The text of the article – with a ‘made-up’ dictionary definition of bookness!
bookness
/bʊkness/
abstract noun: bookness.
An object or
activity that references or contains in its conception or creation ideas,
materials, concepts, production processes, functionality or other elements that
are related to the book, its associated activities, and spaces. These include paper
making, reading, writing, calligraphy, typography, illustration, printing,
binding, folding. Spaces include libraries, archives, bookshops including
second hand and antiquarian, databases, and the internet.
synonyms: book, book
art, bookwork, artists’ book, volume, tome, work, printed
work, publication, treatise, whole book philosophy.
More
The naming of
an idea which has at its core the essence of book. Other art forms that have
bookness and encompass time-based works, including dance, film, theatre,
performance poetry and music both live and recorded.
Something
bound by the concepts that contain the idea of the book.
What is bookness? What is it to make bookart? One approach to the making of books.
This paper sets out to explore some ideas developed
around notions of bookart and the expansive possibilities available when
interrogating the idea of book through the lens of bookness. It will also
examine the making of books within an art practice alongside its position
within education, specifically the core values that were embedded within the
Book Art Course at Camberwell College of the Arts. ref 1
24 years ago, in 1995 as a visiting tutor
at Camberwell College of the Arts, working on the BA Graphic Design Course I
was asked by Alex Lumley ref 2 to help write the course documents for a
new MA Book Art Course ref 3. I had been working with students,
developing ideas around image and text within various formats. In my own practice
I had been printing books since 1983, my second year of study on the Graphic
Design course at London College of Printing (now London College of Communication).
My foray into the making of books was instigated mainly because I had
discovered the glorious design printmaking workshops and the machine printing
workshops operated by ex Fleet St printers. I often created too much work to
fit in the space allocated to individual students in crits and assessments and
the book provided the opportunity to have a lot of work in one place. Eventually
I developed an approach where I produced work specifically for the book format;
images to scale and text length developed in relationship to each other, but
still basically using the form as a container of information, repositories for
my image and text works. I tentatively started to consider the possibilities
afforded by exploring the structures associated with the book; fold, gutter,
page. These were mainly design concerns which contextualised the work within a
livre d'artiste framework rather than an experimental bookwork model. This
was something I only really understood when I found myself standing in Charlene
Gary's library at Basilisk Press in 1983 with Derek Humphries ref 4 surrounded
by things called bookart or fine press books or livre d'artiste. ref 5.
Before that exposure I think I naively believed I had invented this thing
called the book.
As part of my
role to create course documents and the need to further my understanding of the
books possibilities I corresponded with Ivor Robinson, ref
6 who was running a bookart module at
Oxford Polytechnique. Thus, my introduction to bookness was born, I was soon
reading around the subject and was subsequently drawn to the dogma of Ulises
Carrion. ref 7 There have been many people along
the way who have informed my understanding of the creative process, enabling me
to be standing at Turn the Page. Over the existence of the course at Camberwell,
under the guidance of the Course Leader of 24 years, Susan Johanknecht ref 8 I have been introduced to and learnt along with
the student’s new ways of thinking specifically about book. This led to the
development of ideas related to an understanding of bookness, a whole book philosophy, an activity that
explores concepts and actions relating to the making of bookworks; folding,
printing, sequence, order, time, control. This concept has provided me with a framework for a practice
which has enabled a focused core set of values and an approach to the making of
a wide range of artworks and presented a methodology to be used within a
teaching context.
The core of
this paper was carved out of a seminar I have been giving at Camberwell since
the course’s conception - it has evolved greatly from its first iteration,
collecting ideas like a wayward snowball gathers everything in its path as it
hurtles down a mountain, so that it now has the density of a black hole,
tightly packed, somewhat impenetrable but diametrically it melts away under interrogation.
It is this link with the concept of belief, belief in the idea of a made-up word
- bookness that I enjoy. The slippage of language means that each individual
can find their own version of what bookart means to them and it can change with
each new encounter, each new piece of information.
The
presentation titled What is bookness - finding your relationship to book ref 9 formed part of the first seminar that the new
co-hort of MA Book Art students received at the beginning of the course. It was
an attempt to create a level playing field of knowledge within the group, a way
of presenting an open approach to thinking about the book, supporting the idea
of challenging preconceived notions of what book is or could be, an idea that
went to the core of the course's philosophy. My starting point for building the
initial presentation was to challenge traditional notions and known's
associated with the book, for example that in an art practice it needs to have
anything to do with paper, pages and hard covers containing images and texts.
It attempted to present an opportunity for the students to develop their own relationship to book - book as material - image of book - paper -
words / text - binding - folding - structure / book as architecture / space -
smell - touch - codes / communication - documentation / dissemination -
collecting / ordering - performance / reading - process / making - distribution
- sequence.
Having taught
for the whole of the Course's life, from its conception to its termination, I
have delivered a version of the presentation26 times, starting off using
photographic slides and moving onto PowerPoint, each one delivered revelatory
moments for myself which in turn fuels the thinking for the specific cohort and
also informs the next one. This almost invisible reflective element of teaching
has enabled me to reinvent and redefine my understanding of book. The process
of creating presentations is a way of gathering current transitory information and
weaving it with established historical knowledge. When delivering it to a new
group of students there is no way that the inputs from students and subsequent discussion
can be anticipated. In that moment fresh hypothesis are born and original thinking
established.
For myself revelation,
and an acknowledgement of audience are at the heart of what I do and underpin my
relationship to the making of books. This lateral thinking, multi discipline approach
is what artists bring to a problem. The
world is re-imagined, viewed as having 'book-like' qualities, which could be
explored by making connections within the idea of the page, chapter, and
binding. The action of how a walk or book evolves through visiting and
revisiting, reading, and rereading. The bringing together of individuals within
structures has at its heart the idea of book.
The nature of making objects that will be held in the hand by others is
an important element when conceiving and then making the work. Consideration of
scale, weight, and texture, alongside its functionality are at the core of its
conception. The book is a physical conduit between maker and audience. Its
materiality conveys information which needs to be as considered as the content in
and on its structure. The physical form and its functionality can become the
work, form becoming content and the manipulation of the object in the hand
delivering sequence or multiple narratives, as seen in the work of Lygia Clark ref 10 The making of book art straddles and utilises the
world of craft and art. All this interdisciplinary activity confuses
institutions seeking definitive boundaries whilst creating marketing absolutes
with which to sell courses, but it is this mercurial position that excites
makers and audiences who enjoy the skill of making combined with the conceptual
thinking to deliver intriguing objects that convey ideas through the hand and
eye.
The hybrid
nature of the book form has led to undertaking an extensive range of
commissions and residencies, some examples of these will used in an attempt to present
an expanded notion of bookness, specifically
recent work within the science community but initially large-scale public art
commissions were the testing ground for the concept to be trialled.
The act of creating a text for reading in a site-specific space,
timetravel, nonlinear narrative and notions of the expanded book have been
explored and utilized in several large-scale site-specific commissions.
Texts dispersed within a space means that the audience must move between the
words to create the narrative. Rather than animating the texts the space itself
takes on the role and form of book. Text with a content that comments on or
uses information from the past that is also site-specific takes the reader back
in time. This concept was used when rethinking and redesigning 2 streets in
Lowestoft where texts were cut into stone and embedded within the structure of
the street furniture: bollards, paving, junctions, roadway. The texts mapped
the history of the street, allowing the residents the act of everyday time
travel as texts from different time periods, along with facts about the space,
connected them to moments in time as they walked. The texts are reread, rethought,
and transform as the context for their reading changes, through age or personal
circumstances. ref 11
A conceptual question I have asked often is around the space a book inhabits, could this be
mapped? What would it look like? As an
art piece I have wanted to cast this space, making physical the books wider
presence. This would include both the visualisation of the book’s physical
presence, the hinge mechanism and the influence it has, the ideas within the
work disseminated through the eyes, brain and mouth. I see a huge rhizome of nodal points and
connections that links everything with everything. My work within the robotics
department at Kings College, part of Parallel Practices, ref 12 a Crafts Council project where makers were
paired with Scientists offered a diversion to this but went some way to
exploring the idea. Working with Thrishantha Nanayakkara and Naomi Mcintosh we created a project Squeeze Fold Bend and Expand - Structural Memory in
Deformable Objects ref 13 which set out to extend an
understanding of current thinking around soft robotics through model
making. We built new structures whose functionality
and manipulation were framed and enriched by a knowledge of soft robotics. This
led to us challenging and expanding our own practices by exploring ways of
controlling movement and the articulation of objects.
As part of
the trailing and testing I created a
multi-hinged bookwork which was attached to a robotic arm where we could accurately
repeat a simple movement. This meant that the bookwork's physical movement could
be mapped with positional recognition software linked to a video camera. In
effect the bookwork was drawing the physical space it inhabited, drawing both
its influence and its existence. ref 14
The presentation What
is bookness? starts with an image of two bookworks that are
important touch stones for me and in some way encapsulate the possibilities
afforded through the engagement with books; John Latham's Noit Intercourse,
a image of two books in conversation
with each other and Mirror Book by Ron King and John Christie published
by Circle Press - a bookwork that contains the whole world and which changes
with each reading because it is made of mirrors. The concepts of revelation and
engagement are what books do best.
ref
1
the
last intake of students was in 1996, the final graduate exhibition was in 2020.
ref
2
Alex was the Course Leader for the first year and is now Associate
Dean of Academic Support at UAL.
ref
3
https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/fine-art/postgraduate/ma-visual-arts-book-arts-camberwell
ref
4
Derek
Humphries and I were co-founders of Oblivion Boys Press an imprint that burned
bright and intensely between 1985 - 1989
ref
5
Charlene Garry
Basilisk press
https://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/pdf/canon/janssen_ii.pdf
ref
6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Robinson_(craftsman)
ref
7
Ulises
Carrion - The new art of making books http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/reese/classes/artistsbooks/Ulises%20Carrion,%20The%20New%20Art%20of%20Making%20Books.pdf
ref
8
ref
9
https://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/001-a-what-is-book-bookness-2016
ref
10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cq2OVD7dvA
ref
11
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/casestudies/housing/oxbridge/index.html
ref
12
https://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/articles/craft-and-healthcare/
ref 13
http://de-reform.blogspot.com/
ref 14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfOVMb5ecsk
the presentation given at Turn the Page 2019 can be found here -
https://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/ttp-2019-les-b-with-links
