Went to Bradford-on-Avon today and saw Fiona and Piers at Ale and Porter. The A-Mart show seems to be coming along well, with startling pink supermarket fittings filling the gallery space. A shame i can't make it for the opening since i'm in london. I must try to make it for the portraits show, though.
I've also posted another photo set to flickr.
It's at http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreweason/sets/42336/
It's now looking quite likely that I'll be giving one or more talks on book art in the US in spring- probably March, if I can just straighten out my timetable for it. i need to isolate a week or so when there are going to be no calamitously onerous duties to perform as regards my PhD, and get it straightened out. Andrew, thanks for the opening!
I've posted a new photoset on Flickr.
Who says you can't take photos at night without a tripod. (Warning, the woozy streaming lights, out-of-focus shots and digital noise may make some people feel a wee bit nauseous.)
I presented Twelve O'Clock Wood to my usual Tuesday group.
Remarks-
Linear/nonlinear?
How much have I storyboarded?
Why not multimedia?
I'm preferring to see the storyboard question as applying to the project of several books, rather than as pertaining to individual books. In fact, I DO often storyboard books before I do them, as compositions with narrative structure and rhythm. But it's precisely to try out different "motors" for creating the books that I want to try to use the amassed research material in different ways. So, sometimes I write and split a piece of writing into pages with a narrative structure that then gets worked into illustratively. More on this later....
I've been working on a diagrammatic representation of my thoughts on my research project, to try and spark off some relationship-analysis thoughts that can help me see the overall scheme of things and help me figure out what to do next. I anticipate this pile of blobs to grow and get more detailed: eventually I want to have links in here that will feature little gobbets of text that I can finish certain areas up with.
Anyway, here's the pdf. for it:
I've been talking with my friend Andrew about some of his an my projects and discussing some stuff to do with pictorial space and the senses, and the way that the senses inform the project of narrative presence (ie the presence of being-in the story that is actuated by the reader). it sort of fits in with my thoughts about books and also with Andrew's thoughts about the paranoia of knowledge. i saw some of his new pics and wrote him a couple of notes.
He's also asked me to consider doing a couple of basic talks over
there in the states, so I think I'm going to use it as a method of
writing up some of my thoughts about my strategies of practice and test
drive a few of my notions about artists' books, presence and narrative.
I want also, if I possibly can, to introduce the idea of books as a
solution to various problems of practice: a notion I've elaborated at
various points in this blog, but which needs a great deal more
connecting up to
i. the existing conceptual framework around artists' books
ii. my custom frameworks adapted from my wider reading
and, most importantly
iii. How do I frame this notion (books as a solution to the problems
of practice)as a series of questions that I can test/pursue/answer by
making books?
So, this is an exercise in writing up a compact version of my
conceptual framework and a chance to continue considering my
methodology.
Later, I'm going to try to set this up as a series of mind-mapping diagrams...
What might some of the questions be that I ask other book artists?…
This is a parking lot post...
When people pick up and read your books, what do you think is happening to them? I’m interested in ideas of immersion here. Does the reader have a job to do in constructing the text? ( I mean, is there a dialogue between artist and reader? … Do you think there is a higher idea of “book” to which all book artists- including yourself- relate? Do … Do in terms of conception in terms of relationship between production and concept … How … Do What do you think the relationship between printing and book art is? What do you think the relationship between craft and book art is? … Do you find book art helpful in organising your practice? … What … Do
…
Do you think this idea is changing? Does it need to be changed? Is it bad if it changes? Should it be resisted?
you think that the advent of digital information technologies and the
much-heralded death of the book affect the status of artists books?
you think book arts should be thought of as a series of objects or as a
strategy, a form of practice that artists use to create work and
negotiate their cultural concerns? I think that these are two different
ways of looking at things and that there seems to be more thought and
criticism of the objects than of the artists and their strategies.
These approaches are necessarily intertwined...
do you address the relationship between the idea and the material?
Would you say that the available means of production dictate what you
can make, or would you say that if you had an idea you'd find a way to
make it?
you view books as a changing or static thing in relation to your
subject matter/ sources and thought. What I mean is, are they
containers into which your thought can be decanted, or are they more
than that?
…
What about digital printing?
Is the “democratising” principle of the multiple an important issue for you?
…
Can you compartmentalize ideas?
Can you better express complex ideas with a structure/overarching form that aids narrative?
Do books limit you? Is this good/bad/other?
Do books change your voice?
Can you include more than one voice in a book?
Does the idea of a “strategy of containment” mean anything to you in terms of your practice?
Is
a book like a game? Does it exist because of a set of constitutive
rules? And is it therefore easier to temporarily separate from the
world to incorporate ideas elegantly?
is the relationship of books to collage? What I mean, is that simple,
flat collage allows a presentation of disparate materials together on a
page, whereas books (including books of collage) present pages in
relationship but as an array of possibly separate "modules"
you use any digital tools to produce your books? Could you imagine
using the files you create in another medium rather than artists books?
Sense of a temporary horizon just now, as I look forward to spending some time until mid December reading solely about AB's. A sense also of some relief that I can close the borders a little bit thereby- well, I have some small hope of that anyway- and make some headway in my own field without trying to swallow the planet as has been the case for some considerable time. Also, I think that this'll make the time I'm actually spending on my artwork seem more legitimate to me. I'm a bit too tough on myself sometimes, albeit that I have to acknowledge that I could work a bit more steadily sometimes, rather than the sort of binge pattern I have now.
Still, I'm very glad that i've been made to settle in for a bit by my last supervisory meeting.
My recent meeting with Sarah and Iain has resulted in a resolution that I am going to have to go out and encounter many more artists books, and generate a proper critical relationship with them as they apply to the work of of other practitioners. I've been, it must be said, in a kind of pressure cooker of my own practice and it's going to be a good thing to get some other people's viewpoints on the matters at hand. To that end, I'm going to be going to the Put About symposium at Tate Modern, and going to the London Artists' Books fair at the ICA to fill up a notepad with my impressions of and critical reactions to other people's work. Also, feeling disoriented from hearing about other people's projects and methodologies. I find that I'm not really developing a methodology as yet because I'm still trying to form a coherent goal. It's feeling sort of tough.
A bunch of stuff I've been working on of late.
Presentation
I
recently gave a presentation about my work to the MA students I meet
with on Tuesdays. I’d been putting together material and approaches to
this for some time, but in the last decided to start afresh, having
worked up an inappropriate sort of thing where I was working with
definitions of strategies, sources and exemplars to illustrate my
practice in some sort of context. As it was it was sufficient and
actually more appropriate simply to show some of my recent work and
talk about what was concerning me at the time. It amounts, given enough
time and expostulation, to the same thing with different approaches.
However, as it was it was all a bit rushed there wasn’t time to really
unpack the various notions I’ve been working with, through, on etc. I
felt that, actually, I didn’t really communicate the things I wanted to
have out with other people about things: didn’t present the areas I
particularly wished for feedback. It may be, though, that since I
presented more or less impromptu, and since I have what I myself
consider to be quite a sturdily articulated practice, that I presented
quite a well-defended front, as it were, and didn’t invite useful
criticism.
Whistling Copse
One of the things I spoke about was my wish to continue with my project Whistling Copse.
It’s been a long-term project, as I’ve said before. But now I find that
I want to work with it in a more documentary style. I really wanted to
get some discussion about the different voices and values that can be
articulated in the documentary form (and maybe drag in a bit of
Kearney’s On Stories to further articulate the relationships
and their social dimension). As it is, I have the idea that I want to
produce a little bit of film and I want to produce a number of books
that start to explore the idea of different voices- different modes of
research, as it were…poetic, array, visual, document-style, etc…
Twelve O’Clock Wood
Is the first in this series. I’ve been inspired by Zoe Irvine and Helen Douglas’ Illiers Combray to produce a book in one long continuous strip. Because I’m using my existing Whistling Copse research photos
in the main, and because I was already intending to use bits of art
from pottery and so on, it looks more derivative than it really is: the
coincidence of material is really just that. But the form of the book,
whilst it wes something I had thought of already, (to use with the wide
format printer)… actually getting to handle an example and see the way
the structure works has been an inspiration.
Wide Format
Yes, I’m producing
the book on the wide-format printer. It’s an expensive beast (unit cost
per book of something over £12, and I’ve still to see the results.) I
must say it’s an easy method oof production though. I hope I can sell
them, having laid out £70 for the printouts. Hopefully at Bradford and
Spike… It’s good to finally produce something at UWE, even if it is
this mediated halfway house where I simply hand over the files. At
least people will see me making something. This has been lacking and I
feel under-represented: as far as anyone knows I just mooch about.
Under the Wire
…Is the second book,
same format. I’m not certain how it’ll develop from the last one, but
at the moment the P’shop files are denser, more layered, less simply
photographic, darker…
BFI
I’ve also sent an email to the BFI to see if they can arrange a viewing for me of a documentary-drama from a series called “Call the gun expert”. There
was a 1964 episode about the evidence in the Whistling Copse case.that
I want to see- it’s another voice, after all, and another format.
Rooftops
I’m
also working on a short book, that I’ve called, in the interim-
“rooftops”…it’s a short book that is mostly an exploitation of the
unusual structure. I’m hoping also that because it’s essentially
possible to print it on one piece of paper that I can use it as a
project to reintroduce myself into some print processes. Visually, I
want to go for a dense pen and ink line vaguely reminiscent of Edward
Gorey.
Reading
Of course I’ve been reading, too. Mostly…
Searle
Heidegger
Derrida
Drucker
Writing
Book as solution/ pharmakon?
Elements of presence (reading/immersion)
Books versus films.
Agentive intention producing the institutional fact of the narrative,
rather than as a sensory experience, or rather, as a combination of
agentive production and sensory involvement.
Product
and process- my emphasis is or will, I think, be on the process( ie the
artistic practice) of artists’ books as a strategy, as a solution, as a
sort of cultural game, than it will be on a survey of books in
different historical moments and locations. This means, actually, that
I’m asking “How artists’ books?” rather than “What is an AB?”
Decisions about research- need to talk to living artists about practice
The importance of
describing how artists’ practice actually uses books means that it’s
going to be important for me to ask artists how they use the book
concept as a strategy.
Furniture at sea
All of this thinking has had me
feeling like my ideas are skittering about like furniture in a big
ship, not nailed down. However, I think the landscape is becoming a bit
clearer. I still have a lot of gaps to fill in, and a better general
knowledge of the available conceptual tools would help a lot.
