Duck and Cover

1992. Unique, signed by the artist. Softcover. Fine. Square octavo. (17)ff. Kokin's wary glimpse at the social conditioning of children into a state of compliance, and the quashing of youthful self-expression, is made from tapes of various kinds (including, fittingly, "duck") and found photographs and objects. The stickiness of the tapes creates obvious friction between the pages, haptically evoking the frictive and constrained experience of being a child in a bifurcated country, where you either fit in or you don't. The final page sums up the concern and its problematic results. A sheet reads, "You may play this game. Who will be the policeman? Who will be the lost child?" Throughout the rest of the volume, cropped images of children along with found text and scraps of educational paraphernalia - among which are a jigsaw puzzle, a lettering stencil, and math problems - reinforce the point. Of course, now the title evokes that other distressing fear around an American childhood, school shootings. Bound in duct tape wrappers with binder rings. Housed in sheet metal box with wooden toy duck affixed to the lid. Fine.