1.12.16

Dieter Roth's Literaturwursten

Dieter Roth, "Literature Sausage (Literaturwurst)", 1969.

Between 1961 and 1970 Roth created about fifty “literature sausages.” 

To make each sausage Roth followed a traditional recipe, but with one crucial twist: 
where the recipe called for ground pork, veal, or beef, he substituted a ground-up book or magazine. 
Roth mixed the ground-up texts with fat, gelatin, water, and spices before stuffing them into sausage casings. 
The source materials included work by authors and periodicals that the artist either envied or despised; they run 
the gamut from lowbrow illustrated tabloids to well-regarded contemporary German novels to the works 
of Karl Marx and the influential philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Dieter Roth. "Collected Works, Volumes 1–20 (Gesammelte Werke, Bande 1 20)", 1969–79.
Dieter Roth, “Codex from MUNDUNCULUM: A tentative logico-poeticum, represented as plan and program or dream for provisional 
mythebarium for visionary plants. VOLUME 1: Rot’s VIDEUM” ,1967. Artist book, publisher Verlag M. Dumont Schauberg, Cologne.
Dieter Roth, “Snow,” 1964/69. Artist book of mixed mediums, with wood table and two wood chairs. 

Source: www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2013/dieter_roth/index.html