Goulburn River -- Oum er Rbia. : Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world. Alighiero Boetti, Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti.

List of data for the rivers called Goulburn (Australia) and Oum er Rbia [Oum Er-Rbia] (Africa): source, outlet and length, in kilometers. Cites information resource, parenthetically, following river length. In addition, asterisks refer to caveats, elucidated at the bottom of the pages. Six hundred-eighteenth and six hundred-nineteenth longest rivers featured in the book, which sequences the one thousand longest rivers in the world, from longest to shortest. “Classifying in order of size is the most common method for organizing information,” according to author Sauzeau-Boetti, who also concedes that “The partial information available regarding rivers, the linguistic problems connected to their identity, and the very elusive nature of the waters, mean that the present classification - like all preceding or following ones - will always be provisional and illusory.”

Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world by Alighiero Boetti and Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti, published in Milan, 1977. Includes colophon, epigraph with two quotations, and preface appearing in both English and Italian translations, followed by 1,000 pages describing 1,000 rivers, beginning with the world’s longest - the Nile - and continuing in descending order of length. Each river characterized by its source, outlet and length, with citations representing a variety of international information resources. In addition, asterisks refer to caveats, elucidated at the bottom of the pages. Often these cautionary notes about the data’s validity are longer than the data itself. In the preface, Sauzeau-Boetti acknowledges the impossibility of accurately measuring and classifying something that is inherently slippery - flowing water. In so doing, she voluntarily exposes the imperfections of the work from the outset, thereby painting knowledge and its uncertainties as inextricable. Boetti and Sauzeau-Boetti developed the book together over seven years. Throughout his art career, Boetti explored the relationship between chance and order. He investigated the understanding of the world through various means of organization, including cultural orders imposed upon the complexities - even chaos - of nature. Known to many scientists as the Boetti List, the book classifies one thousand rivers according to the most reliable documentation at the time. As Art Forum critic Ida Panicelli articulated, arranging the rivers by this mathematical system "eliminates all emotionality from the perception of reality. To enumerate, codify, serialize — these are automatic operations that do not require personal involvement … The enormous tabulation [becomes an] encyclopedia from which all description, all adjectives have been removed, leaving only the data of classification. But there is a veiled sense of risk beneath this apparent neutrality … As a work that is both planned and open-ended, [it] contains within itself the contradictory elements of order and chance.” The book presents measurements of nature while also implying process and metaphor — at once scientific and poetic. Lacking a table of contents, the book denies the reader any navigational shortcuts for locating rivers within the volume. Thus, one can only meander, encountering each river adjacent to the next longest and shortest. As Sauzeau-Boetti forewarns, "The partial information available regarding rivers, the linguistic problems connected to their identity, and the very elusive nature of the waters, mean that the present classification - like all preceding or following ones - will always be provisional and illusory." Watery bodies defy entrapment, here signaling the fluidity of the natural world and thus the fallacy of any attempt to create a permanent recording of its parts. By rigorously qualifying the data, the book disclaims any ultimate authority, while still providing a singularly rich database on rivers around the globe. Furthermore, the book rejects a model of supremacy by prefacing the sequence with this quotation by poet James Stephens - “Which is, the earth or the creatures that move upon it, the more important? This is a question prompted solely by intellectual arrogance, for in life there is no greater and no less.” Book was produced in an edition of a total 500 copies. This is one of 300 copies bound in red linen, numbered 401 on the colophon. Collation: [8], 1000, [6] pages. Provenance: Thea Westreich, Artist’s Book Publisher. Alighiero Boetti (1940, Turin –1994, Rome) was an Italian conceptual artist and a member of the Arte Povera movement. Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti is an art critic, writer and Director of the Archivio Alighiero Boetti in Rome. The two were married for over twenty years.

https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/198307/rome-turin-milan