The Record

Creator

Anne Covell

Description

"On January 20th, 2017, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. That same day, the official White House website (whitehouse.gov) began the digital transition to archive and replace Obama’s policies with those of the new administration. Immediately, people began to notice that key issues such as health care, education, and immigration were nowhere to be found. Keyword searches for terms such as “climate change,” “LGBT,” and “civil rights” all returned 404 errors. Even more conspicuously, the Spanish-language version and the disabled-accessible version of the site were no longer available. Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library that has been archiving webpages since 1996, captured 167 snapshots of whitehouse.gov that day. This book records the last snapshots taken of Obama’s policies before they came down, the 404 errors that followed, as well as the Internet Archive timestamps for when the information was last available and when it disappeared." - Anne Covell

Publisher

Anne Covell (self-published)

Subject

Government, politics

Extent

6.5 x 4.25 x .25 inches (closed); 13 x 42.5 x .25 inches (open)

Style

N/A

Material

Masa paper

Technique

Letterpress printed on Masa paper with sumi wash and hand brayering

Date

2017

Other Information

Variable Edition of 60 variants. More information can be found here: https://annecovell.com/the-record

Recommended Citation

Covell, Anne, "The Record" (2017). Rollins College Book Arts Collection. 36.
https://scholarship.rollins.edu/book_arts/36

Exhibit Location

This work was featured in the Cornell Fine Arts Museum as a part of the exhibition “Common Ground: Selected Works from The Rollins Book Arts Collection” from September 18, 2021 – December 31, 2021.