American as Apple Pie

This brief tribute to Carolee Schneemann examines her self-conception as an American artist, considering how it intersects with the disruptive performance of gender norms in Americana I Ching Apple Pie (1972). The work was originally staged for the camera in Schneemann's London kitchen in 1972, during a period in which the artist was living in voluntary exile. She published a performance score for the piece in her artist's book Parts of a Body House (1972) and reprinted it in Cezanne She Was a Great Painter (1974–75). This essay reads Americana I Ching Apple Pie as an unruly reenactment of the highly gendered role that the filmmaker Stan Brakhage cast Schneemann to play in his short experimental film Cat's Cradle (1959). It considers the way she understood home and homeland as two interlocking fronts in the ongoing battle over how gender is encoded and enacted. It concludes by briefly considering the reception of Schneemann's work by a younger generation of artists, including Sondra Perry, who staged an homage to Americana I Ching Apple Pie in 2015.

Samuel Beckett's The North

This essay closely inspects the manuscript cluster relating to The North (held by the Beckett International Foundation, University of Reading) to provide insight into Beckett's collaboration with Enitharmon Press and its publisher, Alan Clodd, on an eponymous livre d'artiste illustrated with three etchings by Avikdor Arikha. It outlines the intricate publication details of a short excerpt from (then unfinished) Le Dépeupleur, which was the first part of the late prose text to be translated by Beckett into English. With the help of Beckett's published and unpublished correspondence with Clodd, Arikha, and Barbara Bray in particular, the essay traces the translation process of both The North and what was to become The Lost Ones. Extending over several months, the translation of the short novel gave Beckett considerable trouble and, as appears from his letters to Bray, her involvement in it was tangible. Beckett's linguistic choices surrounding the image of a crouching woman at the centre of this limited-edition artist's book and the English title of the master text, The Lost Ones, are also considered in relation to other art forms, namely Auguste Rodin's Dante-inspired La porte de l'enfer and the statue extracted from it, La femme accroupie. In addition to that, the publication particulars of the Calder & Boyars edition of The Lost Ones (1972) are discussed in parallel to those of Clodd's The North (1973), unearthing the differences between the two translations as well as contractual obligations that shaped them.

Growing in the dark: algorithmic books and possibilities for the contemporary manuscript

This essay documents a generative bookwork of mine called Growing in the Dark. It responds to the challenges of current thought including object-oriented ontology (Levi Bryant and Ian Bogost), the dark ecology of Timothy Morton, and the vibrant materialism of Jane Bennett. It also asks how the contemporary artist's book might be studied as a set of procedures, and then "grown" from that code.

Growing in the dark: algorithmic books and possibilities for the contemporary manuscript

This essay documents a generative bookwork of mine called Growing in the Dark. It responds to the challenges of current thought including object-oriented ontology (Levi Bryant and Ian Bogost), the dark ecology of Timothy Morton, and the vibrant materialism of Jane Bennett. It also asks how the contemporary artist's book might be studied as a set of procedures, and then "grown" from that code.

Dip Your Finger into the Book about Max Ernst’s Books

By paying close attention to the material body of the book, Max Ernst’s (1891–1976) oeuvre extends beyond literature and represents a significant contribution to the artist’s book in the 20th century. In his book design, Ernst emphasises the importance of the body of the book and thus seamlessly puts theory into practice. By drawing on this curatorial project as well as the current scholarship on the materiality of the book, the article focuses on two topics: first, it presents an overview of Max Ernst’s largely unknown poetic and essayistic work, including the discovery of a document that was lost for 65 years. Second, it is a case study of the material body of a book about books. By quoting and transforming Ernst’s book designs, the graphic designers implemented a very surprising postmodern design concept.

"Galáxias", de Haroldo de Campos, é um livro de artista?

In the fifty text fragments that compose Galáxias, by Haroldo de Campos, the dominance of the cogito is constantly broken. In this way, the reader’s attention, generally inclined to turn only to the semantic layer of the text, to look for what the text means, is led to perceive there also the pulse of a living materiality. If the word is not just a vehicle for the message, the body of the book is not merely a support for the texts, but an important element for the production of meaning. With a strange graphic design, could Haroldo’s work be considered an artist’s book? This is what this article investigates.

“You Will Remain Unwavering in Your Determination to Succeed No Matter How Long It Takes”: A Mathematico-Emotional Analysis of A Guide to Higher Learning

In this article we present an analysis of the multi-fold artist’s book, A Guide to Higher Learning (Chen, 2009). In our analysis, we propose different perspectives from which to view the mathematical and philosophical aspects found within the book. We explore aspects of “higher learning” by analyzing the complex mathematical equations and textual elements that readers meet in the book. Chen challenges the reader with: “This is a test. You will not be given any assistance or instructions on how to proceed. You will not be told when to begin or when to stop” (Chen, 2009). Thus, in our exploration of the book, we consider Chen's challenge from the perspectives of the “person on the street” and the “mathematician in the academy.” By doing so, we formulate answers to philosophical questions regarding the process of doing mathematics and the role emotions play in this process (which we call the mathematico-emotional journey). Through this analysis, and the establishment of the distinct perspectives, we were able to identify diverging purposes that A Guide to Higher Learning serves, depending upon the perspective the reader chooses.

Noise, please: let the body of the text unsettle your readings

Book Review: Anne M. Royston, Material Noise: Reading Theory as Artist’s Book. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019, 213 pp. ISBN 978-0-262-04292-5.