TEXT-OBJECT-PROCESS: “NEGATIVE SPACE IS THE NEW BLACK”*

* A phrase coined by my friend Peter Bugg.

And the last step is the most fun, the peeling away, subtractive shaping of the text. This seems like it would be a dangerous, nerve-wracking thing to do, but the paper is incredibly resilient (it’s Somerset Book Heavyweight) and the work is slow enough where it is actually hard to make mistakes (and mistakes are easy enough to fix on a partially destroyed object anyway, and part of this is about all of the “mistakes” made).



I want to figure out way to take advantage of the way that the partially peeled pieces look. It’s a question of legibility (is the partially covered text legible?) and how to structure the action (hand-mechanical, anti-compositional). Perhaps for next year’s broadsides.

Doing things like this always leaves behind interesting detritus:



Yes, I keep them. No, I don’t know what to do with them yet. But one thing leads to another….

THREE DAY LABOR WEEKEND

Fig. 09.09.03
The substance of the life these days.

The image above shows the detritus from the main activity of this past weekend: a pile of letters removed from the stencils for the new broadsides. Hey, Aaron, I thought those broadsides were supposed to come out today. Well, you’re obviously mistaken, because my last post clearly says that they will come out on Wednesday.

But seriously, I want to do this right, and I am already late for work, and I refuse to hurry and do a half-assed job. So tomorrow. Really.

THE FOLLOWING PREVIEW HAS BEEN APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES

The first

THREE
THREE
THREE

BROADSIDES
BROADSIDES
BROADSIDES

on

TUESDAY
TUESDAY
TUESDAY

ART, ECONOMICS, ACADEMIA (a digression’s digression)

Fig. 09.09.01
Unknown Photographer, The UNOVIS Delegation to the First All-Russian Conference of Teachers and Students of Art, 1920.

The text and photographs in this post were taken from the highly-recommended book: T.J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1999). 264-5, 247.

[…] The most evocative of all UNOVIS documents [fig. 09.09.01] shows them setting off by train in June 1920 to a Conference of Teachers and Art Students in the capital. Malevich holds center stage. He grasps a Suprematist plate under his left arm and makes a clenched-fist salute with the other. One of his followers (or is it his wife?) puts a restraining hand on his sleeve. Black Squares are much in evidence: pinned up on the carriage door, worn in his lapel by a man in the foreground, stuck in the impish Iudin’s hair (?) top left, and, by the looks of it, sewn onto El Lissitzky’s sleeve—El Lissitzky is the character in the soft felt hat and light-colored jacket, directly under Malevich’s fist. They are a wild-looking bunch. […]

Fig. 09.09.02
El Lissitzky, cover for Booklet of Vitebsk Committee for the Struggle against Unemployment, lithograph on paper, 1919.

ART, ECONOMICS, ACADEMIA (a digression)

After some discussions on Monday night I’ve been thinking more about the theoretical academic job that I will someday get, that I do not currently have. I do not believe that an academic job is a kiss of death for the artist. I have known some great professors that also make really great studio work, and who keep their studio careers moving forward even though they have or had solid academic positions. Not coincidentally, these professors have influenced me a great deal (they have also been unfailingly kind, supportive, and generous with their time—I hope one day to return the favor to my students) and have helped me to see what I love about teaching and what I want from a job that would allow me to do so.

But I am very specialized as far as my academic qualifications go. So it would have to be the right job, in the right place. And there is not what exactly a deluge of book arts-critical theory-art history-independent publishing jobs out there. So for now I am content to labor in the “real world.”

Many of my friends from graduate school that finished at around the same time I did are spreading across the country and moving into teaching positions. I am jealous. Summer vacation would be amazing. A clearer picture of where all this (the press, not this post) is heading would also be helpful. It all sounds nice, but the most important thing is to continue to move, to make, critically, crucially. Make, making it count.

Sometimes when I am working on something for NewLights, doing something ridiculous like cutting 12 pt letters or peeling paper or fingerprinting, I get this strange feeling where I feel a little bit detached from myself, like I can see myself doing whatever it is I am doing clearly, and something about the absurdity and the intensity of the activity strikes me and I think I’m doing it. I’m doing what I said I was going to do. I’m doing what it takes. All of those dreams and plans are here, right here, in this activity. This is where it is at.

FOUND POEM

HEALS

THE ORIGINAL

DRYNESS

ON THE ECONOMICS OF THE SMALL PRESS

As the returns dwindle, the sources accumulate. Below, more on the economics of this crazy “biz.” Originally from Charles Bernstein’s “Provisional Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation,” Arizona Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1 (Spring 1995); reprinted in Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips, From a Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980, (New York: Granary Books and The New York Public Library, 1998), 259.

Poet Charles Bernstein on the economics of small press literary publishing, using Sun & Moon Press as an example:

The printing bill runs from $2600 to $4000 as you go from 1000 to 2000 copies. [Douglas] Messerli estimates the cost of editing a 100-page poetry book at $300: this covers all the work between the press receiving a manuscript and sending it to a designer (including any copyediting and proofreading that may be necessary as well as preparation of front and back matter and cover copy). Typesetting is already a rarity for presses like Sun & Moon, with authors expected to provide computer disks wherever possible. Formatting these disks (converting them into type following specifications of the book designer) can cost anywhere from $300 to $1000, one of those variable labor costs of small press operations. The book designer will charge about $500. The cover will cost an additional $100 for photographic reproduction or permission fees or both. Publicity costs must also be accounted for, even if, as at Sun & Moon, no advertising is involved. Messerli estimates publicity costs at $1500, which covers the cost of something like 100 free copies distributed to reviewers, postage and packing, mailings and catalog pages, etc. The total cash outlay here, then, for 2000 copies is around $6800. (For the sake of this discussion, overhead costs—rent, salaries, office equipment, phone bills, etc.—are not included; such costs typically are estimated at about 30 percent more than the cost of production.

If all goes well, Sun & Moon will sell out of its print run in two years. Let’s say Sun & Moon prints 2000 copies of the book and charges $10 retail; let’s also say all of the books were sold. That makes a gross of $20,000. Subtract from this a 50 percent wholesale discount (that is, most bookstores will pay $5 for the book) and that leaves $10,000. Subtract from this the 24 percent that Sun & Moon’s distributor takes (and remember that most small presses are too small to secure a distributor with a professional sales force). That leaves $7600. Now last, but not to be totally forgotten, especially since I am a Sun & Moon author, the poet’s royalty; typically no advance would be paid and the author would receive 10 percent of this last figure or $760. That leaves [a] $6840 return to the publisher on a cash cost of about $7000. As James Sherry noted years ago in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: a piece of paper with nothing on it has a definite economic value. If you print a poem on it, this value is lost. Here we have a vivid example of what Georges Bataille has called general economy, an economy of loss rather than accumulation. Poetry is a negative—or let’s just say poetic—economy.

There is also an interesting interview with Adam Robinson of Publishing Genius talking about the success of one of his press’s newest books, Light Boxes, a novel by Shane Jones (a true small press success story: first, Spike Jonze bought the movie rights to the book, and then Penguin picked it up for re-publication). What is success for a small press anyway?

ALLOWING THE NEXT BOOK (part 2)

The other morning when I was walking to work, I had a revelation—one of those revelations that is simply the voicing of something that you have known for a long time. I realized that the NewLights Press will never make enough money to be my primary source of income. This thought left me with two distinct feelings: disappointment and liberation. (The “disappointment” part was yesterday’s post, below. Today is liberation!)

Liberation: So how is the idea of being chained to another job to keep the NewLights Press going liberating? It’s simple, it’s the easiest thing in the world, it’s the old idea that without concern for financial gain, the artist (or company or whatever) is able to take risks and (hopefully) produce extraordinary work that they wouldn’t be able to if they had to worry about sales. For reference, see the life story of just about every avant-garde artist from the first half of the 20th Century. (I believe that good, innovative work, if done with deep commitment and regularly shown, will find an audience. The problem lies in lining up that audience with a market. They are not always the same thing.)

So if there’s another source of money, the press is free to do what it needs to do. But there is the counter-idea that the pressure of the market (of paying the rent) forces an artist to make work that is relevant, that is in a real dialogue with the contemporary world (or art world). There is some truth to that, if even through the negative example of those artist/professors that have been able to spend their time making completely uninteresting work because their academic position keeps them safe. So the question is, how does one find a balance between risk and security in order to keep the work vital? It is possible, I have seen it done. It comes back to that idea of making work with a deep commitment. It comes back to that intense, horizon-bound desire to be in conversation with, and to know more about, the world.

It’s the easiest thing in the world.

ALLOWING THE NEXT BOOK (part 1)

The other morning when I was walking to work, I had a revelation—one of those revelations that is simply the voicing of something that you have known for a long time. I realized that the NewLights Press will never make enough money to be my primary source of income. This thought left me with two distinct feelings: disappointment and liberation.

Disappointment: I would love to be able to run the press full-time. In order to do that I would need my own studio space, equipment, and enough of an income to pay for all that, plus the next book, plus my basic living expenses. In order for the press to generate that much money there would have to be at least one major change in my approach—NewLights would either have to start putting out mass-produced (“real”) books, or I would have to start charging a great deal more money for the books than I currently do. (Right now my prices are based vaguely on materials cost, the rough cost for the next book, and what price I think the “market” will bear. The time spent on the books is a minute consideration.) Most people tell me that the books are underpriced. When I tell people that The Drownable Species costs $400, they say that it’s worth it, and then they don’t buy one. I don’t blame them—my current audience cannot pay that kind of price for books. Also, prices that high make me (morally) nervous. I couldn’t afford them either.

So does NewLights start making mass-produced books? Can I legitimately separate the book (and myself) from the means of production? Do I pour my energy into editing, design, and marketing, as opposed to all of those plus production? Do small presses even make that much money off of their mass-produced books anyway?

Could I potentially subsidize the smaller, cheaper works by selling large, unique books for inflated fine art prices? That seems to me to be the only viable way to make the press, in its current incarnation, to approach funding itself completely.

So I am back to accepting that I will always have to have another job in order to keep the books coming. The focus, always, is on the next book.

Hmmm.

TO BE CONTINUED!

BROADSIDE TEASER

These are some of the in-process photos of the new broadside by Justin Sirois. It's a piece from his new book MLKNG SCKLS (which I highly recommend, by the way).

SAN FRANCISCO ZINE FEST!!! THIS WEEKEND!!!

Saturday, August 22 from 11:00am – 6:00pm
Sunday, August 23 from 11:00am – 6:00pm
SF County Fair Building
(formerly Hall of Flowers) 9th Ave. at Lincoln Way (in Golden Gate Park)

The SF Zine Fest is a FREE annual two-day conference for independent and underground publishing. Exhibitors come from all over the West Coast, and while the focus is on zines, all walks of DIY life are represented — comics, arts and crafts, literary presses, and more. SF Zine Fest was founded in 2002 by Jenn of Starfiend Distro.

SF Zine Fest 2009 is brought to you by the hard-working folks at Family Style, Miromi, NewLights Press, Monkey & Seal, and many other wonderful volunteers.

There is also a benefit after-party on Saturday night with:

Jeepster (Sacramento)
Fleshtone (Portland)
Hyperpotamus (Tokyo/Madrid)
Toby Dick

and an animation screening by Wu of Ghost Family

DJ Neil Martinson (SMiLE!) spins psych, pop, soul, glam, disco, bubblegum, laserboogie, etc.
All the proceeds benefit the SFZF, and will help us cover this year's costs and prepare for next year, our 10th Anniversary! Please come out, have a beer with your favorite creators, and have a great time!

Saturday, August 22 9 p.m onwards at:
Amnesia
853 Valencia St between 19th and 20th
$7 donation - Proceeds benefit SFZF!

Click here for more info about both events.

MORE BROADSIDES!

The NewLights Press is pleased to announce that there are two more broadsides on deck for this year, with poems by:

KC Trommer
Brenda Iijima

That makes a definite five broadsides for this year’s subscription. Images of the first three will be posted in one week, and they will be officially available for order.

LINK. AGAIN!

Also, what looks like a great project documenting Black Mountain College:

http://www.bmcproject.org/BMC%20PROJECT/mission.htm

LINK!

This looks really really interesting:

http://theglitch.info/

A new experimental journal.

EVERYTHING THAT CONVERGES

The Ubuweb is one of my favorite sites on the Internet. It is an incredible archive of hard to find material, ranging from the early days of modernism and the avant-garde to contemporary work. And it’s free. And it’s right there. And it’s always growing.

I was trolling through some old favorites the other day when I looked at this excerpt from Beckett’s Watt. Not only is the cruel, cold, absolutely resigned, repetitive writing of this passage beautiful in that special way that only Beckett’s work is, but the typography and composition (letters + negative space) of this web version is as well. I assume that it is a fortuitous accident (as much typography is). Or perhaps not an accident, but an incredible convergence.

CYNICAL CONCEPTUAL PRACTICE #4: FORM VS. FUNCTION

Cynical Conceptual Practice #4: Form vs. Function
Found objects
2007

OLD, NEW, ALWAYS

From Steve Edwards’s chapter “‘Profane Illumination:’ Photography and Photomontage in the USSR and Germany,” in Art of the Avant-Gardes, ed. Steve Edwards and Paul Wood (London: The Open University/Yale University Press, 2004), 408-409:

[…] Rodchenko’s extreme viewpoints can be seen as a version of the Russian Formalist theory of “defamiliarization” or “making strange” […]. The Formalists were literary and linguistic scholars, working before and immediately after the First World War, who argued that everyday perception was dull, static and habitual. “Our perception has withered away,” suggested the prominent Formalist Viktor Shklovsky, “what has remained is mere recognition.” The Formalists advocated literary techniques that sliced through routinized views of the world. The principle way that they thought this could be achieved was by “foregrounding the device,” or calling attention to the construction of the literary text as a way of increasing the reader’s attention. By focusing on the techniques and procedures employed to make works of art, the Formalists believed, the world could be made to appear strange again, heightening consciousness of the artwork. Prewar Formalism was largely apolitical, but after the Russian Revolution the theorists associated with LEF gave these ideas a left-wing turn, arguing that atrophied perception was a consequence of bourgeois consciousness. Capitalist ideology, they claimed, mystified perception, because it was based on mere appearances rather than on the actual relationships that structured society: bourgeois perception was deemed individualist, static and formal, rather than dynamic, contradictory and collective. According to the left avant-garde, the first condition for any critical art was to draw attention to its own status as representation or ideology: art was to be used to reveal the illusion, not to conceal it. This politicized version of Formalism came to be known as the “formalist-sociological method.” Rodchenko’s unusual points of view should be seen in the light of this theory. His extreme angles of vision draw attention to the role of the camera in making images and invite the viewer to consider new ways of looking at everyday life. These unusual perspectives were designed to pull viewers up short, causing them to reflect on what they were seeing. Elizar Langman, a photographic colleague of Rodchenko, summed up this perspective, claiming his own tilted horizons were intended to “irritate the viewer with something, to kick him out of a dull standard.” […]

[emphasis added]

MCBA PRIZE FINAL FINALIST ANNOUNCED

And the winner is:

Veronika Schäpers!

To see images of the books and read her statement go here.

Congratulations to Veronika and all of the finalists!

EXPERIMENTAL BROADSIDES

Pictured above is the design for the first broadside, with text from MLKNG SCKLS, by Justin Sirois.

Not really.

This is an image of an unfinished design, unfinished because I moved on to a different idea, to make, I think, a series of objects that will be far stranger in the end. But I still like that way this one looks, so I thought I’d share.

ON THE SIDE

As part of the publishing escalation leading up to and through the 10th year of the NewLights Press, we will be releasing a series of broadsides. Of course this is the NewLights Press and we can’t let anything be, so these won’t be like traditional broadsides (i.e. text paired with “appropriate” image/illustration). We will be trying to make them into pieces that are text-image-process total objects, in the concrete sense, in the Beckett sense (“total object, complete with missing parts”). Some sort of variable editions produced through a combination of letterpress printing, collage, delamination, and mixed media drawing. Some sort of terrible mess. Late last night after a few hours of labor on the design for the first piece, I think I hit upon the structural idiom, as least for the first three. It is (as one may have guessed) strange, minimal, and somewhat unsettling. To provide a clue, the main typeface is 48 pt. Arial Black. I am curious to see how these will come out…

The broadside series will be ongoing, released sporadically in editions of 25 (that number might increase based on interest) or so, probably about $40-$50 apiece (they involve a fair amount of handwork). They will be distributed through this website, either as individual pieces when they are ready, or, you can buy a 12 month subscription for $100, which will get you all of the broadsides (three guaranteed, almost certainly more, and probably some other fun stuff, that price includes shipping too) that are produced within that 12 month period. Purchase through PayPal at the right, or contact me directly at newlightspress[at]gmail[dot]com.

The authors for the first three broadsides are:

Brian Evenson
Justin Sirois
John Yau

More will follow as I hear from other folks. Interested in submitting? Let me know (at email provided above).

BOOK No. 1

Book No. 1
Delaminated paper, collage, graphite, and gesso on handmade paper
16” x 20”
2006

Yes, I made the paper. Yes, I know how to make paper. Yes, I thoroughly enjoy making paper and I also thoroughly enjoy drawing and printing on the paper that I make.

SCHEMA No. 4

Schema No. 4
Delaminated paper, ink wash, gesso, and finger/hand prints on handmade paper
15” x 19”
2006

This drawing was made by using a combination of the two techniques described previously.

SCHEMA No. 1

Schema No. 1
Graphite on handmade paper
15” x 19”
2006

This drawing’s composition was determined by combination of a medieval page design schema and the tracing of the piece torn off from the corner in 24 random positions. The resulting lines were then filled in with graphite, the only rule being that two areas of the same value could not share a border. I am still trying to figure out how to make an interesting book using this idea.

MONKISH BUSINESS

Monkish Business
Delaminated paper with hand prints
11” x 30”
Variable edition of 25
2006

“Delamination” is a process of cutting part of the way into a sheet of paper and peeling away about half of the layers, leaving a very shallow relief and a view of the paper’s interior. This print was made by stenciling the text in the middle, and then having my left hand (non-dominant for me) inked up while I was tracing that text with a Xacto knife.

MAKING PHOTOPOLYMER PLATES FOR FUN & PROFIT

I will be the regular instructor for the Photopolymer Platemaking Lab at the San Francisco Center for the Book in the Fall (I am filling in for the summer). I was working on my handout this morning, and here’s a taste of the excitement to come:

THE DEMANDS OF ON-DEMAND, part 3a

The other day I decided to put my money where my electronic mouth is and buy some POD books by Clifton Meador. I am interested in these for several reasons: 1) I’ve only ever seen reproductions of Meador’s work, 2) he is an offset-photo book artist that has jumped right into POD, so I’m interested to see what he’s done with it, and 3) I will finally be able to closely inspect one of these books. There will be a full report later.

THE DEMANDS OF ON-DEMAND, part 3

(A slight digression)

At some point/place (I can’t remember exactly where or when) in the discussion of POD books among the artists’ books community, someone (I can’t remember who) brought up using POD as a teaching tool. This teacher said that they used POD in order to teach their students about how to organize content in a book. The idea being that if the student does not have to worry about how they are going to physically make the book, then they can focus on the content. It is the reverse of when students first learn a binding structure by putting together a blank book.

Good idea. I will totally use it at some point (when I have that theoretical teaching position).

Of course, the problem with using POD as a way to manipulate “pure” content (even in an educational context) is that it operates under the assumption that the technology is somehow completely transparent and neutral, that it does not, or can not, or should not, bring up questions of form (the same could be said of the mass-produced, offset artists’ book).

But there is rarely a structured assignment that can adequately tackle all possible issues in artmaking.

It’s finally affordable for an artist to make a photographic book in a small edition. That changes things. I know several photo-based artists who have already taken advantage of this. I think it finally opens the door for NewLights to do some more photographically-oriented work, also it may allow an opportunity to engineer some books in order to produce an edition of altered books…

THE DEMANDS OF ON-DEMAND, part 2

How can the NewLights Press use Print-On-Demand (POD) books as a primary mode of production?

My first thought was to use POD to reproduce and distribute existing, unique/small edition books. This has obvious advantages, and it is hard for me to square my desire to get the books to as many readers as possible with the form-content-production-reception integrity of the individual pieces. To cite a specific example: recently a friend brought up the idea of a “trade” version of The Drownable Species, because it is a book that many people are interested in, but few can afford. And I am very tempted to do a POD book of it (Though I would have to ask Brian, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, because he’s the nicest guy in the world. Coincidentally, he has a new book of short stories out.) But the problem with REproducing The Drownable Species is that it was produced through a physical disruption of a normally straight reproductive process (the pouring of water onto still-wet inkjet prints). The inherent unpredictability of that process combined with the disorienting effect it has on the reader are central to the book. (They are not essential to the story, but the thing is, as always, is to make the book so that it becomes more than just a “nice” printing/binding of a text.)

A reproduction of the book would mimic those effects. The idea would still be conveyed. Ah, there’s the problem: “the idea would still be conveyed.” The process of re-production would transform the book from a concrete (primary, actual) object into a representational (secondary, symbolic, simulacral) object. The real thing made into a sign for the real thing.

But it would be great to get the book out to more readers. A trade edition might even help sell more copies of the limited edition. It would be nice to sell more books, but this is not about money. At some point in the future, the story will be published in a collection of Brian’s stories. So the story will always be available…

TO BE CONTINUED!

THE DEMANDS OF ON-DEMAND, part 1A

The artist Clifton Meador (who I have quoted in earlier posts) has some books on the POD site Lulu.com, where you can order them directly.

THE DEMANDS OF ON-DEMAND

Yesterday I was thinking about Print-On-Demand, about making some books using Print-On-Demand (POD). While I have no problem using the technology and relinquishing the handmade-ness of the books (for some projects, not all), there are, I think, some important questions to consider before going into this (questions that I had ignored in my initial rush of excitement about putting a lot of books out, which is a main source of excitement and despair these days). Or maybe one important idea, coined by Philip Zimmerman:

“Production NOT Reproduction”

A very important idea when one is an artist using re-productive technology as a primary productive process. (The relationship between production and reproduction requires more investigation) So the question is how can the NewLights Press use POD books as a primary mode of production?

TO BE CONTINUED!

BUY THIS BOOK

I did, finally:

http://www.publishinggenius.com/msdetails.html