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6 DIRECTIONS OF BOOK ART
The world has four directions. This
obvious and sheer nonsense has been accepted as
truth for really long time. As something natural.
The majority of obvious and natural truths are
nonsenses or just drastic simplifications.
Nevertheless each simplification is a distortion as
well. The bigger simplification, the bigger
distortion - maybe this allegation is too risky but
delighting with its simplicity. How can we live in
the world of numberless directions? How can we name
them all? Everything must be named, everything must
be tamed - this is clear. So, we throw away the
unbridled reality and replace it with very simple,
docile model of the four direction world and this
model we accept as a reality. Thus we have east,
west, north and south. Only a few of
us remember that the model originally had two
directions more: zenith and nadir.
The directions can be defined more colloquially:
front, back, left, right, up, down. Yet
colloquiality is very tricky and brings a hidden
hierarchy: front is better than back,
up is better than down, left is
worse than right. I will not analyse why it
is so. I’d be more interested in the fate of
diagonals of all kinds, of the directions neglected
and despised - does anybody know what is the name of
a direction somewhere between up and back
or between nadir and east?
The cardinal points of the 3D map
of book art would be placed just there, betwixt.
They won’t be more important than the others which
could also be marked and defined as directions,
tendencies, trends, methods, mannerisms. The order
of listing would have no meaning and be of no
importance at all. We would undoubtedly forget about
all these premises (and of those not mentioned here)
right on the second page of this text and near the
end we would be surprised and indignant to listen to
a proposal to add one or maybe eight directions
more: this is impossible! the world has only six
directions!
1. The Direction of Scraps Rubbish Leaflets and Books-Ideas An intensely orange sheet of paper
is lying on the table. On one side there is a
scribbled letter (Andi scribbles awfully and I have
to decipher toilsomely crippled words); another side
is covered with a scribbled Xeroxed information of
Wexford Artist’s Book Fair. Last year a paper
boomerang flew to me. In 1996 there was a paper
half-accordion or maybe not-complete-caterpillar.
But earlier I had learnt about the idea of Great Sea
Book composed of 500 sheets written-designed-printed
by 500 authors. Because Andi lived in the place
called Donkey Meadow and my one-man overground
publishing house is called Elephant’s Tail, I felt a
close relationship and decided to send my sea-sheet.
In response I got an invitation to take part in II
Wexford Artist’s Book Festival in Ireland. I sent
three books. Then I found I could go there with my
family. I wrote a letter. Then Andi telephoned and
asked whether I could open the exhibition. Thus on a
Friday evening in August I opened the show.
Regardless awful weather the Pillar Hall in the Arts
Centre was crowded. On Saturday I was „trading”.
Besides my family I brought to Ireland a bag full of
my books and CdA books. That day every participant,
if he or she was present and wanted, could show some
other books, make additional stand, sell, tell
stories, explain. So I was talking and showing
really a lot, surely I can’t say the same about
selling. On Sunday I could sit peacefully at the
table in the corner, take one of the books from one
of the desktops covered with thick cloth and put on
trestles or from the raw plank shelves and begin a
journey through it. And there was a great variety of
books. Very small, very tiny, provocative ideas from
threshold-and-boundary zones (a few crumpled
scribbled up scraps of paper) and giant books (three
collage-books in the centre of the hall put on
simple reading-desks, partially hand written,
partially printed, with photographs glued in, with
original drawings, with metal-wooden-paper-cloth
covers). Books made by painting and writing on other
printed books (or geographical atlases). Books using
reflections in the mirror. Books imprisoned in
sophisticated boxes, closed in bizarre wooden
constructions. Books very severe, simple, sparing,
excellent, exquisite in every detail and books
patched negligently, amateur books, disordered
book... I’m not going to describe the books. The
books has to be read, not described. And the
majority of them were for reading (for short
reading). Livres d’auter. Author’s books. The one
who has given the idea, has also designed and made a
book. Among them there was a book by Andi: a short,
reckless, hand written and drawn report of a journey
he had done by a boat made by himself. According to
him this is what an artist’s book should be like: it
has to be created in enchantment, in rapture and it
has to radiate the energy of captured idea, as
spontaneous as the event it is going do describe and
reading it shall last only a little bit shorter that
writing it, while writing it shall last almost as
long as the described event lasted.
In November 1997 I flew with Alicja
Słowikowska and two huge suitcases full of books to
New York. 4th ArtistBook International. Soho.
Wooster Street - sequence of galleries. Three of
them occupied by books. We - in the first one. An
important remark: Printed Matter is not a gallery,
it’s a book shop where one can buy all kinds of „not
normal” books issued in different ways, sometimes
very simply and roughly but almost always in edition
of at least one hundred. When we were talking whole
day long about the things we gathered on two square
meters in New York, at Stanford University Judith
Hoffberg was telling a story about an invention.
When Xerox copy machines had appeared, people, those
clever beings who can always use inventions of other
people in the way the inventors would never imagine,
thought: oh, now I don’t have to look for a
publisher! now I can draw or write something, copy
or multiply it quickly and cheaply, put the sheets
together and give to other people I know and I don’t
know, sent, sell, throw. Thus the artists’ books
boom started. Thus the artists’ books avalanche
tumbled down. Mrs Hoffberg knows almost all book
makers. For many years she has been editing and
publishing a magazine-newsletter,
something-bigger-than-a-leaflet, Umbrella,
informing what’s going on in this direction (this
area) of the book art. She met us. She wanted to see
what we had brought. Anyway, she was to take part in
a symposium about Polish artist’s book that took
place in Stanford at the end of Polish Book Art
Exhibition there.
2. The Direction of Perfect Print On my table there is a newsletter
of an association of perfect printers. Of course, it
is printed beautifully, so beautifully it doesn’t
remind me a newsletter or an info leaflet - it has
the size of a monthly and paper far better than any
good monthly could be proud of. Looking for new
contacts and still groping in the world of
numberless directions I have joint The Fine Press
Book Association. But I print neither beautifully
nor perfectly! What doesn’t means I pay absolutely
no attention to the quality of printing. But the
problem of getting the richest blackness of the ink
while preserving the matte effect is really less
important to me than the problem whether one can
write about round things using square-edged fonts or
if one can use black letters describing rainbow
phenomena and this is neither book scholasticism nor
mocking. Let’s leave me at my desk with my more or
less degenerate problems. Let’s leave Printed Matter
for a moment. Let’s go to Brooke Alexander Gallery.
There were works knocking down with their quality,
precision, refinement, exquisiteness, prices. The
works which seemed to deny the transience of events
and phenomena, to negate spontaneity and craziness
..... to dry a toy-balloon between heavy sheet of
noble paper. (Please, remember about the general
assumptions! I do not evaluate. I just describe my
impressions. My fingers felt enormous joy touching
the subtle textures of gorgeous papers, didn’t they?
Sometimes I don’t want to fly, sometimes I want to
sink in a comfortable, soft, old armchair, feel a
heavy volume on my laps.)
3. The Direction of Uniqueness Edition:
one of the kind. One-off. There won’t be another
copy, because another copy simply can’t exist. The
unique book can be an object small enough to be held
inside one’s palm or it can be an installation that
weighs many tons. Like the poem-labyrinth by Andrzej
Bednarczyk: tens of monolithic square sandstone free
standing columns; on each side of the column there
is only one word; each time you go through the
labyrinth you can read a different poem ..... A
unique item - maximum flow of energy due to direct
contact with the work of human hands. The more
copies, the less amount of energy flowing. Two
copies - twice less. As the physical, tactile energy
decreases, the mental energy increases, the energy
conveyed indirectly, not from hand to hand but from
brain to brain....
4. The Direction of Big Edition Dreams Andrzej
Bednarczyk made another book and published it in
edition of 400. It has covers made of concrete and a
well cut in the centre with a little stone inside.
Can one imagine this book in edition of 40000? Yes.
At least I can. (Of course, then there would be
40000 different little stones put on the bottom of
the well. By the author?) In Printed Matter, at the
neighbouring stand I bought a small
philosophical-poetical treatise. Several kinds of
paper, exquisite printing in several shades of grey
and black, two beginnings and one end in the middle,
cut off windows. Edition: 1000 copies. My books,
though existing in dozen or so copies and hand made,
are designed to be published in thousands of copies
as well. They would lose something - they would win
something. But first of all the books are to be read
by many people, not to delight the eyes of very few
collectors. To make a sophisticated piece of art is
not the main aim. The point is to create (or maybe
to promote, to promote anew) a way of recording, of
describing, more adequate to the described reality
than straight rows of black letters on white pages.
In fact, the world is more similar to crazy,
colourful books for children then to decent
treatises for adults ..... For almost two months
Polish Book Art was exhibited in the hall of
Stanford University Library. Going there one has to
pass the reading room, or maybe the file room, where
there were computers instead of books. Hypertext -
the non existing unique item which can be
materialised in millions of copies. And what about
opulent textures of noble and poor papers? They will
remain. The people who do appreciate the sound of
turned pages won’t disappear tomorrow. Besides, the
new medium never fights the old ones. It only
settles in the new niche, cultural, information
niche, formed by technological, population and
civilization transformations.
5. The Direction of Picture When
the Polish Book Art was exhibited in Dusseldorf all
books were in glass-cases (like a couple of years
ago in Poznań and in Warsaw). One couldn’t turn a
page, one could read nothing. One could only look
at. Dull staring at one motionless page replaced a
journey through a book; multidimensional space-time
objects were rolled out flat ..... So many artist’s
books eliminate text ...... We forget so often that
reading a book we look at it, so each element that
we can see: paper, shape of a letter, text patch on
a page, covers, colours, shades, textures,
materials... can, could, even should bring us a
message - what a huge area for imagination, what a
vast field for cultivation! and don’t forget about
move, space, time, touch, smell aspects of books
..... So often looking at (or making) a book having
no text in it, and so ingeniously using the non-text
elements, we forget that a book is first of all something
to be read.
6. The Direction of Text James
Joyce wanted (or maybe dreamt) to translate the
gorgeous tapestry of The Book of Kells into letters,
words and sentences. That is why he wrote what he
wrote, especially Finnegans Wake. Probably
nobody has gone further trying to make the literary
notation and description as adequate to the
described reality as possible. Probably nobody has
better filled up the gap between form and content so
diligently and zealously dug by generations of
writers, critics and readers. Probably nobody
squeezed more nonlinearity out of the linear
alphabetic notation. Form and content are the same
nonsense as four directions. In 1997, during the
first Bloomsday in Cracow, one page, a sample page
of bulky typescript of Ulysses translated by
Maciej Słomczyński was shown. Almost every word was
struck out many times. New versions were written
above or below. Some words were matched with
different colours - the translator was trying to
mark different semantic-symbolic-association trails.
I thought that such a page was much closer to the
original version, because in gave us an idea of
multidimensional, multilayer language of Joyce, the
language formed of words-in-words-in-words-in-words
..... This page was not as colourful as a page from
The Book of Kells, you can’t even compare them, but
it was a labyrinth, a true labyrinth, a real one,
not suffering the schizophrenia of form and content
- using the criterion of cohesion (of contentform or
formcontent) it was better than the page from The
Book of Kells ..... And here comes even more crazy
idea. Some years ago somebody (I don’t remember his
name) got wide applause showing portraits he made
putting several different pictures of the same face
one on another. Let’s imagine then several different
translations of the same text done by different (or
the same) translators put one on another, printed on
transparent tracing paper ...... And who would
publish such a breakneckness? Maybe me, the only
employee, founder and owner of the overground
bookmakery ELEPHANT’S TAIL? And who would read such
a multibook? No doubt, nobody ..... Oh no! Doubt,
me!
So, we keep wandering. We move in this direction, then we move in that direction. While travelling, changing places and tossing we meet on the road the others who toss, change places, travel and wander. It is a beautiful world where the boundaries are so smudged and unclear that they don’t exist. We wander because even the most nimble tongue won’t say what the head can think of. It won’t say even two words at the same time, while the head can think of hundreds of things. Where
is ELEPHANT’S TAIL? Where is CORRESPONDENCE DES
ARTES (CdA)? Where are the others? Oh, definitely
not all the time in one place precisely indicated
with any co-ordinates. We do tremble, vibrate,
shake, pass, move. We do form a cloud of electrons
around smudged, unclear nucleus ..... And what is
this nucleus? What is the centre of the world? Every
book. Because in my fantastic geometry each point of
a circle can be its centre. As it happens in less
fantastic cosmo(book)graphy with every place, every
page.
Thus
I have written maybe the intruding introduction or
prolapsed prolegomena to a great treatise on
pageography.
This would treat of several
thousand years long history, theory and practice of
non-linear notation-script-score-record and so called
artist’s book is just but a small part of this
phenomenon.(This text was published in an album printed specially on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the Contemporary Polish Book Art project (Polish Artist Union, Warsaw 1998) |