What am I doing with this document?
- Stating what I’m interested in looking at when I’m looking at Artists’ Books.
- Stating some of the theory or traditions I’ll be using to ‘pick apart’ books; in other words, stating my method of analysis.
- Stating the relationship (which is an important one) between simply looking at the books, and, on the other hand, undertaking to talk with their makers about them and how they were made.
How do I look at artists’ books? How do I use them?
- As material backing up & informing info about artists’ intentions and practices.
- * Backing up- break this up
- * Informing- break this up.
- Finding out about interesting artists. Evidence of interesting practice.
There is a second strand to how I look at this. This first section views my activity of researching as something intimately bound up with my research into artists and their practice, so I’m essentially describing the research’s relationships to it (backing-up, informing, etc).
But how do I actually look at the books? This requires me to talk about what I would call my appreciation of them. This is not unlinked to my other concerns either, since the things I appreciate in them are based on the streams which inform my questions about practice and intention.
What are these things which I aim to appreciate?
Eg:
- Narrative
- Intermedia
- Poetic construction
- Temporary construction
- Addressing the form of the book
- Print execution: stylistic allusions, aesthetic pleasure
- Enclosement
- Sensory/Tactile
- Spatiality
- Relationship to oeuvre
complexity
What about the role of time in artist books? I think that's an important element that distinguishes books from both 2D art and scuplture.
ReplyDeleteYou can't see all of a book at one time. The artist designs what you see at any given time, and tries to direct the order of seeing as well.
You're quite correct Beth. This is an aspect of narrative construction for me- I'll be analysing the construction of books' unfolding (both physically and in terms of the narrative content) over time. I'll be looking at this as an important aspect of how the materials, story and articulation come together.
ReplyDeleteThe book and the reading of it aren't the only place, or the only time this happens though. Because we get "sucked into" the story, our relationship to it gets played out over time as well. A book we've put down continues to exert an influence on us and our relationship to it changes as well, subtly reorganising the story of our lives and our emplotment within it.