Introduction to my work

I seek intimate relationships with impersonal structures. The systems I choose to work with—such as police, secret services, CCTV, and forensic identification, function at a distance, with a wide-angle perspective, equalizing everyone and erasing the individual. I seek the potential softness and intimacy of their technologies, the fallacy of their omniscient point of view, the ways in which they hold memory (yet often cease to remember), their engrained position in society (the cause of their invisibility), their authority, their apparent intangibility— and, with all of this, their potential reversibility.

Books by Jill Magid

Store coming soon. To order books until then, please contact jill@jillmagid.net

Failed States, Forthcoming
Excerpt from Failed States, Printed in Texas Observer, Feb issue 2012. Download pdf or go to link
Excerpt from Failed States, Printed in Modern Painters, Summer 2011. Download pdf
Excerpt from Failed States, Printed in OPEN magazine, Issue 22 , Netherlands. Download pdf


Becoming Tarden ©2010
Softcover. 184 pages. Edition of 1250 copies. 5.25 x 8.25". 25.00 USD.
Redacted by the Dutch secret service.
Printed with support from The New Museum, New York.
Designed by Emily Lessard.

Selected praise for Becoming Tarden:
"The fairytale of the artist and the secret service just had to end badly". —The Wall Street Journal.
An Artist Delves Into the Lives of Spies, The Wall Street Journal, Sept 19 2009
Jill Magid Manuscript Confiscated Following Tate Modern Exhibit, The Wall Street Journal, Jan 8 2010

In 2005, Jill Magid was commissioned by the Dutch secret service (AIVD) to create a work that would "reveal the human face" of the organization. During the next three years she met with 18 agents who volunteered to be interviewed, but remained anonymous even to her. The project resulted in a variety of forms, among them her non-fiction novel, Becoming Tarden. Forty percent of the manuscript was censored by the AIVD in 2008. After legal negotiations with the organization, Magid agreed to let it seize the uncensored body of the book after being exposed—under glass and out of reach—from her solo exhibition 'Authority to Remove' at the Tate Modern in London, 2009-10. The redacted paperback edition of Becoming Tarden was published later that year.


Becoming Tarden ©2009
Hardcover. The complete, unredacted edition. 186 pages. Edition of 1. Permanently confiscated by the Dutch government from Tate Modern, London on January 4 2010.
Printed with support from Tate Modern, London.
Designed by Emily Lessard.
Link to Tate Modern brochure on Magid's exhibition.
Link to Becoming Tarden book website.
Link to Becoming Tarden excerpts.

Coverage of Confiscation from Tate Modern:
Jill Magid Manuscript Confiscated Following Tate Modern Exhibit, ArtDaily.org, Jan 4 2010



Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy ©2007
Softcover. Edition of 800 copies. 64 pages. 5.75 x 8. 25". 25 USD.
Printed with support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
Designed by Emily Lessard.
Excerpt from L.O.V.E, Printed in The Brooklyn Rail. Link to excerpt

Selected praise for Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy:
"Ms. Magid's impressive New York debut includes "Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy," a video and series of photographs accompanied by a haunting novella. All record her five-month friendship with a New York City police officer. She initiated it by asking him to search her (he didn't) and then shadowing him during his night shift, usually on subway platforms in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The best part of the work is the quietly heart-rending novella, a kind of tunnel vision of two people moving along parallel tracks while the city hums around them. The relationship is never consummated, but "Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy" spells love." —The New York Times.
Full article found here: Art in Review: Jill Magid at Gagosian, The New York Times, July 27 2007



One Cycle of Memory in the City of L ©2004
Softcover. 2nd Edition reprinted in 2011, 1250 copies. 100 pages. 5.75 x 8. 25". 25 USD.
Printed with support from the Incheon Women's Biennial 2011.
Designed by Emily Lessard.
1st Edition of 500 copies, Sold out. Originally printed by FACT Liverpool for the Liverpool Biennial International 2004.
Part of the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Sign on to above link as a witness to receive the book in 31 installments via email.

In the city of Liverpool, there are 242 CCTV cameras monitored by CITYWATCH, a joint operation of Merseyside Police and City Council, from within an unmarked control room, located in the city center. CCTV footage obtained from these cameras is kept for 31 days, after which this footage is erased, unless pulled out as evidence. Pulled footage is kept for a minimum of seven years in an Evidence Locker— a digital record stored in the CCTV stations' main IBM computer.
Magid stayed in Liverpool for 31 days to work with the police to create her own evidence locker. This locker, filmed entirely by the police, has over 35 entries, containing over 11 hours of video footage. For access to this footage, Magid had to submit 31 Subject Access Request Forms — the legal document necessary to outline to the police details of how and when an 'incident' occurred. Magid chose to complete these forms as though they were letters to a lover, expressing how she was feeling and what she was thinking.These 'letters' form the novella One Cycle of Memory in the City of L — an intimate portrait of the relationship between herself, the police and the city.

Short Texts by Jill Magid

Theology of Mirrors
Seduction as Strategy
MIT Thesis

Links to Texts about my work

Texting: The Artist as Writer as Artist Modern Painters June 2011

Jill Magid: Closet Drama / MATRIX 237 by Liz Thomas
Walking the Neon Line by Marisa Olsen
Artist Profile, Bidoun Issue #10 for Rhizome
Thin Blue Lines… by Roberto Enriquez
Nettime Interview: Jill Magid and Geert Lovink
Essays from Libration Point at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam
Liverpool Biennial Catalogue essay by Ceri Hand, FACT