El libro como presente continuo

Review of the exhibition “The book as a continuous present. Artist's books around conceptual poetics”. Tecla Sala Art Center, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona). Framed in the Arts Libris Fair in Barcelona.

Bending, Breaking, Wrapping, Binding: Material Knowledge And The Creation Of A Series Of Artist's Books For Catharine Christina Anderson

I. Introduction In March of 2016, my Grandmother called me to ask if I could help her lift my aunt Tina out of bed and into her wheelchair. Born with spina bifida, Tina was paralyzed from the waist down; she lived with my grandmother who took care of her. Increasingly, a migrating pain that had first begun in her knee was making ordinary tasks difficult. That night, my grandmother picked me up in her old green car and brought me to Tina’s bedside. I locked my arms through hers while my grandmother lifted her legs. As we pulled her into her chair, she cried out in pain. I hesitated, but at my grandmother’s urging, we continued. This had become normal. Once in her chair, Tina was pale and hardly spoke. I said goodbye to her, and my grandmother drove me back home. Later that night, when my grandmother couldn’t get Tina back into bed again, she called my parents’ house—I was there for dinner. We’re calling an ambulance, I heard my father say. My grandmother and Tina had adhered to the same daily rituals for at least twenty-six years; the whole length of my life. Now, they had reached a point where this was untenable. The paramedics picked Tina up that night. Within a few days, she was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. She passed away three weeks later, shortly after her 52nd birthday. My grandmother and I both, separately, took the books off our bookshelves and put them back in order.

Bending, Breaking, Wrapping, Binding: Material Knowledge And The Creation Of A Series Of Artist's Books For Catharine Christina Anderson

I. Introduction In March of 2016, my Grandmother called me to ask if I could help her lift my aunt Tina out of bed and into her wheelchair. Born with spina bifida, Tina was paralyzed from the waist down; she lived with my grandmother who took care of her. Increasingly, a migrating pain that had first begun in her knee was making ordinary tasks difficult. That night, my grandmother picked me up in her old green car and brought me to Tina’s bedside. I locked my arms through hers while my grandmother lifted her legs. As we pulled her into her chair, she cried out in pain. I hesitated, but at my grandmother’s urging, we continued. This had become normal. Once in her chair, Tina was pale and hardly spoke. I said goodbye to her, and my grandmother drove me back home. Later that night, when my grandmother couldn’t get Tina back into bed again, she called my parents’ house—I was there for dinner. We’re calling an ambulance, I heard my father say. My grandmother and Tina had adhered to the same daily rituals for at least twenty-six years; the whole length of my life. Now, they had reached a point where this was untenable. The paramedics picked Tina up that night. Within a few days, she was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. She passed away three weeks later, shortly after her 52nd birthday. My grandmother and I both, separately, took the books off our bookshelves and put them back in order.

Blackrock Sequence: A creative dialogue between an artist and a poet

In 2016, my brother David1 was awarded a grant from Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown Council in Ireland, to write a sequence of poems. He invited me to collaborate with him to make a book of poems and images. I had never collaborated with my brother before, so it was important for me to establish my role and how the project would work in practical and financial terms. There was no formal agreement but just discussions over drinks in the Harbour Bar, near where my brother lives outside Dublin. David had received a grant of €11,000 to write the poems and he would keep all of this – he would see if he could get some additional funding to cover art materials and the cost of an exhibition. The book, however, would be my project – I would design and print the book and all money from sales would be mine. My practice as a printmaker and book artist meant that I have a particular ambition for the material aspects of a book, for example the way ink interacts with different papers, and this would not be compromised. I had previously printed and bound a number of my artist’s books in small editions, and these had been acquired by many public collections including the Tate.2 I had also written about the financial challenges involved, so I was going into this project with my eyes open. In terms of the book itself, David had initially suggested a chapbook but was happy to respect my judgement, creative independence and expertise. We also agreed that if we ended up in a situation in which either of us felt there was a significant mismatch between his intentions for the suite of poems, my images and the book I had designed, then I would not publish the book. In deciding what I wanted to achieve with the book, two texts were fundamental to my thinking: Ulises Carrión’s essay The New Art of Making Books and Yves Peyré’s study of artists’ books Peinture et Poésie (‘Painting and poetry’). This article explores the relationship that we established between poems and images and how the book’s structure developed to allow this relationship to be realized.

Printed matter, nomad matter

In a dictatorial or repressive context, movement can be said to be one of the most fundamental and disruptive forms of (aesthetic) resistance. Through exile, migration, travel or correspondence, bodies, ideas and objects are permanently displaced, searching constantly for lines of flight that are impossible to pin down by any political regime. When associated with art, the elusive and ever changing nature of movement can transform objects into events, creating an affective network of images, words, objects, ideas and relations. The ideological potential of movement can be found acutely in artist’s publications, or art in the form of printed matter, such as artist’s books or mail art, which have the potential to circumvent physical limitations imposed by repressive apparatuses. Also, movement triggers imagination to put together all the elements of the network thus constructed and put into motion, also entailing (different levels of) collaboration. This exercise entails taking a closer look to the material and historical circumstances of these objects that become deeply imbedded with ideology. So, by looking at the triangulation movement-time-history, I aim to investigate some ways women artists have used printed matter to revised, confront and debunk totalizing narratives, such as women’s role in society, capitalism, slavery, colonialism, etc., that have been sustained by and have themselves sustained the repressive and dictatorial regimes that operated in Portugal and in Brazil.

Touch

This chapter examines the importance of touch to the practice of reading. While all reading begins with touch (we hold books and turn pages), accounts of literacy tend to downplay this contact with the text, conceiving of reading as a purely cognitive activity. We speak not of touching books but of finding them touching. But thinking about reading in relation to touch is important because it can upset the logic of linearity and rationalism associated with an optic approach to literacy. Through its reciprocity, touch destabilizes agency, exposing the complex dependencies of subjects and objects. This chapter examines a variety of texts that invite a haptic response, including artist’s books, book performances, and digital apps that highlight cutaneous contact. It argues that post-Enlightenment ideals of distanced cognition must be tempered by the textured trace of the physical book and its affective role in our lives.

The Ancient Model – an Aesthetic Program and Method of Teaching During the 17th Century

During the 17th century there was a change in the style and the aesthetic principles as well as in the canon, the proportions and the type of the figures depicted. In fact, towards the end of the seventeenth century, studying the ancient models took priority over the study of nature. The “Ancient Model” became not only a teaching method in the art academies, but also an aesthetic base for shaping the style and the manners of work. This is something we can see in the illustrative parts of the anatomy for artist’s books of the era. The presence of images of emblematic ancient sculptures becomes almost obligatory.

Apropiacionismos y resignificaciones de la obra “Various small fires” de Ed Ruscha. / Appropriationism and reinterpretations of the artwork “Various small fires” of Ed Ruscha

Durante más de cincuenta años, los libros de artista de Ed Ruscha han favorecido una particular tendencia apropiacionista. Por ejemplo, su obra “Various Small Fires” (1964) ha sido “reescrita” por autores como Bruce Nauman (1969), Jonathan Monk (1969), Lucas Batten y Jonathan Sadler (2003), Thomas Galler (2009), Scott McCarney (2010), Doro Boehme y Eric Baskauskas (2010) y Marcella Hackbard (2010), generándose con ello, un movimiento de apropiacionionismos y resignificaciones que se cierra, al menos temporalmente, con “Various Small Shipwreck… and big Fires” (2016) de autoría propia.El objetivo del presente texto, es el de analizar dichas obras y sus relación con “Various Small Fires”, tomando a Ed Ruscha como fundador de discursividad, y al libro en sí, como icono para la memoria colectiva de los amantes de este género artístico y para la historia del hombre en general. Un análisis que nos ayudará a visualizar cómo algunos artistas bajo la figura del replicante han rehecho el estilo ruschiano para la construcción de nuevos discursos que, inevitablemente refractan, nuestras actuales prácticas de creación y producción editorial en un mundo cada vez más globalizado y dominado por los medios de comunicación masiva. Appropriationism and reinterpretations of the artwork “Various small fires” of Ed RuschaFor over fifty years, the artist’s books of Ed Ruscha have generated an appropriationist trend around the world. For example, his work “Various Small Fires” (1964) has been “rewritten” by authors such as: Bruce Nauman (1969), Jonathan Monk (1969), Luke Batten and Jonathan Sadler (2003), Thomas Galler (2009), Scott McCartney (2010), Doro Boehme and Eric Baskauskas (2010) and Marcella Hackbard (2010), etc. All of them have generated an appropriationist movement and resignifications which is closed, at least temporarily, with “Various Small Shipwreck ... and big Fires” ( 2016) of own authorship. The objetive of this text is to analyze these works and their relation to “Various Small Fires”, taking Ed Ruscha as founder of discourses, and the book itself, as an icon for the collective memory of lovers of this artistic genre and our history, too. Aso, this analysis will help us visualize how some artists under the figure of replicant have remade the style of Ruscha for the construction of new discourses that, inevitably, refracted our current practices of creating and publishing in an increasingly globalized world dominated by mass media.

Past’s Present: Artist’s Books by José Oliveira

José Oliveira is a book artist who takes inspiration from the history and evolution of the Western book and of Western writing. His artist’s books take the form of codices, scrolls and leporellos and embody the beliefs, grief and hopes of their author. They ask us about our conceptions of the book and the nature of reading. They are evidences of their author’s resolute rejection of contemporary techniques applied to books. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/2182-8830_2-1_7