Dead Ends
This blog post is about coming to a perceived ‘dead end’ in the research and then finding out that it’s not a dead end at all, its working out what happens next and making plans on how to do ‘what happens next’!
Before leaving for Amsterdam, I contacted staff at the Stedelijk Museum library for help in sourcing material to help me find out about Other Books and So, an artist-run bookshop in Amsterdam organised by Ulises Carrión.
Maartje and Michiel were helpful and emailed to say they’d ordered a book for me ‘Other Books and So’ and that there was another location in Amsterdam to view archives.
Arriving at the library, the book was a catalogue of an exhibition. In essence, it presented Carrión’s essay/manifesto ‘The New Art of Making Books’ published in Kontexts in 1975.
With no time to visit the City Archives on this trip, I felt I’d arrived at a dead end. I need more time in Amsterdam if I want to develop this research further through the Museum.
I made a decision to conduct desk top research at home instead. Also that I need to come to the Museum, better equipped and with sufficient time (and then some) to follow up leads. This is a whole other research trip!
One thing I’ve learned through this trip is to allow more time for activities. While, another week would have been helpful to follow up leads; City Archives, Rotterdam and Uttrecht artist run spaces (Ott’s suggestion), yet another week would have allowed me to get mucky and make page-work with the stuff collected.
I needed to come to Amsterdam to realise why I wanted to come here in the first place, if that makes sense?
Writing this post has helped me realise that the trip is the beginning of wondering:
1. How do I organise a shop space again?
2. How does Counter work?
3. Where do I send/take my page-work – and how?
4. Do I need to come back to Amsterdam?
And then wondering:
How do I do all that?
Back home, I’ve found out stuff about ‘Other Books and So’ through desktop research, there’s another post on this.
The research is about finding models of artist run bookshops to help me realise my own.
