“Good morning and good evening! The words you’re reading were written in graphite, the mineral, by the artist Jimmie Durham. They were faxed (sent using the method called facsimile). Therefore, they aren’t exactly my words. (…) Could they be yours? Or perhaps they’re words, drawings, made by a machine with our collaboration.” * With this declaration, Durham himself provides the guidelines for his contribution for Peep-Hole Sheet #10, consisting of a selection of his correspondence of old faxes, which he defines as a slice of pre-email art life from his side. Drawn from the archive entrusted by the artist to Bart De Baere and M HKA in Antwerp, the faxes published here constitute an example of the archaeology of communication, revealing a personal yet lucid vision of the world, Durham’s artistic approach and the dynamics that inspire him, and others that instead affect him and lead to specific positions. Above all, they offer a detailed analysis of the very nature of language and its limitations, within the underlying pattern of constant irony often based on wordplay.
* From the fax 1364, Antwerp Jimmie Durham Archive, digitalized by M HKA, also published in Economies, Cultuurcentrum Gildhof, Tielt 1994.

Jimmie Durham (Arkansas, 1940), lives and works in Rome.

Peep-Hole Sheet is a quarterly of writings by artists. Each issue is dedicated solely to one artist, who is invited to contribute with an unpublished text whose content is completely free in terms both of subject and format. The texts are published in their original language, with accompanying translation in English. Peep-Hole Sheet is meant for those who believe artists are catalysts for ideas all around us, and who want to read their words without any filter. Over time it aspires to build up an anthology of writings that might open new perspectives for interpreting and understanding our times. Peep-Hole Sheet is published and distributed by Mousse Publishing.