I have debt, who doesn’t? Why is it that so many people have debt? And I don’t mean student loans or mortgages. I mean the kind of debt that is impossible to pay back, because these debts do not deal in currency: they deal in the elusive transactions that bind people to things, and things to a network of tendencies that strings together to form a semblance of a common good. Can these debts be forgiven? And what would it mean to forgive a debt that cannot be calculated? Through a layering of texts and images, Wht is some debt? tries—rather unsuccessfully but with gusto—to express the inexpressible nature of debt as the fundamental lack that binds the living to time and to each other.

Wht is ?
This series of handmade books and e-books made by Paul Chan uses a special technique of overprinting images and texts onto existing sheets of book paper to create works that read like nothing else. The series premiered at the 2011 NY Art Book Fair. Each handmade book exists as an edition of one with two artist proofs, and as an e-book with a unique ISBN available on Apple iBooks.

Paul Chan is an artist who lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited widely in many international shows including: Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2009; Medium Religion, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2008; Traces du sacrê, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008 and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include Paul Chan: The 7 Lights, Serpentine Gallery, London and New Museum, New 2007–2008. In 2007, Chan collaborated with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Creative Time to produce a site-specific outdoor presentation of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot in New Orleans. Chan’s essays and interviews have appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, October, Tate etc, Parkett, Texte Zur Kunst, Bomb, and other magazines and journals.