Artists' Books Conference

SESSION ABSTRACTS

Artists' Books from the Brooklyn Perspective. Moderator: Deirdre Lawrence | schedule

This panel presents representatives from Brooklyn-based organizations that publish artists' books. Discussion will cover the creative process, design, publication, and distribution.

Bound to Please: The Influence of Institutional Collecting on Artists' Book Production. Moderator: Tony White | schedule

Barbara Bader. Modernism and the Order of Things: A Museography of Books by Artists

Bader will focus on books by artists produced in the 1960s and 70s and their institutional reception in the 1970s and 80s. This period represents at once the climax of modernism and the instating erosion of its hegemonic status.

She will argue that books by artists are a showcase example of how these two trends became manifest in the field of artistic production: while some consolidated the notion of the autonomous and self-referential work of art by transposing the modernist concern with the essentials of a particular medium to the book, others facilitated the understanding of immaterial "concepts" or "ideas" as art, whereby the book represents merely an interchangeable container and transmitter (for the information which is the art). As such, books by artists are also a point in case of how the assimilation of modernist "misfits" into flagship museums in the 1970s and 80s led to a fundamental reinterpretation of art produced outside the modernist paradigm. Based on three case studies of the collections at the MoMA Library in New York, the Tate Library in London, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, Bader will show how to date, the modernist order of things is effectively reinforced through organizational and taxonomic structures, collecting and exhibiting practices, curatorial cultures, and educational tools, as well as medial fittings and spatial representations. Bader will conclude by arguing that the category called "artist’s book" is a modernist phantasm.

Sandra Kroupa. Working Together: Artist and Curator Collaborations | top

Kroupa’s presentation will focus on the active role the curator can take in the creative process, encouraging work with content, excellent construction, and accessibility. She may quote artists who have used the University of Washington Libraries Book Arts Collectionto their advantage.

As a teaching collection, the Book Arts Collection is characterized by a broad range of materials representing an expansive and challenging definition of “book”. Acquisitions are tied to active academic programs and community use. Increasingly the focus of the Collection is theme-based, with more concentration on forming a tight fabric of related work rather than collecting all of the work of a particular artist. Funding constraints mean more and longer deliberations, with difficult choices. These four elements—diversity, service, concept, and expense—conspire to require a balance in forming an excellent collection.

Very few artists have the luxury of knowing an extensive combination of current and historic work or in having it in hand when most needed. The curator can bring together materials to elucidate a technical point, assist with marketing issues, and provide inspiration and perspective. By seeing work in progress, critiquing, and suggesting alternatives to an artist by showing other artists’ work, a curator can assist the artist in fulfilling their creative goals.

Clive Phillpot. From N.E.Thing Co. to Anything Goes | top

Phillpot will discuss his experience of the institutional acquisition of artist books, in England from 1970–1977 and in the US from 1977–1994, placed in the context of proselytizing for the medium in lectures, publications, and exhibitions. These activities will be compared with the work of other agencies engaged in the same arena, both libraries and organizations such as Printed Matter and Franklin Furnace. The parallel and increasing diversity of artists' work with the book form will be discussed, as well as the possible effect of differing institutional criteria for acquisition.

Cooking the Books: A Conversation with Non-Profit Art Publishers. Moderator: David Senior | schedule

Providing opportunities for artists to explore the book medium, these art publishers function as advocates for the genre and well as contributors to the medium. Panel participants will discuss the individual agendas of each organization in terms oftheir creative mission, the general process of realizing an artist project, and the practical demands of sustaining an organization over time.

Historical Methods and Materials in Contemporary Artists' Books. Moderator: Jennifer Tobias | schedule

Historian Geoffrey Batchen writes that "history has to be displaced from the rigor mortis of way back then and be seen for what it is: living, contentious, dangerous, part of the fabric of contemporary life." Professor Batchen will lead this dialog between photojournalist Susan Meiselas and (book) artist Joachim Schmid, addressing cross-disciplinary trends in the interpretation of ostensibly neutral primary sources.

Today both artists and historians are engaging new as well as traditional kinds of sources. While eyewitness accounts, existing archives, and even archaeology remain rich fodder, now crowd sourcing, data mining, and "fake news" represent new ways to engage the past.

For example, photojournalist Susan Meiselas' Kurdistan (1997) is a photographic history of a country that exists only as an ethnic group's aspiration. Using archival photographs, Meiselas shows how materials of the past are always already embedded in the present—and as such they imply a particular future.

Artist Joachim Schmid has long used artists' books to reinvent documentation. His ongoing series Bilder von der Straße (1982–) assembles photographs found on the street, unearthing repressed histories for public consumption and re-interpretation. His recent book Tausend Himmel (1995) is similarly intimate yet public: hypersensitive to noise, the artist photographed the sky whenever he heard a helicopter; the resulting document evokes today's "quiet" but potentially invasive surveillance.

This session will also indirectly address larger historiographic issues. First, in works such as these second-wave book artists are building upon the brief history of the artist's book itself, consciously or unconsciously looking back to conceptualism and documentary photography but also forward to the now and future of the genre. Meanwhile, contemporary historians now think more critically about their profession, interrogating "official" histories to learn from sources as diverse as topography and digital media.

As a whole, this conversation seeks to show how the products of historical investigation (whether artists' or academics' books) ever-destabilize comfortable preconceptions about narrative, journalism, and primary sources.

Keynote: Hans Ulrich Obrist in Conversation with Joseph Grigely and Rirkrit Tiravanija | schedule

The keynote features Hans-Ulrich Obrist in conversation with artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Joseph Grigely. Grigely's work involves collected and fragmented texts, such as notes and found documents. Linguistics, communication, and social transience are central themes, The artist is known for accumulated conversations in the form of handwritten notes, necessitated by his hearing loss in childhood. In addition to artists' books—such as his visual/verbal epic Blueberry Surprise (2006)—Grigely produces prints, video, performance, and installation. His work has been exhibited at the Venice and Whitney Biennials.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, known as "the artist who cooks," creates sites for social interaction. Besides spaces for cooking and serving meals, the artist has staged reading rooms and bicycled from conversation to conversation. As a trans-national artist, these intimate events represent larger cross-cultural interaction. His artists' books include Rirkrit Tiravanija's Soccer Half-Time Book of Cookery (2006). Recipient of the Hugo Boss Prize, Tiravanija has shown at MoMA and LACMA, among other venues.

Leading the conversation will be Hans-Ulrich Obrist, whose "art" constitutes prolific, published interviews with contemporary artists.

Multiple Ideas: Artists' Periodicals as Site for Collaboration and Distribution of Ideas. Moderator: David Senior | schedule

The artist-produced serial is an established precedent in the lineage of modern and contemporary art. As a mode of art production that seizes the modesty of the book form and its relative ease of production, artists have often relied on the journal format for the dissemination of ideas and as a workspace for collaborative activity. In this way, contemporary artists and designers working in the space of a journal or magazine tread a well-worn path. The functional space of the artist periodical has been continuously re-applied as an idea and also a medium through which ideas are presented and distributed in patterns that can short-circuit the conventional path of artist exhibition and representation.

As we survey the contemporary setting of this genre, there is a growing trend of young artists and designers incorporating this medium into their practice. Many have aligned in groups, establishing formats which may refer to a collective aesthetic, political exercise, or curatorial statement—even as simple advocacy for a low-cost art object.

In this panel, Emily Roysdon of the journal L.T.T.R., Matt Keegan of North Drive Press, David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey of the collaborative team Dexter Sinister and publishers of the journal DotDotDot, will discuss their individual projects and reflect on the collective processes incorporated into their publications.

Outside Looking In: Evaluating Artists' Books Criticism. Moderator: Tony White | schedule

Dr. Cornelia Lauf. Truth and Lies in Art and Books | top

The academic divisions of Art History and Studio Art are flip sides of a coin that should be retired from circulation. Artistic practice has always taken place symbiotically with the production of art historical knowledge. They should be fused, and seen as one and the same. The field of artists' books is perhaps the best indicator to the future path of art history. Many of the greatest contemporary artists are superb historians of their own work, and it is their long arm that lies behind many so-called monographs. This panel presentation centers on how and why artists and writers can shape art history through publications.

By studying iconic contemporary artists' books, publishing programs, and the aims of scholars who work with artists directly to create art historical contributions, I argue for a much wider understanding of artistic agency, and to urge against segregating the field of artists' books into a branch of study that is medium-defined. Books are a vehicle equal to any other manifestation of an artist's work, and it is the duty of writers, artists, curators and librarians to find interesting common spaces for their presentation. I will give examples ranging from the catalogues of Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Joseph Beuys to the books of Mark Dion, Maurizio Cattelan, Tobias Rehberger, and Christian Philip Mueller to map how books can defy classification, and thus naturally expand the language of their reception.

Changes in the status of artists' books are taking place precisely because of boundary-widening contributions, which infiltrate the current journals dedicated to their review, and are beginning to be manifest in phenomena ranging from the publication of museum imprints to the explosion of artists' books fairs. The heightened value of books, and the efforts of trade publishers to upgrade the status of book into object, has also contributed to their notoriety. This author argues against a strict community of artists' book critics, or over-emphasis on the vehicle of the book, and instead advocates looking at how books figure in overall artistic practice, and how their study, exhibition, and increased appearance is impacting the course of art.

Elisabeth Long. When Critical Discourse Isn’t Critical | top

As someone new in the field, both as an emerging artist and as a writer interested in exploring new forms of critical discourse, I have been surprised at the relatively small amount of critical discourse in the field and on the seeming lack of concern this arouses in many of my colleagues. But I find it difficult to comment on why this might be without first asking, What it is that I want out of criticism? What form should it take? What should it do for the field? Do I know it when I see it or, perhaps more significantly, do I know when I am not seeing it?

This last question especially helps us consider the existing body of writing on artists' books and examine the difference between writings that focus on practice and technique and those (less common) writings that are of a more critical and theoretical nature. Understanding why the field so often conflates these two forms of writing can help explain the current state of critical writing as well as point the way to new forms of discourse that might exhibit the rigor of theory while engaging with practitioners' interests and experience.

Buzz Spector. Are We Asking the Right Questions? | top

We have art criticism and literary criticism, but what do we call the critic who writes about artists' books? The "zone of activity," as Johanna Drucker so eloquently observes of the community of book artists, is riven with ideological and technical oppositions: offset versus letterpress, unique versus edition (or limited versus unlimited editioning), image/text versus picture/word, and the overarching taxonomical disputation over which among publications is an artists' book?

Let's take a look at some ways in which artists' books are engaged by critics from the visual arts and from literature. How does the artistic affiliation of the critic affect which qualities are judged in a subject artists' book? What is the role of reading per se in assessing the success or failure of a particular work? When (and why) does print method matter for our understanding of an artist/author’s intentions for a work?