GUEST POST: The Book as Utopian Object (Sally-Shakti Willow)

For my practice-based PhD in utopian poetics and experimental writing at the University of Westminster, I’m researching the utopian philosophy of Ernst Bloch and the artist books of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.  I’m coming towards the end of my first year, and the first fruit of creative practice is the project called The Unfinished Dream, a collaborative work with illustrator and animator Joe Evans.

The Unfinished Dream began as an experiment in applying Ernst Bloch’s utopian theory to creative writing practice, inspired by the text works of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.  Both Bloch and Cha explore the relationship between subject and object (self and other).  Bloch suggests that the experience of non-alienation, where the subject (the individual) experiences itself as not-separate from the object (the world/the other) is the essence of the utopian.  Cha embodied this desire to create an experience of non-alienation between the subject and the object in all of her major text, film, and performance works.  The Unfinished Dream experiments with these ideas and has developed into a collaborative project that keeps growing and shifting – an unfinished and unfolding creative process.

For Bloch, the utopian function of art and literature is to facilitate the ‘self-encounter’ (100), the recognition of oneself in and through an encounter with the other.  For Cha, as for Bloch, the art object becomes a space of encounter between the artist and the audience where each fulfils the roles of both subject and object in their interrelationship with one another through the work.  One of the forms used by Cha for realising this connection was the artist book.  The book is an object of intimacy, a space in which the reader and writer are drawn together through the page.  The book, as an object, is designed to be held and engaged with in a one-to-one relationship between the writer/maker and the reader.  Cha uses scriptovisual techniques to create a relationship between text and space, words and silence, self and other in her artist books.

I’m interested in exploring this strange relational space between artist and audience, writer and reader, self and other as an experiment in the kind of non-alienation that Bloch ascribes to the utopian function of art and literature.  I’m interested in the ways that the book form can facilitate this kind of an encounter between subject and object, self and other.  What kinds of spaces need to be opened up within the text for the reader to project herself into?  How might the relationships between text and space / word and silence / text and image / image and space engender a performative experience of non-alienation for a reader encountering the book object? 

To experience something, we often need to encounter it physically, via our sense organs.  In this sense, and in others, the physical relationship between the book and the body is integral to the project.  I’m also deeply interested in the physicality of the book form, its materiality and its function.  Below, I describe some of the processes and ideas behind the creation of The Unfinished Dream, the first part of my creative practice for this three-year PhD.

The Unfinished Dream illustration details

 ‘May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve’. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

  
The Artist Book:

The physical object of the book is a central concern of The Unfinished Dream.  The experimental writing collection explores the ways that the materiality of the book is often ignored and made invisible at the expense of the words and ideas it contains, in a similar way perhaps to the relationship between the physical human body and the concepts and ideas that are generated by the mind.  The Unfinished Dream explores writing, drawing and creative practice as embodied, physical processes – processes that take place in, of and through the body, and which may be experienced physically, viscerally and emotionally by those who come into contact with them.

Similarly, the general invisibility of the book form means that culturally we take for granted the codex structure which has become synonymous with what a ‘book’ is.  Historically though, and across geographical and cultural spaces, different forms such as scrolls, wrapped papers, and now digital platforms have provided alternative ‘book’ forms with different relationships to structure, linearity and temporality.  The codex form developed with Coptic Christianity and encodes the linear, teleological (end-focused) structure of the biblical narrative.  What happens when we question these invisible assumptions that structure the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we tell of ourselves, so implicitly?  The Unfinished Dream explores the human relationship to the codex form and the teleological narrative it encodes and embodies.

Ernst Bloch describes utopia as ‘in the process of being’ (15).  For Bloch, utopia is a process rather than a destination and as such it is non-teleological.  Cha’s major artist book Dictee embodies a non-teleological structure in that there is no temporal narrative development throughout the book, and her use of repetition to return to key thematic images and ideas gives the book a cyclical or circular structure, despite its codex binding.  The Unfinished Dream embodies a similar structural rhythm in an attempt to disrupt the teleological structure of the codex form via its content. 
The book also explores the relationship between words and silence as represented by the spaces between words and phrases on the page; the relationship between words and images; and the relationship between parts of words through the non-standard use of the square bracket.  Each of these relationships has the potential to generate multiple possibilities through the gaps in between two elements and/or the dissonance generated between two or more contradictory parts placed together.  This is intended to have a twofold utopian function in that it disrupts teleological structural development by offering a profusion of possible pathways through the book as well as situating the reader as a co-creator of meaning, as each person encounters and experiences the book differently.  In this way the boundaries between writer and reader become more permeable.  The  co-creative relationship between the reader and the writer/artist is at the heart of The Unfinished Dream, as the reader must complete and interpret the work of the writer and illustrator from the multiple possibilities that are offered both within and beyond the text.

When making The Unfinished Dream we also wanted to question some of the invisible assumptions which suggest that artist books must be artisan products, requiring specialist skills, materials and equipment to produce and displaying the skills of fine craftsmanship.  We love those kinds of artist books of course.  But we were interested in a kind of democratic creative process that didn’t fetishize the book as an object, that embraced real life physical processes and that aesthetically embodied the ideas contained within the book.

 

 A4 school exercise books, hand illustrated, cut and pasted

Binding with Sally’s hair

The Unfinished Dream – artist book

The Unfinished Dream – interior pages

The Unfinished Dream – interior pages

The final poem is left unfinished, with space for the reader to complete the work

      

In addition to the artist book, The Unfinished Dream is also a short film and a performance.  Click here to watch the film (90 seconds; contains nudity).
To find out more about the project, including the film and the performance, please click here.

A still from the film, projected as part of the performance

The Unfinished Dream is a project by [Sub]Atomic Books: Sally-Shakti Willow & Joe Evans

Bibliography:
Bloch, Ernst (1988). The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected essays, trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenberg.  Cambridge Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press
Cha, Theresa Hak Kyung (2001 [1982]).  Dictee.  Berkeley, California: University of California Press

GUEST POST: Becoming The Book (Chloe Spicer/ObjectBook)

Becoming The Book

My work, as a bookish artist and time spent working/lurking in libraries can be summed up with this primary objective: I want to become a book. 

Still from 002 is The Book (installation), 2015

I’m not exactly sure what that means yet. I think people imagine that I’m envisaging wrapping myself in a large fold of red leather, and will spend a few years lying on a shelf somewhere quietly cultivating a dusty aroma. Sure, actually that sounds like great fun, but I think of being or ‘becoming book’ as a sort of spiritual practice or human evolutionary plan which is beyond, but intrinsically linked to, the codex. I want to be a book, but I want you all to be books too.  

Books for the Body I, 2015 (Digital Print)

A universal accessibility for The Book

Although sounding slightly dystopian, my latter aim is not entirely selfish. Books have huge accessibility problems: I love books, but they hurt me. They play hard to get. I can forgive the paper cuts, but it seems particularly cruel as a bibliophile that I experience painful visual disturbances when reading - text literally dances on the page.

This is an interesting symptom of my neurodiversity, but there are countless other differences in eye sight or physical ability and neurological diversity that can make reading a book bloody hard, before we even consider the need for education and access to books themselves. It seems quite remarkable that any of us can nestle into that cosy armchair with the fireplace, slippers, cup of cocoa/glass of whisky and a good read. There must be a better way. What can the book of the future do to address these issues? Can there be a universal accessibility for the book?
 

Raver at The Library Rave, 2015

Books as multisensory experience

Books have special sensory power. In order to read a book, and to decide that it is worth the effort, I really need positive tactile feedback.  They need to be against my skin, in fact even that seems like a cop out – I need books under my skin, to absorb the content and bookish ‘essence’; e-book screens are entirely unfit for purpose.

I’ve learned that despite my love for diversity, I am not an inclusive book lover. There are many books that just aren’t book enough for me: e-books, textbooks & magazines – anything that doesn’t feel good hasn’t got a chance. Books need to offer a sensory experience.

The Library Rave, 2015

Seeking a universal and multisensory accessibility whilst holding onto the tactile nature of books is the keystone of my practice. This is a lifelong research project, which I develop through participatory events, workshops and installations to explore human experiences and requirements of books, and to pilot my methods of becoming book. I live for the stories that appear out of these interventions. I’ve met people who confess to having compulsively nibbled the corners of pages as a child or who fell in love at a library self-service machine, this all seems desperately important somehow.

 
So what would this bookish future look like? 

How will we become books? Crude methods like immersing in shredded Book Baths (2010) or wearing Book Art Hats (2014), which toyed with absorption through bodily contact (if we place books on our heads, will some of the knowledge fall out?), have evolved into practical bio-tech solutions like DNA as Data Storage (2015) where I considered rewriting the body’s junk DNA with books. What would it mean to use our bodies as data storage devices? Could the volumes we embody subconsciously provide wisdom or alter our characters? Families could choose to take responsibility for the storage of particular genres of books. On having children, these libraries would merge, and grow with each generation, eventually becoming a global genetic library.

The DNA method is universal, but a tad disconcerting which leads us to a more palatable solution: Edible Books (2015) - rice paper books printed with edible ink/pens and bound with strawberry laces, or as in Books for the Body (2015) miniature leather bound books. Digesting information is a popular and accessible way of becoming a book (if you eat seeds a tree will grow inside you…), although its unclear how the digestive system would allow for retention of information.

BYOBBBBBQ (Bring your own book book burning BBQ) (2015) is a ritualistic ceremony for books which have come to the end of their lives. I believe that when you place a book in the fire, the text rises in the smoke, which participants then inhale (or consume by cooking over the ashes) enabling the books to live on within them. This follows the eastern worlds insight into text burning as a spiritual act, rather than one of censorship.

The Library Rave (Image credit Mindy Lee)

 
But in looking for a multisensory accessibility The Library Rave (2015) offers the cumulative method: an audio book silent disco, offering a bookish experience for all the senses (Join the rave at the BALTIC Book Market June 18-19).

Dance round the library to the bookish anthems of Fahrenheit 451 and The Library of Babel over music, as you rave with books and handheld disco light. Wear your entry wristband, drop an e (book), and maybe just maybe we’ll all become books by way of sensory overload.

Image credit: UAL

You are invited to join Object Book 26th May for a tempestuous evening of cocktails, cinema and books:

Book Flick Nights: I’ll Drown my Book.
Celebrate Shakespeare400 with book art workshops, literary refreshments and a bookish screening of an art-house take on The Tempest.
The Colour House Theatre, London SW19 6.45pm £12/£10 [goo.gl/TlV8gG]
 

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Publication as Artwork

On Monday I went to see the recently opened ‘Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979’ at the Tate Britain and it was nice to see the exhibition of books and the interesting challenges that that faces. 

‘The book is a medium that requires no visual display other that to be read, an the active mental participation of the reader. The book imposes no information system but the printed image and word; it is a complete entity in which both public and private documents are reproduced. The book is a collection of photographs, writings and ideas - it is a product of thought and of imagination. It is a result of concrete activities, and serves to document, and to offer information as the means and material of art’ 1.

book as artwork 1960 - 1972 - German Celant A.

Germano Celant's ‘Book as Artwork 1960-1972’ 1972 was produced to accompany an exhibition at Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London and was the first critical consideration of the artist's book.

In the introduction he describes the point at which book arts evolved:

‘At that time, there was a move away from an informal art, which was visual and in which the information was emotionally charged… This art had been made up of traditional artisan techniques of communications (like colour, collage, dripping and action painting) leaving little scope for public participation. The move was towards an informale freddo, involving the spectator. The visual and physical data of this technique was achieved through technological and biological media, possessing a small visual content, but demanding a high degree of participation and contemplation from the spectator.’ 1.

book as artwork 1960 - 1972 - Exhibition Nigel Greenwood Gallery B.

The Book as Artwork exhibition showed books in in clear perspex vitrines along the outside of the wall. These were only partially closed so that rarer books at the back could be displayed and those that could be handled placed nearer the front. 

Front Cover of Art - Language, Volume 1 Number 1, 1969 B.

The evolution of the book form in art can be linked to an adoption by artists as a way of dissememinating their work. Such as the artists group Art & Language. In the exhibition at the Tate the original publications were kept in vitrines with facsimiles of the pages pasted on the wall. Allowing the gallery visitor the chance to read the work. The only failing of this system was time, but it gave a nice contrast to the idea of art object and art communication. Preserving the original intent of the object in communicating and sharing information. The work (the book) is a container for the ideas and is a vehicle for them. The design choice of the book, had to be matter of fact and functional, in order to work as read information. Though the book is still a vital component and is much a part of the ideas contained within. 

‘A little about the form of the ideas. There have been, and still are, artists “who write” as a supplement to their object work. The artists who founded Precinct Publications have increasingly, over the past two years, been placed in a position such that they  “only write”, and as such many people, it can be assumed, would not allow them qualification “artist”. It matters not. The crucial question is not, whether or not they are artists, but whether or not their remarks, assertions, etc. hold out as relevant to certain problematic aspects of art today. The artists think, rightly or wrongly, that these aspects sufficiently warrant their attention for them to form Precinct Publications as vehicle through which their ideas can be made public.’ 2.

If you have a chance I urge you to see the show. It brings together a lot of examples of reading and language, through books, within a gallery space. 

[George]

References

1. CELANT, G. book as artwork 1960 - 1972. 1972. 
2. An Introduction to Precinct Publications, Coventry, 1968

Images

A. CELANT, G. book as artwork 1960 - 1972. 1972. 
B. Conceptual Art in Britain 1964 - 1979. Tate, London. 2016

→ gold on the cover // The Great Omar + 10 contemporary foiled covers.

As we are getting ready for PAGES|Leeds with our gold embossed covers - which will house a new publication for GUTTER project - I have been looking around at gilding practice in contemporary bookmaking. 

↓

Fabulously rich gilded bejeweled bindings were frequently used on grand illuminated manuscripts in Middle Ages. As manuscript culture faded, so did the bindings. 

In the XXth century Sangorski & Sutcliffe emerged as the binders of exceptional extravagance, using multi-coloured leather, jeweled inlays and precious metals. The history of their most famous work The Great Omar, is as spectacular a story as the work itself.

The Great Omar was commissioned by Sotherans Bookshop. It was indicated that the cost of the book was not to be a consideration. With that carte blanche, Sangorski & Sutcliffe outdid all previous efforts: after two and a half years they created a sumptuous binding containing over a thousand jewels. The front cover was adorned with three golden peacocks, their tails made of inlaid jewels and gold, as were the vines winding around them.
When the book was finally completed in 1911, it was listed for sale at £1,000 and shipped to New York for display. Customs, however, demanded a heavy duty on the shipment and Sotherans refused to pay. The Great Omar was returned to England, where Sotherans had it sent to Sotheby’s auction, where it sold to an American named Gabriel Wells for mere £450. The first ship scheduled to transport the Great Omar sailed without the book, so it was packed safely into the very next option, a luxury liner called the Titanic. The book went down with the ship in 1912. Weeks later, Sangorski also drowned in a bathing accident off Selsey Bil.
Sutcliffe took six years to recreate a second copy from Sangorski's original drawings. As soon as the new Great Omar was completed, it was stored in a bank vault for safety. Unfortunately, the bank, vault, and book were destroyed in the bombings of World War II.
The firm passed into the hands of Sutcliffe’s nephew, Stanley Bray, in 1936. After his retirement, Stanley created the third The Great Omar, which took another fourty years. He worked to his uncle’s original specifications. This final copy lives in the British Library still today. (from Biblio and Guardian)

The place of Sangorski & Sutcliffe is taken today by designer bookbinders. Contemporary bindings look remarkably modest as compared with the above. I have discovered some very skilled bookbinders (such as Robert Wu or Sol Rébora). I have failed, however, to find jeweled lashings of gold (even though, I am sure they exist!). As a result, I have diverted to mock gold leaf, i.e. metallic foils. 
Here are my top-ten book covers:

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald anniversay book cover editions by Coralie Bickford-Smith

 

 2. by Julia Kostreva

3. by komma (a platform for presenting projects of students of the Design Faculty of the University of Applied Sciences, Mannheim)

4. Laus 2015

 5. by Keith Hayes

6. by Coralie Bickford-Smith (again)

8. by Marian Bantjes

 9. by Tadeu Magalhães

10. Laus 2012

[Egidija]

Books Between Art and Science or Science and Art

Book exterior. Image source: Folia Water

A friend introduced me to this excellent project which aims to provide clean and safe drinking water to parts of the world that don't have access; the product is a book which contains advice and whose pages can be torn out to use as filters.

Book interior. Image source: Folia Water

According to the makers one page can filter water for up to a month and the entire book can filter water for a year.

Book as filter. Image source: Folia Water

I love the aesthetic of the book - the bound and embossed cover, the orange perforated pages with silver text. As this is a prototype, I wonder if the finished product would look dramatically different?

It is interesting that this book started as a scientific project, when it could have so easily been an art project - it's great to see how the two fields converge.

An example of the opposite - an artist whose work becomes scientific - could be Jamie Sholvin in his excellent project 'Various Arrangements' who used a mathematical formula to design covers for unreleased volumes of the iconic Fontana Modern Masters Book series.

Exhibition detail. Image source: Wire Frame

The project started when the artist noticed that ten forthcoming books were advertised but never released, so he created a loose formula to determine how the finished covers might look. 

Formula detail. Image source: Fontana Redux 

His 2012 exhibition at the Haunch of Venison exhibited his playful experiment and the book covers he has designed.

[Chris]

→ in the gutter

At PAGES book fair in Leeds, March 5-6, we will be presenting GUTTER - our curatorial experiment, which is an investigation into the contextual presence of book as an object and as art object, as well as an investigation into a curated event as a paradigmatic structure. (do come and see for yourself what this sentence actually means!)

As a result, gutter is something I could not help but notice as we were selecting  entries for prescriptions medical humanities and book arts exhibition, due at Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in April later this year.

Here are a few of the artists and their works I have noted down for their use of gutter space.




Wounds by Ruth Shaw-Williams documents some of her mother's many scars left by years of surgery. Ruth is interested in the visual articulation of that which has been hidden.  This involves the archiving of past hurts, coupled with documentation of the point at which they re-surface.

 
Ashely Fitzgerald considers the idea of the book as if it was a body that came to life with the spine of the book as the back bone and the pages as layers of flesh. The work G.B.S.  addresses her experience with a viral infection called Guillane-Barre Syndrome.

When speaking about gutter it is only appropriate to talk about guts and on innards: a collaborative project between Amanda Couch, Andrew Hladky, Mindy Lee and Richard Nash, which explores the changing conceptualisations of guts and digestion, their impact on the creative process and the role they play in constructing and destabilising our sense of self. The book is very appropriately spilling out of it's encasement with more parts being added to it as the project develops.

 
Derek's Story by Josie Valley is based on a narrative provided by Derek Cummings. Josie has created a visual response that is empathetic to his expressions of the multimodal experience of chronic illness in contemporary society.

 

→ excavating phantasmagoria (after Kaunas Biennial 2015)

fantasmagoria was a form of theatre which used a modified magic lantern to project frightening images such as skeletons, demons, and ghosts onto walls, smoke, or semi-transparent screens, frequently using rear projection.

Threads: A Fantasmagoria About Distance was the main Kaunas Biennial 2015 show (finished on 31/12/2015), curated by Nicolas Bourriaud. "A damn good title!", as Agent Cooper might have said. The title draws from the concepts of phantasmagoria (19th century "almost real surreal" horror theater, from the times of pleoramas, dioramas, padoramas, myrioramas, phantom rides, panoramas, magic lanterns and peep-shows) and distance (the space between two points). The ideas of distance and phantasmagoria are not the subject of the show, however, but a metaphor for contemporary art exhibitions, according to Bourriaud.

Based on the link between science, poetry and spiritualism, Threads is an exhibition about art as a system that connects itself to a different time and/or space.  The artwork as a telegraphic device, entering into contact with something happening somewhere else, in another realm, world, place or times. (Nicolas Bourriaud)

According to the curator, “the exhibition strives both to approach the form of fantasmagoria and address the way today’s artists include the notion of distance in their works. In a globalized and digitalized world, how does art deal with transportation, with real time communication? What is the current shape of presence/absence dialectics? How do artists present absent realities?”(Virginija Vitkienė)

Threads: A Fantasmagoria About Distance unites eighteen artists working in very different media (dominated by installation artworks). The title not only unites, but also highlights each of the works' "phantasmagorical" and "connective" aspects by re-contextualising them. Highlights? In certain cases excavates, where no phantasmagoria was seemingly present beforehand.

Attila Csorgo

One of my favorite works is Attila Csorgo's gently geeky poetic contraption Clock-work (2015): a three-dimensional curve projected onto the wall casts the shadow of (the symbol for) infinity, with a second hand moving round in circles, as propelled by ticking of the mechanism at the bottom. Installation itself looks like something from the 19th century - one of the popular spectacles, that later gave birth to the film. Like the 19th century visual illusions, Csorgo's work is based on science and meticulously engineered devices. Unlike the 19th century illusion, Csorgo's work is not just a visual spectacle - it is also an analytical glance into the fragments of reality that might not be noticeable otherwise, as well as a "thread" back into the world of phantasmagorias, shadows and mechanical timekeeping.

 

Amalia Ulman's Stock Images of War (2015) is a video piece of poetry. A TV screen in a small room loudly recites a poem to the soudtrack of the war, supplemented by brash animation of the text. I am assuming it is original poetry - although, it could also be an accumulation of phrases from online sources. I have found no information about this arwork, beyond the fact, that it was created to supplement an exhibion (under the same title) of very delicate wire sculptures.  The video can be considered in relation to its very prominent soundtrack, visual effects and vocal poetry tradition, but in Threads: A Fantasmagoria About Distance the video is primarily a tardis into the distant horror theater of war.

Darius Ziura's autobiographical work The Monument to Utopia (2015) is a collaboration and a re-connection of three friends: Darius, Serge and Slava, who had met during military service twenty-five years ago. The work is authored by Ziura; it includes a statue made by Slava, a film about the making of the statue and two tons of books stolen in Dublin by Serge (another currious subject, which I hope to explore somewhere later). Twenty five years of separation, eight years of stealing books, two hours of film; thousands of miles between Vilnius, St Petersburg and Dublin are contained in this memorial, which collapses physical and temporal distance between the three men. Like in a theater of shadows, their ghostly presence rises from the objects and suggests undelying reality and possible authenticity.

→

An exhibition - like a book - is a structure, where each element is exposed to the title and appropriated by it. The title Threads: A Fantasmagoria About Distance tints every artist in the show. Some works employ obvious links to the metaphor, such as flickering light by Carsten Holler, creaking doors by Julijonas Urbonas or live webcams by Roberto Cabot. Others, however, benefit from some excavation, to regenerate unexpected semantic aspects of text/artwork that might have got burried as the work evolved.

Title is the viewing lens into phantasmagoria of the art show.





 [Egidija]