After the book fair weekend had finished the exhibitions continued until 26th March. As well as organising a stall and the Imaginary Museum exhibition, I had also been selected for a video and performance art project by AMBruno. The project was called Book Act and explored the nature of the book as a time-based medium, as well the transformation of the book through performative acts.
AMBruno: Book Act
“AMBruno: Book Act was a new project by AMBruno, initiated by Sophie Loss, in which artist book-makers performed and embodied the concept or essence of their books through the medium of film or performance. The exhibition at The Tetley, Leeds, comprised the originating books and corresponding video work, with live performances on Sunday 9 March 2014.”
My contribution to the exhibition was the video and bookwork, ‘Mouth Scroll’, a long scroll of paper wrapped around a small armature for presentation, which was then inserted into the mouth and unscrolled to be ‘read’. The work recalls Carolee Schneeman’s ‘Interior Scroll’ in linking speech and writing to the body and the performative. The opportunity to ‘perform the book’ through the use of video also opened up the possibilities of exaggerating the limits of the book and the body through editing, creating the idea of a continuous scroll which alluded to magic tricks and religious texts.
Films and performances
Alongside my video was the work of 10 other artists listed as follows: Karen Blake (void-ances mown circle: earth), Manya Doñaque (endless lists), Kathryn Faulkner (Everything changes), Judy Goldhill (Contingencies of light : sun body), Jane Grisewood (Mourning Lines), Sharon Kivland (Nana Vit Sa Vie), Sophie Loss (Swinging Susan Red), Valérie Mary (Digression: Au bord de l’eau), Anne Rook (Apple Story), and Cally Trench and Philip Lee (Sixteen Dada Heads).
There were also live performances carried out in response to the video works, re-interpreting the artists’ books for a live audience setting. These works included: Anne Rook (Apple Story), Karen Babayan (Lolo’s Story – August 1941, Tehran, Iran), Jane Grisewood (Mourning Lines), Marco Calí (Mobius Strip), and Cally Trench and Philip Lee (Sixteen Dada Heads).
The book as a time-based medium
Similarly, the idea of time, performance and sequentiality is a theme often explored by artist book makers. This time-based and often narrative medium translates equally well into film, video and digital media. Despite the often cited fear of books becoming outmoded in response to the internet and digital, artists have used these techniques to create a mixture of online and offline experiences in response to the book.
The exhibition Pulp to Pixels, curated by Andrea Dezso, Steven Daiber and Meredith Broberg is an example of this, combining LEDs, monitors and ebooks alongside physical works in order to create a more interactive exhibition. As Jimi Jones notes in his review of the exhibition, the use of digital elements further enhances the performativity inherent in the book form. However, as an archivist he also raises the issue of digital preservation, as underlined by the inclusion of Paul Zelevansky’s ‘The Case for the Burial of Ancestors Book Two’. This book, produced in 1986, is a physical book which includes a floppy disc containing a computer game.
Digital preservation
Changing technologies highlights a large problem for artists working with these techniques, as well as for the collection and preservation of new media works by galleries and museums. However, increasingly artists are merging the physical and the digital, producing hybrid products that don’t rely solely on the use of particular technologies. This is illustrated in the case of the ‘Mouth Scroll’ video, where the book exists as a physical entity, and the video (although a work in its own right) has been produced to show the book being performed.
Further reading:
http://moca.org/openbook
http://www.tate.org.uk/about/projects/transforming-artist-books
http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/22735
