points of reference: novels

a list of possible points of reference to the research outside the usual academic spectrum

w.Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities

Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose

Jorgé Luis Borges: The Library of Babylon

www.bibliomysteries.com has some links of interest.

also...

snip:

Neil Gaiman's Sandman Library of Dreams is a pretty explicit homage to the ideal library in James Branch Cabell's Beyond Life,
which thus deserves mention -- will photocopy the relevant bits if you
don't have the book. Then there's poor old Lord Sepulchrave's doomed
library in Titus Groan, and Borges's exhaustive `Library of Babel', and the booby-trapped library-cum-labyrinth in The Name of the Rose....Neil Gaiman's Sandman Library of Dreams is a pretty explicit homage to the ideal library in James Branch Cabell's Beyond Life,
which thus deserves mention -- will photocopy the relevant bits if you
don't have the book. Then there's poor old Lord Sepulchrave's doomed
library in Titus Groan, and Borges's exhaustive `Library of Babel', and the booby-trapped library-cum-labyrinth in The Name of the Rose....snip

programme of work

ideas and notes towards a programme of work

the life of the book

an ideas parking lot. buzzwords and notes for a short essay I want to write.

Circulate/recur/preserve

catalogue/vicinity/serendipity (discrete and not discrete)

review

digitize

handling / physical preservation

travelling (Wesley)

promulgation, multiplicity (media history...printing)

loss- burning, disposing, crumbling, forgetting, collections split

found- secret

opened and closed

collected/enjoyed/hated/abused/reverenced

dreaming/ interiority

editions, relations

1001 nights

mythic/quasi mythic- calvino

Scratchpad for visual collection

This is a scratch list for my visual collection. The images will be hosted on Flickr and the pages on my server. I may link from these names and objects to their entries,  a link which would require a password...

Torbjorn Rodland

Photographer. Flimsy surfaces like a badly-hinged joke hint at
submerged and fractured narratives. Absurd sexual frisson, dark fringed
situations. Style as a container. See Contemporary no 67

http://www.contemporary-magazine.com/

Hogarth

Sung landscape masters

Spatiality, narrative and subject order. Systems of spatial
representation and narrative presentation reflecting cultural factors.
Perspectival system as symbolic form. ( i must read Panofsky one day !)

Roni Horn

Looking at Roni Horn in Contemporary today. Work includes "Some
Thames", a work i think I read about in a Sunday supplement magazine
years ago. I think it's very good work.

"Some Thames" was the work with the pictures of the Thames filling
the picture field: up close images that showed the turbulent surface
with all its characterful, meaningful exactitude. But a surface that
nonetheless swallows up: Horn's supporting text was full of forensic
reports on bodies recovered from the depth. Depth, perception, surface:
embodiment, intentionality, repetition. Horn's repetitions set up
relations across a series that are fascinating. "Doubt By Water" is a
sequencew of images, double-sided, on plinths, where the sequence is
examined...WRITE MORE

Sophie Calle/ Paul Auster

Identity, space and chance. Narratives of chance and place. The insistence of objects on coincidence.

Italo Calvino: Castle of Crossed Destinies

ditto, but with Tarot, so the objects become symbols.

Baraka/Ron Frick

Visual components/componence rhythm and editing. Solidity of intention despite nonverbal mode.

Russian Ark

A journey through a memory palace. The way the narrative drives
through on one single line, but has others meshing like gears on a
toothed track. Vision, layers of presence. History and research as
subject. Ghosts.

Vong Phaophanit

Especially the one with the ashes and silk.

Christiane Boltanski- "les Tombeaux"-"The Tombs"

v similar to (Tulse Luper suitcases)by Peter Greenaway

What is Boltanski doing to people though? Do his commemorations victimize?

Abelardo Morell

http://www.abelardomorell.net

Photographer. Camera Obscura series is fascinating. Section on books
also. Attracted to visual games, light. Sense of hermetic value.
Enclosed, gamelike.

Isaac Julien- the John Soane film.

Don't Look Now (Nic Roeg)

Francesco Clemente

Sigmar Polke
R. B. Kitaj
Tom Phillips
Richard Serra
Cy Twombly
Sol LeWitt
Ian Hamilton Finlay
Joseph Kosuth
Jenny Holzer
Art & Language
Amikan Toven
Wolfgang Laib
Christo and Jeanne Claude
Starn twins
Mary Kelly
James Turrell
Joseph Beuys
Anselm Kiefer
Bill Viola
Vija Celmins
Nancy Spero
Paula rego
John Kirby
Heraldry
Susan Rothenberg
Tony Cragg
Rachel Whiteread
Joseph Cornell
Mona Hatoum
Susan Hiller
JS Bach
Eileen Lawrence
Cornelia Parker
Tacita Dean
Niki De Saint Phalle
Louise Nevelson
Sonia Delaunay
Max Ernst
David Lynch

Possible questions

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 you think this idea is changing? Does it need to be changed? Is it bad if it changes? Should it be resisted?

Do
you think that the advent of digital information technologies and the
much-heralded death of the book affect the status of artists books?

…

Do
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...

in terms of conception

in terms of relationship between production and concept

…

How
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?

…

Do
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 do you think the relationship between printing and book art is?
    What about digital printing?
    Is the “democratising” principle of the multiple an important issue for you?

…

What do you think the relationship between craft and book art is?

…

Do you find book art helpful in organising your practice?
    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?

…

What
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"

…

 

Do
you use any digital tools to produce your books? Could you imagine
using the files you create in another medium rather than artists books?