Reflections on Black Books

Seven of the Black Books are in the library exhibition. Two have appeared on the blog already - Field Potential and Here And There - and the others will appear whenever I don't have a "fresh" book du jour...

Meanwhile I'm putting the books on my website, including this raison d'etre:

"The Black Books have three main components - the clamshell box, the diptych format, and what is inside. The box is of varying size and weight, but always black, with the title debossed into the cover. The diptych format, intrinsic to the codex book format, is fundamental to my concept - that the two sides are related to each other in ways that must be imagined. The "reader" opens the book to see them in a flat space; when the book is closed, the "pages" face each other. The contents of the book are visual and haptic - the books must be handled to be seen. Readers must dare to open the black box; having read the title while doing so, and viewed the contents, they can conjecture what continues to happen in that dark space when they have closed the book and put it back on the shelf."

So ... handling is very necessary - just knowing the title isn't much help. Yet the black boxes aren't very inviting to pick up. And when books are in an exhibition, there is ambiguity about whether they should or can be picked up.

Some of the boxes are a bit difficult to open, largely because of my inexperience in making them. I hope the description of the "Handling Collection", which highlights this difficulty, will help people overcome that little problem - they should tug just a little harder, rather than putting the book down because they don't want to damage it. (A little wear and tear is part of the life of a book.)

Handling "art" is such a no-no ... handling books is part of how we operate the mechanism that is a physical book. You have to open the cover, turn the pages...

Not all of the books  fulfill my original intention. I had an idea of "conjectural books" containing objects/materials rather than words. So on viewing - laid flat on a table, say - they would be a diptych format and the two panels would tell a certain story. Then, when they were closed, the contents would be in a different relation, and the viewer would have to conjecture what was happening in the darkness inside the upright box.

Here And There, for instance, is more about manipulation and displacement of space, and Release is a trivial fait accompli (but I just had to make it...) Lucky, too, is a finite story - one with a sting in its tail - if you win in pulling the wishbone, you get to choose one but then lose out on the other.

Those closest to my "conjectural" idea are Caress and Field Potential; even in those there are things that could be changed - the silvery stuff in Caress could be more explicitly sandpaper (or something different) and it could have worn areas; I'd like to use a real mirror in Field Potential, one with the backing coming off in places, but then how could the "gap" for the "spark" be created.

Most of all I'd like to do a book with a light that goes on when you close it -- and then, unknown to the viewer, shuts itself off (to save batteries, right?).

The photo at the top is the book in the vitrine - it would be great to have it as a handling book - all that tape spilling out when you opened it! - but stuffing the tape back in would be a nightmare. It's called Unheard and is better displayed in the exhibition - spot the difference -