Octavo Fika

by andreweason

OF poster

 

Part of Book Week Scotland, Octavo Fika is an open-submission book exhibition that will probably be of interest to book artists. Kalopsia embrace textile as a form of artistic practice, and their interpretation of this apparently includes the ‘textile’ of expression over the passage of a book work. The cross-over isn’t unusual – Helen Douglas’ practice is strongly rooted in her knowledge of and experience of textile working, and the practice of integrating interpenetrating strands of material over a continuous surface fairly begs for textile metaphors, (even though the same sentence just as usefully describes the narrative endeavour). The ‘narrative’ theme here might pull some of those threads together. I’m particularly fond of the fact that this is taking place as part of a larger nationwide event where people can celebrate a lot of different facets of books. (I think the influence of Alistair McLeary’s Book History way of looking at things might be informing the multifaceted approach the Scottish Book Trust are taking…)

Anyway – open entry, part of a big event. I haven’t been able to find out exactly where it’s happening yet (Update; it’s on at The Colour Room,  68 Henderson Row, Stockbridge, Edinburgh Nov 25th-Dec 2nd)

Excerpt from their info below:

“We are looking for textiles, art, graphic design, photography, illustration and written words etc.

The only rules are: It has to be your work, and it have contain a narrative.

The book can be 2 pages, hand-made, mass-produced, a publication, 5000 pages and so on.

The exhibition will take place between November 25th and December 2nd as part of ‘Book Week Scotland’ 2013.

DEADLINE for submissions: Friday September 27th

All submissions are FREE,however, successful submissions will pay a one off charge of £25 (a discount will be given to all past successful submitters, please contact us for further details) which will help go towards the transporting of the books, the renting of the event space.

This is a great opportunity to show your work to a much wider audience and raise your exposure as a creator without having to worry about the any of the difficulties of putting on an exhibition, or of making and transport large scale pieces. All you need to do is send us a book.”

Octavo Fika

Kalopsia contact: info@kalopsia.co.uk

thinking about Wilson Art Full Text

by andreweason

Having a play about with the Wilson art full text database. I used it a lot for my Fine Art PhD but not so much subsequently in the information and library management MSc. It’s interesting to look at from a different perspective now, trying to see if it makes any sense to have it for the public library in Bristol. It would be a wonderful reference resource, but is definitely more useful for academic research than for browsing, even though it has a fair amount of pdf full text (and hence, reproduction after a fashion, of the visual material). I’m remembering Susie Cobbledick’s research about the information practices of artists and others on what artists want from libraries, and it comes down to having the (usually physical) materials available to form up into whatever process is right for the artist – and this may differ pretty widely from academic/ information literacy-type practices familiar elsewhere.

That said, there are some art journals that really cater more for theory and research than they really offer to artists, and its the extent to which Wilson offers these that it’s really useful. I could envisage replacing some of these physical subs with digital ones, and even envisage – subject to the usual caveats about the ongoing relationship with the provider – the possibility of disposing of some old back runs of more-commonly-held, more ‘research-y’ back runs.

It would certainly amplify the research potential of the art library, especially given its strength in monographs over the last 25-30 years. I don’t think it would necessarily help the artist-researcher as much, geared as it is to a more academic approach – though I may be mistaken there, too. So long as it wasn’t taken as a signal to dispense with the more visually-oriented subs (and I’m thinking not so much of the antiques and collectors’ subs here as much as the contemporary art and craft subs) I think it would be a real step forward.

Thesis now available

by andreweason

I recently got my thesis deposit updated on the UWE repository page; you should now be able to download a copy should you wish, from http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/18767/

Here’s the abstract:

A practice-centred view of artists’ books, coupled with a descriptive vocabulary/structure from formal criticism helps us to engage with some of the most insoluble problems of artists’ books criticism. Our history does not necessarily point towards a centring definition or identity for artists’ books, but towards a practice that always engages with other forms and identities. This engagement, rather than a solid identity from which to speak offers a way out of the artists’ books ‘ghetto’. This is already prevalent in practice, but requires additional narration and reflection to become part of our critical apparatus.

Thus, a dialogue of formal and practice-centred critical engagement with artists’ books is proposed. But this is prey to deconstructive reverses in the interpenetration and co-dependency of its valent terms. Similarly, I present dichotomies of strategic and tactical forms of practice. The tensions held thus in play I evoke as metaphorical, and a hermeneutics of ‘metaphorical practice’ narrates the artist’s relationship to these terms. Metaphor is employed as a means to model the creative tension of terms thus held in proximity.

Thirteen interviews are used to examine uses of metaphor as a way of artists pursuing practice in books, including ‘the book-as-space/time’,’ the analogue self enacted through books, the ‘promise of reading’, etc. These are shown to exhibit a metaphorical consistency of practice that opens up some of the tensions a more formalist view of artists’ books indicates, but cannot explain. The research makes explicit certain tacit practices of artists’ books’ practice, in doing so offering a model for its interpretation through the extended significance of metaphor in artistic practice. This is offered in the hopes of suggesting new approaches to some of the tensions proving insoluble to the critical functions of the field as it stood at the time of research.

Bon voyage!

Reading Matters/Metaphor

by andreweason

The Telegraph recently included a piece about research done at the University of Liverpool on brain function whilst reading literature. The literature professor working on this research, Philip Davis, has swum into my ken before:

I had heard about this research before, watching the BBC’s Reading Matters series. (Recap the relevant scenes here). At the time it had seemed to me to attach to some of the material I was most interested in in the area of literature and society, the sort of material explored by Martha Nussbaum in Poetic Justice, or by Wayne C. Booth in The Company We Keep: an Ethics of Fiction. All of these sources attached somewhat contentious tags to the effect that reading fiction was a good “training ground” for empathy. That by ‘being around’ and caring about fictitious others, we could develop the habit of attaining others’ points of view and get better at making judgments with a high degree of empathetic understanding. For my part, I found this area fascinating, because I was interested in the idea of books offering the prospect of the ‘projected self’, and of ideas of empathy and identity derived from my readings of Paul Ricoeur. (My own research was about how working with and in books affected primarily visual artists’ creativity and ideas of themselves).

The Liverpool work wasn’t strictly speaking to do with empathy, but about the power of reading to make us make new connections; however, the two subjects are related (and both were featured in the BBC programme I referenced). The comments in the newspaper article do bring up the problematic relationship of assigning behavioural-scale meaning to brain function; that correlation is not explanation in and of itself. Nevertheless, the outcomes are, if not surprising, a step towards understanding some of these impulses, values, feelings from a more scientific viewpoint. The point is, I think, not to understand that Shakespeare makes us think, but to allow those feelings, those experiences, new language that can bring it closer to the naturalistic fold when and if that seems apposite.

My interest was piqued by the language used by Philip Davis in describing how ‘The Shakepeared Brain‘ jumps ‘electically’ to new connections, new meanings and insights when confronted by Shakespeare’s challenging language and shifts in word-usage. Davis’ language reminded me of my own interst in metaphor as (confusingly) a metaphor for how we can happen upon insight and new constructions – a concept that figures broadly in my 2010 PhD thesis. That is to say – the linguistic trope of metaphor does not describe what physiologically or mentally happens when I experience metaphor, but it coins a striking likeness in another field of being. Metaphor is a trope, not a neurological description: but it is something that happens to our minds. In reading, it sometimes works a bit like this: jumping from word to word, we notice a new meaning when some unusual word is jammed, hugger-mugger, into a new context. This isn’t a metaphor. This doesn’t follow the form of metaphor, but it works in a similar way; ‘madded’ is mad – but not quite, or not only. The metaphorization disrupts our expectations and lets new meaning new connection, into the reading.

Another comment in the Telegraph was that the research showed nothing surprising. Well, perhaps not; but being able to build a naturalistic and quantifiable picture of the benefits of reading has value not only for therapeutic application, but in defending reading and its paraphernalia as not ‘merely’ of cultural value, but of positive impact in other measurable ways.

It turns out that Davis is (or at least was in 2010) the editor of the Reader magazine, to which I’ve linked a couple of times here. I’ll definitely be looking at their output in future.

Self-fashioning, Dowland, and artists’ books

by andreweason

One of the things that’s come out of my interest in the paper I referenced in my last post about John Dowland is the concept of self-fashioning. It’s not a concept that I’d come across before, and in any case it seems mostly be used in cultural studies terms to describe the social construction of self and affect in historical circumstances. There are exceptions to this, though, since obviously a critical tool that can be of use in attempting to give the formation of personal identity some background is going to be quite appealing to anyone who’d like to put some meat on the bones of how we create our selves. (And how we have historically been doing this since forever, not just since postmodernity).

A little background on my own interest, though.  My studies on artists’ books include my PhD thesis Becoming what the book makes possible: aspects of metaphorisation of identity and practice through artists’ books. This was about how the use of the roles made possible in artists’ books made it possible for artists not just to use different techniques, but different ideas of who they were: they were being poets and printers and writers and publishers and painters and (etc etc). I was concerned to set out how there were things to find out about the I of artists’ books on their makers and readers, as well as critical investigations/typologies/etc to be founded on their effects. (I’ve also more recently been interested in how artists’ books can provide dissonant or disruptive effects that cause us to alter our affect towards the institutions that provide them (in particular, libraries: see my Masters thesis). Effect recapitulates affect. Sort of. Which was my way of sidestepping others’ work on canon-creation/ definition by looking at artists’ books more as a performative locus for the artists’ identity/the reader’s critical literacy. It’s been fun.

I need to read more about how self-fashioning is supposed to work, but I think I can interpret  my own theoretical interests in its light. It’ll probably  fit with much of the theoretical apparatus I set up to describe what was happening to artists who chose artists books – with their possibilities of creating new circuits of exposure, new forms of legitimacy, ways of piggybacking on other cultural constructions and identities, etc, and their hybrid , metistic, tactical qualities (over against the qualities of definition, strategic outlook and settled identity).

This interview with John Shusterman on Art and Self-Fashioning is proving a fruitful starting point for me to see how one might begin to build up a coherent contemporary application of self-fashioning in precisely the area I’m interested in.

All this was started off by a passage in Eckstein’s paper (see my last post) where he writes about the possibilities for self-fashioning for Dowland, offered by the prospect of publishing his work. Even though publishing the work was a downgrade step for a courtly musician, for Dowland, it was a tactical moe that allowed him new forms of exposure and new ways of presenting his role. Eckstein’s notes head it as follows:

Motivations to publish printed music collections

– an increasing ‘privatisation’ of the music market in the second half of the 16th century
(a rising ‘middle class’ wants to imitate aristocratic culture)
– printed collections suddenly become attractive as
o tools of self-fashioning
o marketing instruments (e.g. Thomas Whythorne, 1771)

(Eckstein 2008)

This seemed to me to directly parallel the experiences of book artists feeling that their way of publishing (the ‘democratic multiple’ gives a sense of what was at play in instigating this wave to take advantage of the book for the opportunity it presents for self-fashioning) – that publishing would give them an alternative to the (privatised) gallery system, and  as tools of self-fashioning, of presenting their efforts in new ways, and of piggybacking into cultural areas otherwise inaccessible. Of course, one needs a more nuanced view and close readings of the topics to make the comparison interesting, but I nevertheless thought that the coincidence presented was worthy of comment. I’d like to do some more reading into self-fashioning and consider whether there is a fruitful field to illustrate this in artists’ book practices. I have (kind of) already done this, but this presents an opportunity to find a kind of theoretical crossover into a wider cultural discipline.

John Dowland’s ‘Come Again’

by andreweason | 1 Comment

Snow, darkness, melancholy.

I’ve been reading from stoic authors recently, but downloaded the 2007 album ‘In darkness Let Me Dwell‘ with Stephen Stubbs, Maya Hornburger, John Potter & Barry Guy as a bit of a wallow. It’s a well-considered collection of Dowland songs with some interesting new arrangements including saxophones and double-bass. I quickly got into the lyrics of ‘Come Again’, and, desirous of finding out whether the singer’s phrase ‘to die!’ was indicative of some form or romantic ecstasy (as well as the fulfilment of the hobby-melancholist’s desire to dissolve in a miasma of self-indulgence), came across notes for a lecture by Dr Lars Eckstein. Some of his references seem to confirm my filthy-minded suppositions, but there are a wealth of other analytical facets he considers, including how Dowland’s song puns on existing structures of romantic and ‘melancholic’ mores. Fascinating, and just the thing to consider huddled in the northern European darkness, waiting for the sun, too, to come again.

I love the library

by andreweason

This is by Bucky, a Bristol-based band, featuring characters I know and love…

It’s all quite sweet really…

At other moents they do rock pretty hard though.

Thanks to my friend and colleague (and rather good painter) Jem Bowden for the link to the video.

Lisle’s Man

by andreweason

Some materials from a book I worked on some years ago entitled Lisle’s Man. The Lisle in the title is Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, who was governor of Calais for many years during the reign of Henry VIII. The man is master John Hussee, the Lisle’s ‘agent, estate manager, and matchless confidant’. Husee it was, who as a private citizen represented the Lisles in their absense at court, dealing with the varied intrigues and demands of the Tudor machine. His role is put best by Richard Holmes:

Husee directs us into the heart of the Lisle letters, which is a theme straight out of Shakespeare’s history plays: the exercise of power. influence, and personal affection in a dangerous world where no one is safe.

…Lisle’s salary as governor of Calais was negligible…what kept him going…was the promise of royal reward: land, gifts, …posts he could assign, and thus receive gifts for himself. Such a system explains a dominant characteristic of Tudor political life: that as wealth and prestige increased, personal security and expectations, being dependent on the King’s favour, grew more tenuous – terrifyingly so. Hence the vital importance of a man like John Husee, the go-between, the intelligencer… the gift-presenter, the manipulator, the man who knows more than his master…

Husee’s shrewdness of observation and political tact became Lisle’s most valuable weapon in the struggle for survival. He knows… the absolute necessity if watching the shadows behind Cromwell. Most of all, he understands his own master’s greatest weakness: to be temperamental… too nice, too anxious not to give offence. This made Lisle especially vulnerable to Cromwell, who had perfected the art of pressuring his subordinates by unspoken threats, nuances of displeasure, meaningful silences, or sudden tiny cold splinters or criticism – his notorious ‘sharp’ letters – that slid beneath the skin like glass…

In one celebrated instance Husee actually confronted Cromwell with one of these sharp letters to Lisle, and boldly informed the lord privy seal ‘that if his lordship did not the sooner write some other loving letter unto you [Lisle] that I stood in doubt that your Lordship might take such conceit [imaginary fear] thereon that might perchance put you in hazard of some disease or peril of your life.’ One can almost see Cromwell’s narrow lips – in the famous Holbein portrait – draw back in a disarming, deadly smile: ‘he answered and said that he thought your Lordship was wiser than to take it after any such manner, for whatsoever he wrote he was and would remain your Lordships sincere and very friend.’

from Richard Holmes:
 Lord Lisle and the Tudor Nixon Tapes
First published in Harper’s magazine,
New York, August, 1982

The Lisle letters really are a fantastically inspiring resource. I’d love to revisit some of these ideas with another attempt at the book.

Radio 48

by andreweason

Radio 48

In this, the final page, I reach out towards the air and grasp it.

Am I reaching for the voice, for the implied contact of the communication? Am I touching, holding the messenger and connecting with its message? Or am I crushing it? Is the annihilation of the message/lacewing the completion of its journey?

This plays out some of the same tensions we saw in the transmission of the message 'swallowed by birds', or the notion of the message/lacewing annihilated by (head)light (which might itself be the form the message takes).

But its the end of the book, and you'll henceforth have to find your own bugs to crush.

I will return shortly with a serialised version of Tiercel, my book about a hunting falcon who watches a battle between danes and Anglo Saxons. I wrote a poetic text that is based on a fragment from a well know Anglo-Saxon piece 'The Battle of Maldon', but I retell it from the bird's point of view.

Thanks for reading along, and don't forget that if you are interested in having a nice, high-resolution copy of Radio for yourself, you can get one (among several others) at my Blurb pages.