November 2021
A few books out of many that have inspired me: a project put together for 57W57Arts, NYC
Starting at the top of the stack:
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A handwritten book? I looked closer – it was in English and the writing wasn’t a digital font. I bought it for itself, only later finding the colophon and looking up the description online.
I’ve often toyed with writing a book of my own by hand – but I dislike my handwriting.
Kris Martin: Idiot (Aspen Art Press)
“Each new work by Belgian artist Kris Martin puts a fresh spin on the roles of process and duration in art. In this artist's book, Martin has written out the entirety of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, substituting his own name for that of the book's hero, Myshkin, in an extreme act of adulation and identification with Myshkin's desire for spiritual transformation.”
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A soft cover book in Japanese with Japanese binding /
on NOH
...picked it up at a flea market and still love everything about it: the paper worn soft, the foxing, the bold characters and skinny illustrations. Because I don’t read Japanese this book renews itself every time I open it.
I myself dream of creating an endlessly renewable book....
This is Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams randomized. Completely. The entire book is here, in English, but it reads like a dream whose meaning is scrambled and out of reach. It is good bed-time reading, and reading aloud reveals how much we rely on common linguistic patterns for efficient reading and comprehension.
Re-writing Freud /Simon Morris.
Translated by Lingo algorithm, programmed by Christine Morris, Edited by Craig Dworkin. Published by Information as Material. 2005
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In each of these illustrations, every item is shouting a number – and each number corresponds to two different sets of sounds. The pages are orderly demonstrations of cacophony. The illustrations suggest narratives – the whole ensemble could be staged...
(Found in a church rummage sale, nothing else like it in the bin.)
BILDWORTERBUCH / DEUTSCH UND SERBOKROATISH
RIECNIK U SLIKAMA / NJEMACKI I SRPSKOHRVATSKI
Stampa BEOGRADSKI GRAFCKI ZAVOD, BEOGRAD 1967
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Kaldirimlar Destani / Kaldirmlar Kurdun Hayati /
by Masist Gui / Turkey 2006
Hand-drawn house plans with architectural overlays... Sensing a rich dialogue between the two, I bought the book – only later discovering the heart of it.
Published by Raking Leaves 2011
A Maanippaay dictionary defines Thombu (Thoampu) as a public register of lands....
The Incomplete Thombu
by T. Shanaathanan
“The contents of this file provide records of properties and lands belonging to Tamil-speaking citizens prior to single or multiple displacements from their homes. The enclosed documents are made up of three related elements: ground planes of houses drawn from memory by displaced civilians (with interview notes on the reverse), architectural renderings of collected ground plans and dry pastel drawings made in response to all of the above...”
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Name, Class, Subject by Aisha Khalid / Published by Raking Leaves,
Raking Leaves is an award-winning curatorial publishing organization based in Sri Lanka. The organization commissions contemporary artists to publish new bodies of work in book form, which are mass produced and distributed on an international platform to reach as wide an audience as possible.
This book is almost nothing – but look closely and you discover anomalies – slight – often nearly invisible. The narrative (the thing that makes you turn the pages) is the anomalies. This generates a strange kind of between-the-lines reading.
The colophon reveals that each of the 240 pages is reproduced from an original watercolor drawing.
MAFIA / United States Department Bureau of Narcotics /(2007) foreword by Sam Giancana
I saw an ad for this when it first came out and ordered a copy. It’s an exact facsimile (!) of the Treasury Department’s original file on organized crime. It is the look and feel of information that gets my attention. This reminds me of high school yearbooks...
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In conclusion: there's no accounting for taste - or inspiration.
