comment that every fair is essentially two fairs: one sunny and bright, full of cuddly animals and babies; the other dark and ambiguously dangerous, more grown-up and aggressive. The text at the beginning of each section is inspired by the tone of the imagery and the audio found in that section. A demolition derby that begins in daylight and ends in darkness is the last thing the reader sees and hears in DAY, and is the first thing the reader sees and hears in NIGHT. Rayles views his work at the intersection of many categories, including news reporting, social commentary, and an area of scholarship known as documentary studies, which he mentions in an insert containing some explanatory notes about the project.

The overall effect is at once personal and exotic. The form of the object is book, but strangely so. The subject is one we all know, yet it is one that we have mythologized into a (somewhat treacherous) fantasy world of oddballs, oddities, misfits, and shysters. We know what to expect at the fair; we are delighted when we find it. The blandness of the general is resoundingly trumped by the specialness of the particular. Turning the pages of the video stills, hearing the sounds, feels, in the words of one viewer, “like reading a movie.”

Like its namesake, Fair contains elements of familiarity and surprise, as the artist re-creates the fair experience visually, aurally, and even structurally in the book. Each section contains one popup designed and constructed by the artist, and there are several flyouts and pulldowns for the reader to unfold and peek inside. The artwork on each cd, the covers, and the spines of the books is stenciled and stamped by hand, making each book unique, and the cover paper, book cloth, ink, and paint combinations vary.

The price of the book is $350. Books are available directly from the artist. Contact:

Jason Rayles
435 Broadway
Apt. #403
Brooklyn, NY 11211
jason@23grand.com

About the artist: Jason Rayles was born and raised in Glasgow, Kentucky, and he has attended numerous fairs, be they county, regional, or state. He finds book art to be a perfect means to overcome the tyrrany of genre (really, people) and to express his interests in documentary film, literature, journalism, audio work, and whatever else he can roll up in there. He is 28.