A Review of Francesco Levato's Arsenal/Sin Documentos

Francesco Levato has created a disquieting and challenging book that provokes more questions than answers. Reading the book pulled me into a dialogue with it, almost an argument, questioning it as much as it questioned me, challenging me as I challenged it. The book fits into no easy categories, and describes itself as “a work of poetry and concept art."  This is an apt description.

The title, Arsenal/Sin Documentos, packs a lot of information about the book. It is nearly a complete summary. The slash cuts the title in two, apposing English with Spanish in a dialectic juxtaposition. Arsenal is an English/Spanish cognate, and according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, it means “an establishment for the manufacture or storage of arms and military equipment.” The word can also refer to a store, repertoire, or set of resources without necessarily denoting weaponry; as for example, “she had developed an extraordinary arsenal of mathematical techniques.”

The right side of the title, the part following the slash, ‘Sin Documentos,’ is Spanish for ‘without documents.’  This seems an explicit denial of fact for the book is itself undeniably a document. Moreover, the book consists almost completely of official U.S. Government documents. So, the title, Arsenal / Sin Documentos, is a paradox that works simultaneously on multiple levels.

Sin, that prominent middle word has the joy of living in both languages, but with different meanings in each. Clearly, sin connects the left half English word directly with the right half Spanish one. Sin sits between them like a fulcrum, balancing the left and the right hand parts of the title in a kind of sour bilingual pun. The title connects documents, their absence, weapons, and sin.

The cover of the book displays a couple of graphic elements that reflect the core of the book, its purpose and message. One of these graphic elements is the way the author’s name is printed. While the first name, Francesco, is in normal text, the family or surname is in bold font with a strikethrough; i.e., Levato.  The visual impact of the strikethrough, featured on the cover, prominent under the title, is visually disturbing, bizarre, and absurd, which is consistent with both the core message of the book as well as the compositional techniques Levato uses.

Roughly about half the pages in the book contain text that, not only has a strikethrough, but been completely obliterated with a thick, heavy, black marker pen. On flipping through the book, the effect is undeniably eye catching and dramatic. These pages look as if an outraged state censor, intent on demonstrating his fury, worked these pages over.  Page after page contains text that is completely unreadable. These are not polite, carefully executed erasures. These pages have been violently obliterated. The visual impression these pages communicate is the intentional destruction of the text; they are a visual embodiment of anger. They look like the product of an imperious totalitarian government. The anger works on two levels. One level is Levato’s own rage at the text of the government documents he obliterates. The other level is the subtext of emotion and affect contained in the original government documents themselves that provoke Levato’s rage.  Notes at the end of the book state that the “. . . book consists of a series of linked documentary poems composed of appropriated language from U.S. government documents such as: Customs and Border Patrol handbooks, the Immigration and Nationality Act; the U.S. patent for Taser handheld stun guns,” and so forth.

Levato structured the book into fifteen parts, each part beginning with an untitled but numbered policy statement, ranging from Policy .01 through Policy .15. Each of these policy statements is followed by one, two, or three additional documents on a variety of topics, some in Spanish, some in English. This organization parodies the government documents and the bureaucracy that produces them. The book’s index displays the book’s general outline and organization, with the numbered policies, sections and subsections, definitions and so forth, mercilessly printed in a standard government format and font that is intentionally designed to minimize any sense of humanity and to discourage reading. Importantly, these documents form part of the government’s arsenal of regulations, policies, procedures, and other weaponry employed to secure our borders. The documents describe the specific levels of violence acceptable for the enforcement these policies; and in the process of enforcement, apprehending, harming, brutalizing, criminalizing, and if necessary, killing the alien morphed to victim/villain. Levato uses these texts as a canvas on which to expresses his rage at the text and what it embodies. Thus, the book is a collection of Levato’s passionate abstract expressionist sketches of anger and outrage reflected back onto the text that itself embodies anger and outrage. In this respect, the book is more a work of visual art than of linguist art.

The cover has still more to say about the book. A large portion of the cover is devoted to a black and white rendering of the American Flag. The fifty stars are fifty black asterisks. The flag’s thirteen horizontal strips, normally alternating red and white, are rendered in black and white, the black being another heavy black maker pen redaction, completely obliterating whatever is under it. Thus, the cover, with the strikethrough, the heavy blacked out redactions, and the reference to a caricatured nationalism of the flag, displays several main compositional elements of the book. These elements include the obvious fact that everything in the book is printed in black and white, not only on the page but also in its world view.

Not all of the pieces of the book are dramatically overwritten and blacked out. A much smaller number of documents appear so faintly on the page they are virtually impossible to read with the exception of a few words scattered here and there. These pages of faint text contrast with the black heavily marked out text that dominates the book. The faint, disappeared text reminds us not only of how privilege afforded to the wealthy is visibility while poverty is assigned invisibility; but also, the disappeared text calls to mind the disappeared. With these faint texts, Levato manages to evoke the disappeared, to call attention to those missing. He makes this move with great subtlety, so we pause and mourn.

This book has an absolute unity of purpose and singleness of vision. It realizes an overarching inspiration and design. It is by no means a collection of separate individual pieces; rather, it is a single unitary creation. The document’s appearance on the page, its physical embodiment contains, illustrates, and conveys its meaning. This 151 page book, in its entirety, is more like a passionately conceived, concrete poetic monograph than anything else. It is a convincing, deeply satisfying, compelling, yet emotionally disturbing document to spend time with. I have never encountered anything quite like it.