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From 5aThe hand-mechanical is, at least in my formulation of it, “monkish business.” These processes are quiet, disciplined, meditative, and are, to a large degree, hidden. Hidden not for secrecy, but for humility, to keep the process a process willingly undertaken, and to avoid the pitfall, the temptation, of performing the process. The process must, at all costs, be kept from becoming an image, from passing into a stable, transferable, and consumable representation. The process must repetitively dismantle and destroy any image of itself. The process must be thoroughly infused into the facts and factitiousness of the object as an object. The process must be a thing done, in time, a task completed and here, here, in the object that is in the reader’s hands.& into 5b, which will pull its predecessor to piecesThere are a few different things going on, a few different ideas circulating, in the paragraph above. We will get at them through the question of authenticity: “to avoid the pitfall, the temptation, of performing the process.” What is “performing” the process? I would define it as using a particular working method because of the meaning of that method, and that meaning may be more than, or just as important as, the actual results. A method performed is a method deployed because of its ability to act as a signifier in and of itself. The performer acts with a large degree of self-consciousness. The conventions of the method are taken up, examined, and are either left intact, or they are disturbed, tweaked, displaced, reworked.
What is the opposite of “performing” a process? A process not performed is a process simply done. It exists as an event, in time, mute (yet always legible, like everything, to the desire to read), in the same way that the sun rises, the wind blows. The process done is engaged with by the artist as a fact, conventionless, its meaning and role so stable that there is, essentially, no meaning. The thing done is a thing real, of this world. The thing done is an authentic act in a simulated discourse.
[Here, here, is where the reversal, the folding, the doubling, of terms begins. It is never a question of one or the other.]
The idea of authenticity is an idea that is politically hard to let go of. If the world is shaped by economic flows and the spectacles of corporate power, then “authenticity,” of an act, of an experience, or of a person, is one of the few anchors that we have. And authenticity is important, necessary even. But authenticity is not the same thing as innocence. Authenticity comes from a deep and sustained engagement with an idea, to the point where the idea becomes inseparable from the one who struggles with it. Every role, every medium, every sign, every thing, every meaning is, authentically and at its root, unstable and multiple. The “performer” accepts this instability and manipulates the codes and conventions of the role, to see what new material it can yield. The one who simply “does” believes thoroughly in the stable meaning of their role, of their method, or wants to believe thoroughly in the stable meaning of their role, of their method.The stability of signification is one of the oldest illusions. Feigned innocence will be the death of us all. And now the text gives way to a new formulation:The hand-mechanical is a deliberate manipulation of the codes and conventions of artistic practice.The photograph used in this post, in its singular form, is: Art Kane, Andy Warhol as Golden Boy, c. 1960, color photograph.
Yesterday I paid a visit to Special Collections at the Tutt Library here at Colorado College. We have a great little collection here, and it’s always fun and interesting to go up there and look at and page through things. Somehow during yesterday’s discussion the above photograph was produced from the archives. It is from c. 1920, and it shows Archer Butler Hulbert sitting in the Colorado Room in Coburn Library at Colorado College.Getting closer everyday.
The hand-mechanical is anti-spectacular and anti-heroic.A little over a month ago now Darren Wershler came to Colorado College as a visiting lecturer for the Press. (His visit was what led me to reading his book on typewriting and typewriters, The Iron Whim, mentioned in a previous “Machined” post.) Before his visit we had done a broadside with him, a broadside that relied on delamination, so the hand-mechanical was very much on my mind during his visit. On the second day of his visit, Darren did a workshop/discussion/lecture with a group of students (and a few faculty & staff), and in that discussion he mentioned Kenneth Goldsmith and his piece Day, where he re-produced a particular issue of The New York Times.I had always been under the impression that Goldsmith had physically retyped the newspaper. But according to Darren (a friend of Goldsmith’s) he did not. Goldsmith began by retyping the newspaper, and after doing that for a while, he decided to scan and OCR (optical character recognition, to convert the scanned image to malleable text) them. When Darren first disclosed that fact, I was, I admit, shocked. The mythology of that piece, and thus of Goldsmith’s work in general, was shattered. This was particularly disappointing because I had been thinking, for a while now, at least since the writing of the first iteration of The New Manifesto..., of Goldsmith’s “uncreative writing” practice as a writerly example/precedent for the hand-mechanical. This massive, interior deflation of mine occurred in about one second. Then the whole thing changed completely, because Darren when on to say something more, telling how Goldsmith thought that the act of typing the newspaper was too heroic, that it was the sort of thing that he could do in a gallery window, that the typing became a kind of performance that focused on his (heroic/nostalgic because of the typewriter) labor. But if he scanned them, then what he was doing wasn’t special, wasn’t heroic. He was replicating the way that written documents are converted to digital text every day, by the assembly line workers of the information economy.One could make the argument that Goldsmith was not concerned about the “heroism” of his typing, that what he was concerned with was the amount of time-energy that it was going to take, and that he switched methods because he got lazy. One could make that argument. But we’re not interested in that argument, because the idea of the implied heroism of a process, or of its display, has helped me to articulate what I think is an important aspect of the hand-mechanical:
The hand-mechanical is anti-spectacular and anti-heroic.(I did retype that sentence, instead of copying/pasting, but you would never know, nor should you ever believe me, here, here, in the realm of seamless replication.)The hand-mechanical is, at least in my formulation of it, “monkish business.” These processes are quiet, disciplined, meditative, and are, to a large degree, hidden. Hidden not for secrecy, but for humility, to keep the process a process willingly undertaken, and to avoid the pitfall, the temptation, of performing the process. The process must, at all costs, be kept from becoming an image, from passing into a stable, transferable, and consumable representation. The process must repetitively dismantle and destroy any image of itself. The process must be thoroughly infused into the facts and factitiousness of the object as an object. The process must be a thing done, in time, a task completed and here, here, in the object that is in the reader’s hands.
This is getting difficult, now, because the process must also be an image of itself unfolding, an image that is transferable to the reader, so that they can, potentially, enact it themselves, or at least understand it, or at least destroy it, themselves.
So the image must exist. But its meaning must be precise. How is precision in meaning possible in a system with multiple inputs and outputs? How is exactness in meaning justifiable in a system that is claimed to be open? How can I, writing about this process, try to simultaneously dissolve and solidify my position of authority? Is that the game of the hand-mechanical?
The catalog for the exhibition Poems & Pictures: A Renaissance in the Art of the Book: 1946-1981 is now available for purchase via Oak Knoll. The show was curated by Kyle Schlesinger, NewLights author, proprietor of Cuneiform Press and all-around fine human being. The catalog has tons of images and some great descriptions of the various presses represented in the show. I am honored to be a part of it.
The hand-mechanical is not (necessarily) obsessive. Describing a hand-mechanical practice or approach to a piece as “obsessive” means, of course, “obsessive compulsive,” means, of course, that the artist is a little crazy. And if the artist is “crazy” then their work (and they themselves) are some sort of aberration, a mistake, an anomaly, and while the hand-mechanical process can be enjoyed by the viewer, it is not something that they can understand, because, as the product of a mind that is a little off, there is nothing, essentially, for the viewer to understand. The process becomes a kind of spectacle for the viewer to consume.The label of obsessive immediately denies the idea that the artist came to the choice of using a hand-mechanical approach comfortably and rationally, and that that approach, that process, is integral to the concept of the piece. (Brief aside. Concept: The overall arrangement of the entire idea for the piece. Concept contains form, content, modes of production, and modes of reception. Concept is the arranged relationship between those four things. Content: what the piece is about. Could be personal, political, spiritual, self-referential, theoretical, etc. Content is one piece of the concept. These terms are way too confused in day-to-day art discourse. (There’s a day-to-day art discourse?)) A hand-mechanical process can be used rationally, should be used rationally and logically, to examine artistic (and other kinds, “non-artistic”) labor. What are the internal qualities of a hand-mechanical process, and how do they affect the other internal qualities of the piece, such as form and content? How can the process of making affect the process of reception/distribution, and vice versa? Can an intensive process have external qualities? Does it have something to do with the world? What are the parameters that determine whether labor is artistic? What kind of labor and laborers are author-ized? What kinds of labor and laborers are not allowed to share in the act of creation? What kind of labor is agency in action, and which kind of labor is a denial of agency?An activity that is undertaken by an artist because they are “compelled” to do so by a mental disorder is an activity whose critical capacity can be easily dismissed. (To be clear: the sentence before this is being critical of a particular critical attitude, and is not a dismissal of the work of the mentally ill as “non-artistic.” The hand-mechanical could potentially be used as a means to unpack how and why the work of the mentally ill is valued differently than the work of “normal” artists.) And so the label of “obsessive” denies the hand-mechanical, and the artist who uses it, of their agency, when in fact a hand-mechanical approach often is a seriously considered, self-effacing, critical application of that agency to the idea of artistic labor.
Working Method“[The] process of [the stripe paintings was] simple-minded…. But it was a lot more intense; just doing those things, painting those stripes one after another is quite enervating and numbing. It’s physically fairly exacting…I couldn’t keep it up. The physical concentration…it was just a different kind of way of being a different kind of process. But the process was everything then, as it is now.”
“[The] process of [the stripe paintings was] simple-minded…. But it was a lot more intense; just doing those things, painting those stripes one after another is quite enervating and numbing. It’s physically fairly exacting…I couldn’t keep it up. The physical concentration…it was just a different kind of way of being a different kind of process. But the process was everything then, as it is now.”
“[The] process of [the stripe paintings was] simple-minded…. But it was a lot more intense; just doing those things, painting those stripes one after another is quite enervating and numbing. It’s physically fairly exacting…I couldn’t keep it up. The physical concentration…it was just a different kind of way of being a different kind of process. But the process was everything then, as it is now.”
“[The] process of [the stripe paintings was] simple-minded…. But it was a lot more intense; just doing those things, painting those stripes one after another is quite enervating and numbing. It’s physically fairly exacting…I couldn’t keep it up. The physical concentration…it was just a different kind of way of being a different kind of process. But the process was everything then, as it is now.”
“[The] process of [the stripe paintings was] simple-minded…. But it was a lot more intense; just doing those things, painting those stripes one after another is quite enervating and numbing. It’s physically fairly exacting…I couldn’t keep it up. The physical concentration…it was just a different kind of way of being a different kind of process. But the process was everything then, as it is now.”
“[The] process of [the stripe paintings was] simple-minded…. But it was a lot more intense; just doing those things, painting those stripes one after another is quite enervating and numbing. It’s physically fairly exacting…I couldn’t keep it up. The physical concentration…it was just a different kind of way of being a different kind of process. But the process was everything then, as it is now.”
Quote from Frank Stella. Retyped from: Caroline A. Jones, Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 128. The quote originally came from an interview with Stella that was conducted by Caroline A. Jones. The brackets were put in by Jones.
My first experience with a hand-mechanical piece/process occurred during the first semester of the last year of my undergraduate education. It was at the beginning of that school year, and I hadn’t figured out quite what to do book-wise, so I was experimenting with approaches to writing that could be thought of as visual art (I was at an art school, majoring in Painting, though I had given up actually painting after I made my first book at the end of my sophomore year. But painting returns, slowly, changed by the book, in the hand-mechanical).I had a typewriter, my mother’s from college. I’m not sure what brand it was, but it was manual, with an almost completely dead ribbon that I was not interested in changing. The typewriter had become, in a weird way, the symbol of the kind of work that I was interested in at that time, partly maybe because of the nostalgia for writing, but mostly because the machine stood between writing and printing. It was like the letterpress, but portable, easy, informal. The letters left definite impressions on the page, which I tried to utilize in some pieces. I drew with it mostly, doing my “real” writing on a computer. The typewriter became, for me, at that time, less about the product of writing (text) and more about the process of writing (typing).
And so a piece developed that at the time seemed isolated, removed from the bookwork/publishing I was doing, but now I see that in it were latent ideas about the conventions of art and writing, of printing particularly, and how those conventions could be manipulated to draw the viewer’s attention to them. I didn’t really understand it that way at that time—I simply had an idea that on an intuitive level, “worked.”The piece was this: I sat at the typewriter and typed the phrase “I am a good man.” over and over again, once per line, in a single column down the page. This was repeated for 100 pages. I don’t remember now if I allowed typos to remain or if I retyped the pages with mistakes. The paper was plain, white computer paper, probably from some large office supply store. The type itself, because of the old ribbon in the machine, was light and uneven, and the impression was visible, so the sheets were obviously written with a typewriter. I numbered and signed them, 1/100, 2/100, 3/100… just like an artist would sign and number a print. And it ended with an “alternative” distribution model—I stood in the senior painting studio hallway (during an open studio tour) holding the stack and gave one to each person who walked by, and said to them, as seriously as I could, “I am a good man.” I remained in that spot until I had given every sheet away.Thinking back, it’s the first piece I made where the process of making was the driver of the overall concept (not content) of the piece. And process was connected to that content (the obsessive, devotional act), to the form (the machine composition, the aesthetics of the letters), and to the reception/distribution (the act of distribution turns the private devotion to a public insistence, the thing done becomes a thing real-ized, author-ized). A book of dispersed pages, all insisting the same thing, all exactly the same, each one totally unique. Not painting, not drawing, not printmaking, not writing, not performance, not completely.
Once Buzz Spector and I were talking about concrete poetry, and he put forth the idea that concrete poetry had ended, not because it was conceptually played out or over, but because it became, over time and as technology advanced, too easy to do, to make. The streamlining of the process of visual composition pulled it away from the writing, and made it design after the fact, and the after-the-fact-ness of the visual identity and arrangement of the text is exactly what concrete poetry denied. If we accept that visual manipulation of text is now a cultural norm, that both the process of doing it and the results aren’t particularly productive (in a subversive, discourse cracking kind of way), then one question we could ask is: Can we write a new, contemporary concrete poetry that functions not on visuality alone (form) but on production and reception as well? Can we begin processes of writing that will tear at the very discourse that produces those processes? What can we do, tied to these machines?
The other day I began reading Darren Wershler(-Henry)’s The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting. I haven’t gotten very far yet, but it’s an interesting book, about the history of the typewriter and typewriting, about how our relationship with the machine has changed the way that we represent and think about writing, as well as the way that we actually write. Or wrote, because now we are in the midst of a related, yet new, discourse on writing and writing machines.One of the main reasons that I am interested in this book particularly (besides my general interest in Wershler’s work and these kinds of discursive histories more generally) is that typewriting provided me, many years ago, with the seeds of the idea for using processes that I now call hand-mechanical. A hand-mechanical process is any method that stands or slides between the rigidity of machine control and the variation of the human hand. I tend to think these techniques mostly in terms of printing and bookmaking, and indeed, print(mak)ing naturally carries these kind of soft, repetitive processes at its core. Some examples: setting lead type by hand, inking & wiping litho stones and etching plates, pulling sheets of paper from the vat, pulling a squeegee across a screen to force the ink through the stencil. All of these things, done over and over again, each time the same, each time a little different. The hand-mechanical is repetitive.
Drawing and painting can be hand-mechanical as well. Drawing/painting through stencils, or with guides, or tape, or a pre-determined composition (Frank Stella, Sol Lewitt, Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse, coloring books, paint by number, Andy Warhol). Knitting and crocheting are hand-mechanical, forming a larger structure through a network of small movements. The hand-mechanical tends toward compositions that are planned out beforehand.
Writing is always somehow bound to the physical processes that enact it, and thus writing is always, to a degree, hand-mechanical. The very act of typing or writing out by hand the same 26 letters in different forms and combinations, according to pre-determined conventions (whether the author’s own or the culture’s) is a hand-mechanical activity. To write is to engage the hand, the body, with multiple technologies. When we are composing as we write (like I am now) the physicality of the activity moves to the background of our consciousness. When we are not composing, but still writing (like when we have to retype a handwritten document, or in the “uncreative writing” of Kenneth Goldsmith) the physicality of the activity becomes foregrounded, and we see ourselves as bound to the machine and the activity that it produces. The hand-mechanical occurs when a human being and a machine create as an assemblage, as a larger, creaking, organic and deliriously imperfect, machine. 
Almost everything we do, now, in a techno-logical society, is to a certain degree, hand-mechanical. As long as our activities are tied to the movement of our bodies, we are caught in the machine. Naming, locating, and outlining the hand-mechanical as an approach to creative practice will let us begin to see how that machine works.
Yesterday afternoon my students were working on setting type for our class project. One of them had made the arrangement pictured above so that he didn’t have to hold on to the job stick while he was setting. Too perfect. The merging the of old and new media. Thanks to Peter Elliott for the innovation.
Hitting the road today so that I can be at the Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair this weekend. I am an exhibitor at the fair, and this time I will have some books and broadsides from the Press at Colorado College as well as NewLights Press. It should be a good fair (and related events) some come on down if you're in the neighborhood. The Description:
Pyramid Atlantic Art Center presents the 11th Biennial Book Arts Fair and Conference, the preeminent book arts event on the east coast. Now in its third decade, the fair will showcase a dynamic array of innovative book art, limited edition prints, fine papers, and specialty tools along with a rich program of notable speakers, demonstrations, and special exhibitions. This three day event will connect international artists, scholars, collectors, publishers, and art lovers. Serving to inform and inspire, the Book Arts Fair and Conference is a celebration of the printed form and the book as art.
The 2010 Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair
Friday Nov. 5 - Sunday Nov. 7
Silver Spring Civic Building
Silver Spring, MD
Their website has a full schedule of times for the fair and other events.
Hey Everybody: The Baltimore Print Studios will be having their Grand Opening party this weekend. If you're in the area, it is definitely something that you should check out. This is a truly wonderful and momentous thing for Baltimore, and will be a living and ongoing testament to the independent, DIY ethic. And the art community in Baltimore is entirely DIY, which is just one of the reasons why it is such a good city to live and make artwork in.The info:Sunday, October 17th 3-7 PM18 W. North Ave (btw Charles in Maryland (where I used to live!))Baltimore, MDhttp://baltimoreprintstudios.com/
Despite the closeness of your nose to the sheet of paper in front of you there is a blossoming of risk in this activity. There is time, piling up on the desk in front of you, falling in flickering pieces to the floor around your chair. Each mark that you make betrays your mortality. The corporeal hovers and the spiritual falls in flickering pieces to the floor. There is time. There is language, climbing into your chest. There is history, permeating and filling the air above your head. There is time, flickering in the spaces between your back and the floor. A silence that no one will ever hear. A light that climbs into your chest. This is a place, this is an activity, in which risk blossoms, swallows. This is time, the floor will always be there.
On Monday, 9/19, at 12 AM Cairo time, the Understanding Campaign new website and Kickstarter fundraiser was launched. These crazy kids trying to change the world with a grassroots, DIY campaign. The audacity of the thing. Courage and boldness in a world delirious with fear. The audacity of the thing. To see some human beings on their feet.Earlier on this blog I posted some cryptic pictures of my “Arabic lessons.” The pictures were of paper bags and other scraps scrawled with an alien-looking writing that may or may not have been Arabic. All of that writing was from genuine, if informal, Arabic lessons, from my friend Kamal.Kamal ran the deli/café down the street from Hello!Lucky, and it was convenient for me to stop there for coffee and breakfast in the morning (after my first place, which was, coincidentally, run by Kamal’s brother, closed). I am a creature of habit. I started going in there every day. I started going for lunch sometimes too. After awhile Kamal started to talk to me and give me things: donuts, fruit, pastries. At some point he decided that he was going to start teaching me a little bit of Arabic, and that was when our friendship really began. I went there twice a day, every day, mainly to see Kamal.Kamal is a polyglot. He is from Jerusalem. He is fluent in (at least) Arabic, English, and Spanish. Most likely Hebrew too. And I also heard him speak, at various times, French, German, and Chinese. He loved to address his customers and friends in their native languages. And it made people happy, made them feel more comfortable in a strange, stressful city.I learned a few words of Arabic, which I will not attempt to transliterate here. I learned about Arabic culture, about growing up in Jerusalem. I learned about Islam, I learned about San Francisco. & of course everything in the world always coalesces into a print project. When I became involved with the Al-Mutanabbi project (to which I was particularly attuned to because of my friendship with both Kamal and Justin Sirois, because of a family member serving in Iraq) it became very clear very quickly that we had to include some Arabic text, both on the broadside itself and in the colophon on the back. If these things were going to Baghdad (which they are) we had to be sure that the people there could read them. And so Kamal helped to make sure that our translation was good and didn’t have any typos. And believe me, when one is setting type, letter by letter with the glyphs palette, in an alphabet where the letters change forms depending on where they are in the word, in an alphabet where the meaning of words is subtly changed by the addition of marks around the letters, in an alphabet where I kept getting lost in the beauty of the shapes of the letters, there were typos. Plenty of them. I think that we went through 4 versions. But we got it. And for the first time, after 10 years of printing, I printed something in another language.The Arabic language, Arabic culture, is not an abstract thing to read about, to see on TV. It is lived, every day, beautifully, generously. I understand that now, thanks to my friends, thanks to the audacity of kindness. & I am changed, & the world is changed. The boldness of the thing, to see human beings on their feet. Join the campaign here.
Just a little re-post, just a reminder that tomorrow, Saturday, 9/18, the Press at Colorado College will be hosting PRINT HERE NOW: Colorado College Broadside Bonanza. The official description:PRINT HERE NOW: Colorado College Broadside BonanzaWorkshop & Open HouseSaturday, September 181 PM – 7 PMThe Press at Colorado College, Taylor HallFree and open to the publicIn the summer of 2010 Levi’s began a program of opening up temporary art studios devoted to different disciplines in cities across the US. The first one of those was in San Francisco, and that studio was focused on screenprinting and letterpress. The studio closed in August but the adventure is not over, because three of the intrepid letterpress printers that were involved with the workshop are now driving across the country to deliver a printing press to a community print studio in Braddock, PA, and they are stopping for a day here at Colorado College. They will be setting up shop in our letterpress studio, the Press at CC, to host a day of informal conversation about the trip, the experience of the Levi’s studio, and their personal experiences as young print artists in the Bay Area and beyond, as well as orchestrating an improvisational print project that anyone and everyone is invited to participate in. So come on over, meet Rocket Caleshu, Taylor Reid, and Tom Smith, see the Press at CC, and learn about letterpress printing by reaching in there and getting your hands dirty. The event will begin at 1 PM with a short presentation, and then will continue as an open studio until 7 PM.And the links:The official Colorado College page, with a map.The blog of the Levi’s workshop.I know that this event is going to be a lot of fun, and if you’re curious about the Press at CC and what we do here, and/or are wondering how you can be involved, this is an excellent opportunity to check things out, meet some other interested and interesting people, and, most importantly, to have a good time making a real thing.
I got my hands on a digital camera for a brief time yesterday, so I thought that I’d take some pictures of the new studio here in Colorado to share with everyone.A view of the pressroom from one corner. You can see 4 of the 5 presses (not counting the proofing press) that we have. The one you can’t see is an 8” x 12” Chandler & Price platen press.
The bindery and classroom space.
The type room, which I will soon start calling the composing room, as soon as I clear out some space for composing to happen.
And now some close-ups. Back in the press room:Galleys and furniture!
Ink!
In the bindery, copies and pieces of the current Press publication The Burden of the Beholder: Dave Armstrong and the Art of Collage, which will be released soon.
A broadside about our type collection.
And type, type, and more type. And there’s more too, not pictured here, because it’s not in this room yet.
& THESE MACHINESAnd the presses:The Vandercook 219 AB.
The Asbern, a smallish German made cylinder press. It has some really great features that I will detail in a later post.
The Vandercook Universal 3.
The (giant) Vandercook Universal 4.
It’s nice to be home.
I’m not sure if anyone in Colorado Springs is reading this blog yet, but if you are you should come to Colorado College on Saturday, 9/18 for PRINT HERE NOW: Colorado College Broadside Bonanza. The official description:PRINT HERE NOW: Colorado College Broadside BonanzaWorkshop & Open HouseSaturday, September 181 PM – 7 PMThe Press at Colorado College, Taylor HallFree and open to the publicIn the summer of 2010 Levi’s began a program of opening up temporary art studios devoted to different disciplines in cities across the US. The first one of those was in San Francisco, and that studio was focused on screenprinting and letterpress. The studio closed in August but the adventure is not over, because three of the intrepid letterpress printers that were involved with the workshop are now driving across the country to deliver a printing press to a community print studio in Braddock, PA, and they are stopping for a day here at Colorado College. They will be setting up shop in our letterpress studio, the Press at CC, to host a day of informal conversation about the trip, the experience of the Levi’s studio, and their personal experiences as young print artists in the Bay Area and beyond, as well as orchestrating an improvisational print project that anyone and everyone is invited to participate in. So come on over, meet Rocket Caleshu, Taylor Reid, and Tom Smith, see the Press at CC, and learn about letterpress printing by reaching in there and getting your hands dirty. The event will begin at 1 PM with a short presentation, and then will continue as an open studio until 7 PM.And the links:The official Colorado College page, with a map.The blog of the Levi’s workshop.I know that this event is going to be a lot of fun, and if you’re curious about the Press at CC and what we do here, and/or are wondering how you can be involved, this is an excellent opportunity to check things out, meet some other interested and interesting people, and, most importantly, to have a good time making a real thing.
Here in this new place, new information, new paths on old lines of inquiry emerge. An entire subject, the history of the book, that could be applied imaginatively to a productive practice of making and distributing books today. We can look at old formations, old and current ideas about them, and use those to construct new possibilities for books, for makers of books, for readers of books. […] The task of the historian is, then, to reconstruct the variations that differentiate the “readable space” (the texts in their material and discursive forms) and those which govern the circumstances of their “actualization” (the readings seen as concrete practices and interpretive procedures).
[…] Hence the attention placed upon the manner in which (to use the terms of Paul Ricoeur) the encounter between “the world of the text” and “the world of the reader” functions (Time and Narrative, 3:6). To reconstruct in its historical dimensions this process of the “actualization” of texts above all requires us to realize that their meaning depends upon the forms through which they are received and appropriated by their readers (or listeners). Readers, in fact, never confront abstract, idealized texts detached from any materiality. They hold in their hands or perceive objects and forms whose structures and modalities govern their reading or hearing, and consequently the possible comprehension of the text read or heard. In contrast to a purely semantic definition of the text, which characterizes not only structuralist criticism in all its variants but also literary theories concerned with reconstructing the modes of reception of works, it is necessary to maintain that forms produce meaning, and that even a fixed text is invested with new meaning and being (statut) when the physical form through which it is presented for interpretation changes. […]
I would add that “a fixed text is” also “invested with new meaning and being” when its mode of distribution/reception changes. It’s not just the physical form in which the text is manifested, but the way in which that form is transmitted to the reader, both on the local level of their individual experience and also in the culture at large. The physical form and the mode of distribution are intimately connected, and I think it is important to parse out the differences between (and work with the relationships between) the qualities of the immediate form (size, paper, typography, weight, design), the modes of production of that form (Printed or electronic, offset, mimeo, letterpress, photocopy, handwritten? Limited edition or mass produced? Unique?) and the manner in which it is distributed (In print: Through libraries? Sold? Given away? At fairs? At readings? Among immediate friends? In bookstores? Big or small? As a whole or serial? Electronic: an e-reader text, specific to a certain machine, or a raw text file? Sold? Given away? Downloadable or passed on physical media? Floating or tied to a specific website or series of websites? As a whole or serial?)[…] We must also realize that reading is always a practice embodied in gestures, spaces, and habits. Far from the phenomenology of reading, which erases the concrete modality of the act of reading and characterizes it by its effects, postulated as universals, history of modes of reading must identify the specific dispositions that distinguish communities of readers and traditions of reading. […]
People in different cultures, in different communities, at different times, read differently. I think that it is important for makers of books to study these prior/different modes of reading, identify current modes of reading (and the kinds of text that they are attached to), and imagine new ones that could potentially be actualized through the making of books. And this might not have to be just working with the paths and procedures that an individual reader might use. Is it possible to create new social situations of reading? (Example: the different readings that we experience versus reading a book on our own, reading it as part of a book club, or reading it for a class.) How does or can the act of reading affect the being-in-the-world of the reader(s)?The sections transcribed above are from: Roger Chartier, “Laborers and Voyagers: From the Text to the Reader,” reprinted in The Book History Reader, David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, eds., ( London: Routledge, 2002), 48.
A hand and surprise. We are caught in this dream again. In this dream again, interspersed and beating, beading, like that, on that lip. Huddled, pale light sketched and held in pale hands. This room is orange and green. It is not ours. Aware of a flickering space. Aware of a hand, now gone, now interspersed, this room is green. This room is gray in this light. This room is gray in this space, hanging, diffuse, permeable. Unable to breathe. Pink like that and pale. This room is not where we are.Once again drawn in. Pale light sketched and held in pale hands. It must be morning, it must be spilling over and cold. In it we are interspersed.
& a reader of this blog, or some of my other book-things might notice that I am obsessed with beginnings:It was he that told me I’d begun all wrong, that I should have begun differently. He must be right. I began at the beginning, like an old ballocks, can you imagine that? Here’s my beginning. Because they’re keeping it apparently. I took a lot of trouble with it. Here it is. It gave me a lot of trouble. It was the beginning, do you understand? Whereas now it’s nearly the end. Is what I do now any better? I don’t know. That’s beside the point. Here’s my beginning. It must mean something, or they wouldn’t keep it. Here it is...
& also with non-beginnings in that whenever I want to emphasize a beginning I begin with an ampersand, partly as a nod to the decorated initials of illuminated manuscripts but mostly as way to stress the idea that every beginning is only provisional, imaginary, mythological, because everything, always is part of, subject to, the great continuity.I am meditating on beginnings here, now, at the end of the day, in the bleeding of night into day, because I find myself slowly making my way into yet another. Another new life that will hopefully be a refined continuation of the old life—better, always better, a little bit anyways, if we are willing to work for it.& of course beginning again, and doing something over again, or reading something over again, can yield attention to new things. In the case transcribed below (taken from Karl Young’s essay “Notation and the Art of Reading.” Reprinted in A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections about the Book and Writing, Steven Clay and Jerome Rothenberg, eds. (New York: Granary Books, 2000), 47-8.) I can once again see how this new beginning is another link in the great and vibrant history that we are all a part of:[…] A large portion of the audience for contemporary poetry gets involved in publishing the work of other poets at some time in their lives, and this becomes a further means of participation. They may act only as a magazine’s assistant editor for a short time, or they may edit their own magazines, or run their own presses. For some, this becomes a way of life. Poet-publishers tend to read manuscripts carefully and critically in determining whether or not to publish them, and they put a great deal of effort into the means of producing those they decide to publish. This type of activity tightens the bonds between poets, opens channels of communication with a larger audience, gives the editors a sense of proportion in terms of nature, size, and scope of their audience, and, again, can encourage the intimacy with the text latent in copying. Publishing requires commitment and encourages the poet-publisher to be textual analyst, literary critic, and graphic designer. Working with layout, type, perhaps presswork and binding, has suggested new kinds of notation and presentation and has inspired work that would otherwise not have been done. The method of production a poet-publisher uses often effects or reflects her or his work: offset publishers often write differently from letterpress printers. The mimeo format of d.a. levy publications continues to be an integral part of the outlaw urgency of the work, even though levy’s been dead for many years. The austere design and impeccable typography of Elizabeth Press Books underscores the restrained precision of the poets published in that series. The limited press runs and personalized distribution of most poetry publishers creates a sense of intimacy and fellowship not unlike that created by the circulation of manuscripts in Donne’s time. […]
& in the section after that he actually goes on to talk about artists’ books, but let’s hold back a little, but let’s save a little, maybe for tomorrow, maybe for our next false beginning, true & brilliant in the brilliant light.
Everything seems so quiet lately. The move is happening this week. Posts will resume on a more regular and frequent basis once I am settled in to my new mountain fortress.
The Center for Book Arts in New York has posted some photographs from the opening of the Poems & Pictures exhibition. There are also some pictures from the opening from the concurrent show, I will cut thrU: Pochoirs, Carvings, and Other Cuttings. The image above shows part of a collaborative piece by Ron Padgett and the great George Schneeman. You can see the photos here.
Tomorrow night, Tuesday the 20th at 6 PM, I will be presenting as part of the Printers’ Night at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Here’s the official description from the SFCB website:OPEN PRINT STUDIO: PRINTER'S NIGHTS
Join us for a new SFCB tradition, Printer's Night, a bi-monthly evening of community and camaraderie among printers (and aspiring printers!). Bring your current project, your stories of challenges and triumphs, and your love of letterpress and printmaking. The evening will include a short presentation by this month's featured artist, Aaron Cohick, proprietor of NewLights Press and printer extraordinaire. Bring yourselves, your projects, your questions, and your enthusiasm!
I will be showing some of the more recent books, and concentrating on the current, in-process project—Kyle Schlesinger’s What You Will. I am about 96 runs deep on that now, past the halfway point, almost to the close of the first and most involved section of printing.This will, sadly, be my last event at the SFCB, at least for awhile. I would love to see you all before I go.Printer's Night at San Francisco Center for the BookTuesday, July 20th6 PM - 8 PM300 De Haro St., San Franciscowww.sfcb.org
I am tremendously excited and honored to announce that I have recently accepted the position of “Printer of the Press at Colorado College,” in Colorado Springs.The Press at Colorado College was founded by Jim Trissel in 1977, and has operated more or less continuously since then, publishing fine print editions of literary works (books & broadsides) and artists’ books, and teaching students the arts of typography, printing, and binding, both through those projects and in conjunction with their regular classes. And so my job as Printer of the Press (love that title) will be part teaching (working with faculty to develop and facilitate coursework that will be done in the letterpress studio) and part making/publishing (developing, designing, printing, and binding books). I can not really express how thrilled I am to be chosen for a position where I will be paid to do my two favorite things—make books, and teach/help others to make books!I know that this will be a challenging job—but the ones worth doing always are. I am looking to this opportunity as a chance to broaden my engagement with printing, books, and publishing, with the pedagogical and social issues that surround those activities. The NewLights Press will continue to operate (and will actually have more time to do that) and I am hoping to ramp up production more than ever. The future is bright, gleaming, breathless.I am sad to leave the Bay Area though. Everyone here has been extremely welcoming, kind, and supportive. Thank you all again. I intend to remain as much a member of the community here as I can, even from afar. Being here, being a commercial printer, being a teacher—all of these things have been rewarding, enriching experiences, all of them bolstered by the wonderful community.The Big Move will happen in August. Until then, production on various projects and postings here will continue, as I can. Thanks for reading.
Phillip Guston & Bill Berkson, Negative, 1973 The official text:The Center for Book Arts (NY) is pleased to announce the Summer 2010 exhibition, Poems & Pictures: A Renaissance in the Art of the Book (1946-1981). This exhibition, organized by Kyle Schlesinger, examines the fundamental relationships between: form and content; visual and language arts; seeing and reading; and the miraculous occasions when these relationships blur. The major presses featured in this exhibition were established between 1945 and 1980, and some are still in operation. Together they share in the common objective of bringing bold new writing into print where commercial presses fear to tread, and to do so with flair, imagination, and intelligence.
The exhibition features over 60 books produced between 1946 and 1981, as well as paintings, collages, periodicals, and ephemera. Poets, artists, and collaborators include Wallace Berman, Joe Brainard, Robert Creeley, Jim Dine, Johanna Drucker, Philip Guston, Joanne Kyger, Emily McVarish, Karen Randall, Larry Rivers, George Schneeman, and many more.
I am tremendously excited and deeply honored that the NewLights Press is a part of this exhibition, as one example of a contemporary press whose work is linked to the tradition(s) initiated by the historical examples shown. The three new NewLights broadsides (Yau, Sirois, and Evenson) will be on display.
After the show is finished in NYC, it will travel to the Museum of Printing History in Houston, Texas.OPENING TONIGHT! July 7, 6 – 8 PMJuly 7 – September 11The Center for Book Arts28 West 27th StreetNew York, NY 10001www.centerforbookarts.org
Registration is now open for the 2011 Codex Bookfair and Symposium. This year’s theme is “Borders & Collaborations,” and so the focus (as seen in the presenters listed below) will be on international presses and books. Here’s the info from the website:The third biennial CODEX International Book Fair and Symposium will take place February 6-9, 2011 on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. We are gathering together a congress of the world’s finest private presses, book artisans, artists, curators, collectors and scholars in the spirit of an Old West rendezvous. The Symposium and Bookfair will provide an opportunity to see and be seen in a relaxed setting. The best and most current work of a truly international group of artists and artisans will be on display. Participants from all the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand have responded. The San Francisco Bay Area’s libraries, book-arts & bibliophilic organizations host an abundance of events, exhibits and receptions during the week. Finally, the following weekend, will be the 44th annual California International Antiquarian Book Fair, certainly one of the biggest and best in the world. This will be an historic “bookweek” in the grand scale of the San Francisco tradition!
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS :Paul van Capelleveen. Curator Modern Collections, Museum Meermanno, The Hague. The Contemporary Dutch Private Press.Richard Ovenden, FRSA, FSA. Keeper of Special Collections and Associate Director, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Book Arts in the 21st Century Research Library.Juan Nicanor Pascoe. Printer. Fine Printing in Mexico: Taller Martin Pescador, MichoacánMartha Hellion. Artist & Independent Curator. Perspectives: The Artist Book in Latin and South America.PRESENTATIONS BY ARTISTS & PRESSES:Jan & Crispin Elsted: The Barbarian Press, Mission, British ColumbiaMarina & Mikhail Karasik: M.K. Publishers, St Petersburg, RussiaBarbara & Markus Fahrner: Fahrner & Fahrner, Vancouver/Frankfurt/MainCaroline Saltzwedel: Hirundo Press, Hamburg, GermanyThe image at the top was designed by Russell Maret. That same image is used for the Codex postcards and some really nice letterpress printed posters.My first year at Codex was the last one, in 2009. I had a great time. If you are at all considering buying a table, don’t hesitate too long, because they will sell out. And you may not make your money back, but showing your work at the fair brings in more than just money—it will connect you with an international community. & that is worth a tremendous amount. Even if tabling at Codex is not in your future, it’s worth coming anyway, both for the symposium and the fair. You will not see more fine press/artists’ books from all over the world in any other single venue (at least in this country). Mark your calendars. We will all look forward to seeing you there.
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