Collaborative seminars - second week

We arrived to find the table laid out for a paint-feast. The topic of the first seminar was "the book as self portrait", and yes we did paint a small self portrait - as a colour...

A performance element - "Mickey" came to life and was willing to answer questions about her/himself, but only with yes and no -
Beside the original Mickey, the "self portraits" created by the unused paint are gathered to make a group self portrait -
These are the painted versions -
Lots of interesting books circulated and were shown in slides, including Glenn Holman's memoir of making a model Spitfire with his father, the tale of Matthias Rust's landing in Red Square, Duane Michals The House I once called Home, Tracey Emin's desert journal, Hilary Judd's box of shoes, Michael Landy's Breakdown Inventory, John Coplans' photographic Body Parts, two collaborations (November 5, 2006 and Mapping Knowledge), and Roni Horn aka Roni Horn.

"Materials of the book" occupied the rest of the morning, in four chunks: content; the book in time; the book and the senses; books in different cultures.

Content can be linear, as in the codes (example: Helen Douglas, Last day in Kas), or interactive, in which case the book may need other materials in order to be read - for instance, a work based on barcodes would need a barcode reader.

Over time, the book is subject to various threats or processes of erosion or destruction (this wasn't the glossary used, but it certainly has a lot of library/book terms!) - biopredation and WAF (with all faults) were new to me. Have a look at the biblioclasm of Araki Takao's fragile Bibles

and Andrew Norris's Lijepa nasa domovina,or Angela Lorenz's Rags make Paper; for a palimpsest, look at Heather Weston's Read, made with heat-sensitive paper; as an example of marginalia, Sophie Artemis-Pitt's Title.

The books chosen to illustrate "the book and the senses" were Camille Scherrer's Le Monde de Montagnes (it's an interactive set-up in which the computer acts as revelator; see the video here); Masaki Fujihata's Beyond Pages; and books2eat, which holds events in various places around April 1 (the edible gallery is here). Also of note: the handmade paper of Aimee Lee.

Books in different cultures include the different formats and materials used in the past - scrolls, vellum, clay among them. Contemporary examples are Anselm Kiefer's large lead book, The Secret Life of Plants

Rosamond Purcell's Bookworm; Xu Bing's abstract concept of the book in Book of the Sky; Huang Yong Ping's Chinese and Western art books washed together in a machine; Cai Guo-Qiang's firework book (too dangerous to open); and the red paper cutouts of Lu Sheng Zhong.

In the final seminar, "iconic/symbolic books", our practical exercise was to quickly draw certaint concepts - peace, anger, religion, disney, etc - and try to decide if the drawings were iconic or symbolic. Tricky, given that a symbol can become an icon...

Iconic books include the telephone book, religious books, Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, Mein Kampf - and among artists' books, 26 Gasoline Stations by Ed Ruscha (regarded as the first "artist's book" and rejected by the Library of Congress for its lack of information).

With symbolic books, the reader has to work out the meaning. These might include Agnes Richter's jacket; Regenerator by Richard Falle (using the ashes of a burnt book to make ink for a drawing of the book); Little Museum by John Dilnot (9 photos of hands holding objects); Little Library by Todd Pattison; It's not a Popularity Contest by Jody Alexander (date due pockets from withdrawn library books); Pentimento by Claire Jeanine Satin; the poignant Keepsake by Angie Butler; One Life One Book One Time by Kathy Strother; Donald Lipski's constructions using books; John Latham's work; Alicia Martin's cascading books; and works by Brian Dettmer and Robert The.

These seminars are an opportunity to think about topics for The Essay. Several things interest me - the relationship, or boundary, between public and private worlds; why are artists books so hard to "read"; is the book still seen as precious - or rather, how are books valued today. For each of these, I have a glimmering of "the answer"/outcome - but that glimmer may be wrong - it would be interesting to see if something else emerges, something unexpected (perhaps disturbing?).... Or maybe a topic that's more compelling, more "right", will come up in the next wee while. Suggestions welcome...