WORKSHOP: Artist’s Book
I attended a recent workshop which was focused on the artist book as an art form. It is ‘not a book’ but a publication, where the emphasis is on content and form and the medium in and of itself. An artist book does not belong to the literary infrastructure. It is not a book about art, but art itself. Like film or performance, an artist book is an ideal medium to illustrate a sequence of moments, where space and time collude and collide.
Making a definitive appearance in the Fluxus movement, the artist book was an early example of conceptual art. Considered as a means to promote living art, it became a component of the anti-art movement as a creative way to make sure art reaches the people. George Maciunas commands in his Fluxus Manifesto, ‘promote NON-ART REALITY, to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals’. Performance and publication were common methods considered non-hierarchical in the quest to dematerialise the art object. Often political, Fluxus integrated ‘life into art through the use of found events, sounds, and materials, thereby bringing about social and economic change in the art world’.
The artist book is a way of presenting art as a series of pages that depict space time continuum. Ed Ruscha was a painter and a designer but published many books which focused on a theme played out through pages. I was privileged to experience a number of his publications, held in the UCA Farnham Archives. Included in the archive is Royal Road Test, Various Small Fires, Nine Swimming Pools and 26 Gasoline Stations.
I have a previous interest in Ruscha’s publications as my current work which documents the empty field on a daily basis (ongoing) lends itself not only to stop-motion film but to an artist book. I was particularly interested in Nine Swimming Pools, as included in the publication were many blank pages. This is something I had been considering as a method to illustrate the days where no image is captured. I am experimenting with blank spaces in a film currently in progress which uses the daily images in a sequential format. To leave a blank page in a publication of the same sequential images to illustrate the absent days was an intriguing approach, but I questioned whether this was effective for the viewer. The discovery that Ruscha had done exactly that was very exciting and enabled me to view the blank page objectively. It has given me the confidence to persevere with the idea, considering the blank page as a vital component to the narrative.
