Agora hosted 3 workshop on Artists’ books to explain that they are works of art just realised in the form of a book. They can be handmade works, unique, produced in small editions and as a sculptural method for storing and sharing information. Stephane Mallarme’s famously said that “Everything, in the world, exists to end up in a book”, has today in a sense been fully realised, to the point at which the object that the term “book” once neatly delineated no longer remains so tightly constrained. Each artist that took part in the workshop produced their own Artists’ books that were shown in the Nacht und Nable festival here in Berlin.
Travis Wood
This work depicts a story where so much is said, but also at the same time nothing is said. Allowing the reader to fill the gaps with their own interpretation. There is one main subtext in Cookes’ artists book – ‘Can I Trust My Senses?’ this main ‘’idea of the book as idea’’- the self-reflectivity in artists books takes these investigations of the book into a dialogue in process the creation of this visual book. This image that Cooke paints is the ideal artists existence, the clichés of literature, film and adolescent dreaming.
Petra Valdimarsdóttir / Factory Living
On this work Petra studies a series of photographs that she took while working in China, each image will fold down into a compact, informative pamphlet. So the conventions of the bookness becomes a subject matter, turning the pages becomes physical, a sculptural element instead of an incidental activity. Valdimarsdóttir artist books are reproducing a record of experience and information while in the same moment the books are serving as documents themselves.
Shuah Brotherton / Untitled
Shuah Brotherton looks more at our physical relationship with content, a self-conscious function in relation to the bound parameters of the book form, whereby the reading is created by the reader in a physical act of imprinting.
Deeqa Ismail
‘‘This book only shows what I’ve forgotten’’. This book is about the absence, rather than the presence of record. The experience is always elsewhere, and the text, form and material of work are a thing in themselves rather than a symbol or substitute for the world.
Caique Tizzi / Bia Paiva
The work “If Value, Then Copy” from Caique Tizzi and Bia Paiva, discusses the issues of originality, authorship and copyright. The work is an entire appropriation itself. The photo has been taken from an installation at the 12th Biennale Istanbul 2011, printed out and copied. The title of the piece “belongs” to the Danish collective Superflex.
“I have finally finished my greatest work and I am proud to say that not a single idea in it is mine.” Confucius
Pedro Jardim / Museum of news 2/11/2011
Jardim’s piece “Museum of news” is a built up image from issues that he has been documenting . By their genuine simulacra production of an archive that seems to present the viewer with raw materials of a bystander experience with the use of colour and pixilation that has you questioning what it is that you actually looking at. What is the real story behind the image?
André Uerba / Nothing is mine
Uerba’s book is a poetic investigation of the book metaphor- making books is a fundamental way of processing his experience into a symbolic form.
“The day you’ve passed away I saw fireworks from the window. My legs were shaking and my body lost his weight. Suddenly everything’s gone so silent. I was still there watching but suddenly nothing was mine.”
Gabrielle Lockwood Estrin / Journey II
Gabrielle Lockwood Estrin presents a series of woodcut prints taking the form of a concertina, entitled Journey II. It explores the possibilities created through printing in a series and through it’s ‘book’ form it hints at a narrative, however leaving this deliberately ambiguous. It encapsulates ideas of loss, entrapment and time passing.
Antonio Sobral / Non-missing books
Not all artists’ books are issued in photo-offset reproduction on neutral paper with standard inexpensive formats. An artist’s book can be unique work like that of Antonio Sobral a highly limited edition, a direct expression of aesthetics ideas in a book form. He plays on the concept of the diary with this Dada collage forms demonstrated in his work.
Abigail Liparoto / Sit down, drink wine & touch this book
The book demands you engage with it, inviting humor in the dialogue, of what is art? Why you I make it? Offering you wine in exchange for attention and a moment to read enjoy playful images of artists and their issues. The book is instinctively embracing low brow art and all its joys.
Dylan Aiello / Bucket of Blood
Story Lines # 1
A choose ur own ending buch. The first in a series of 10 best selling rivetting stories. Use the objects and instructions to find your way through the story. Crucible, Quaglia, and Mary Devine hanging out in the worst bar in town. How will you find your way to peace?
Sacha Molnar / This is you
This auratic object has an aura about which generates a mystique, a sense of charged presence.‘This is you’ seems to bear meaning just in existing; the appearance of this book is unlike any other, its form iconographs material.
This book is aware of its complex factors from subject matter to unique production.
Performance by Miriam Welk, Shuah Brotherton and Andreas Steffens
Wror
Wror is a self-created word. It is an attempt to describe the sound you hear and feel, when you have high pressure on your ears. And an attempt to describe the way you see, when your eyes are unable to focus. It is a tautological attempt to define a state of being in between. Being stuffed in the border between outside and inside. The wideness of the compressed perception leaves you feeling numb and deluded.