In Process..

The definition of Book according to OXFORD concise dictionary: Is a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together. The conventional idea of book is a form that has a specific kind of physicality and function.The aspect of value production is the crucial role that these forms of book play as they have been understood as memoirs of historical times. So, there is something which is understood as the bookness of the book in the sense of the way in which it should be made, read etc.

Through mentioning some of the basic instances with regard to the conventional ideas about books, my attempt here is to introduce the process of the current international residency that largely contextualizes within the peripheries of Bookmaking. It is important to understand here that the basic conceptual premise of this residency is to move away from the conventional modes of approaching the structure of Book. It is to re-think about the book itself, including the processes of how it is made, looked, understood and read. But some of the fragmented aspects that have been associated with books historically definitely re-occur within the creative methodologies of this residency. As the practitioners come from different cultural/disciplinary backgrounds it paves a path for newer explorations and enquires with regard to space, medium and approach. In a discursive space such as this, the Ideas are shared, thoughts are re-worked and attempts are re-interpreted.

The studio space transforms into a Page erasing and re-working itself. A paper roll gets molded into a large landscape starting from the sea to an urban architectural scene. Multiple varieties of objects like mirrors, bird cages come together at the work place to decipher meanings. Thus this residency is the space where all these diversities come together and stand as a site of fragmented assemblage. As these attempts are in process I would look forward to see their re-configurations in the coming days.

Presentation Time..

Meghna Bisineer

Logaine Navascues

Meghna Bisineer and Aditya Pande

Sebastian Corodova

Sachin G Sebastian

Presenting Presentations

As part of the current International residency on Bookmaking at Khoj, all the artists have made presentations introducing their prior engagements and concerns. This was an attempt to share their works and conceptual motivations behind them. It was also an initiation towards a dialogue about the interests and thoughts of the artists with regard to discursive theme of the residency.

My attempt here is to briefly outline some of the observations with regard to the practices of the artists and understand their significance within the discursive field. To start with, Sebastian Corodova’s work situates itself within the larger context of urban dynamics. The visuality of the urban architectural spaces becomes a crucial trope in some body of his work. While dealing with the relationship of the Text and the Image, often text inspired by the image, Sebastian explores the maximum possibilities of this overlap and finds an innovative language. The black and white drawings portray everyday scenes of public places and activities with specific reference to his cultural instances. Touching upon the issues of mobility and functionality, some of his works Working Toilet and Working Chair deal with objects like chair and toilet stand. By shifting the space in which these operate and making them as movable/mobile objects, Sebastian re-defines the existing understandings about these objects. These attempts are not mere criticisms of the urban set up’s but also an attempt of play with the aspect of space and function of the object.

Sebastian Corodova

Sebastian Corodova.

Meghna Bisineer’s works are largely based on drawing; they exist as layers of forms and images put together speaking the language of their own. Her animations can be understood as extension to this, as they are drawings that move into different directions, set-ups and contexts, inventing and re-interpreting themselves. It is interesting the way in which Meghna deals with the aspect of process, rather than merely concentrating on the final product, she documents every stage of the process the work has passed through and in that sense each stage of the work can be understood as a creation in itself.

Meghna Bisineer, The Drawing Film, Documentation of 'The Grid'. Part of a Collaborative Drawing Project with Jane Cheadle

Meghna Bisineer ,'String man' , wall animation using string, grease, powder paints

Aditya Pande creates images that are abstract and figurative at the same time. His works adapt a curious method of developing the forms with mixture of lines created through the software followed by working and re-working, through drawing; painting over them. This attempt thus, creates a camouflage not just of the techniques but more importantly of the images that are represented. The technological mediation brings forth a different kind of visuality that situates his works in a distinct trajectory.

Aditya Pande,Who's love is it Anyway?, Ink and Enamel on Paper, 180X236cms, 2008

Aditya Pande, Champa and Snowy 2008, Ink and enmal on paper 93" x 71" (236 x 180 cms)

Logaine Navascues’s works operate with a dominant conceptual undertone to the aspect of love, understanding the nuances and translations of this aspect in various contexts, Logaine tries to archive some of the documents such as love letters in various formats. These stand as memoirs of a history, not of the individual person but with regard to the larger concept of love itself. For Instance, her work Epistola & Diastole is an archive in itself that has the shape of a book and has the architecture of the Box in which every drawer /partition have images, letters, books that in some way or the other articulate the aspect of love. Thus logaine through her engagements deals with aspect of love on one hand and re-thinks the structure of book on the other.

Logaine Navascues

Logaine Navascues, Epistola & Diastole

Sachin George Sebastian is truly a paper engineer as he calls himself. Having a vast understanding about paper, Sachin creates an image with the process of cutting/molding it. Many of his works adapt the genre of pop-ups saying that ‘there should be something magical inside that any one can’t easily imagine’. For Instance His two pop-up books A Christmas Dream and the other The Diwali Night portray an unusual narrative that is being narrated by a character called Toto, the popping up images with the help of the text, surface the ambience of the subject before us. In one of other works he clubbed the images that are usually printed on the back side of different Indian currency notes, basically to look at what kind of implications all these produce when they come together.

Sachin G Sabastian , India through Currency ,Pop-up work

Sachin G Sabastian, From the pop - up book A Diwali Night

Sukanya Ghosh works cuts across mediums such as painting, found images, photo-montage, etching and video and often appear as overlaps. They have as Sukanya says ‘A bit of everything in them’ trying to construct a diversity of approaches within a singular attempt. Her works are also memoirs of differed cultural locations as she had conceived her work in different geographic locations including India. These cross-cultural affiliations bring together a diversity of visualities in the form of a fragmented assemblage.

The above observations were some of the primary reflections/understandings with regard to the works of the artists. My engagement with them and their works as a critic in this residency will attempt to take a nuanced way in the coming days extending my enquiries to much more critical concerns.

Artist's Books : A Historical Overview

This overview is an attempt to briefly map the historical transformations of the artist’s book as a genre with regard to its emergence and role in the discursive field. A part from mapping the historical shifts that has happened in the genre of artist’s bookmaking, I would be also looking at the critical instances the genre of artist’s book brought in, to the domain of art practice.

Many of the scholars who have worked on the history of artist’s books consider William Blake as the protagonist to this practice. One of the significant innovations the initial form of artist’s book had brought in, is the intersection of text/image. Works of Blake can be considered as good example for this, as many of his books have an integration of image and text to the extent possible. For him this practice was a strategy to gain certain amount of independence in the process of bookmaking, publishing and distributing.

Later to this in around 1890’s in France with the role of a Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard the artist’s books reappear but in different context. This attempt was in a historical time where the art market created by the bourgeoisie was dominant. Thelivre d'artiste as it was named, was an initiation towards showcasing the works of artists through the form of a book. But unlike the Blake’s attempt to overlap the image and the text, livre d'artiste adapted a form where there is a clearly marked distinction between the image and the text, sometime even having the original prints made by the artists illustrating a classical text. Though these books were meant for only specific audience and were not accessible at large because of its cost, some of the critics considered it as a radical attempt that has brought together the Image and the text and gave text the same prominence as to the image.

The key historical shift in the genre of artist’s books was at the time when many of the artists/political thinkers/activists joined together and published their avant-garde ideas in the forms of Pamphlets, Posters and Magazines. Though these were not books in the actual form, they were efforts to initiate radical ways of engaging with the idea of book itself. This radical move was later exemplified by the Italian Futurists in 1909 by publishing “futurist manifesto” on the front cover of French Daily newspaper Le Figaro. It resulted international disparage for Filippo Marinetti who was the key person behind it. Taking this as an event of rupture, and using the fame it has brought to him, Marinetti travelled to all over Europe spreading his radical ideas and made some of the practitioners to involve in book-making and pamphleteering. One of the strong ideological shifts that this movement has brought in is that, it has adapted methods of expression that have large distribution and also strongly negated the objectification process by the art gallery systems.

Later to Italy, artist’s bookmaking took a notable shift in Russia when the futurism as a movement was in place. The Russian Futurists created a series of artist’s books that radically challenged the assumptions of orthodox book production. Most of experiments by artists played with form, materials and content in their own way. For Instance works such asKruchenykh & Olga Rozanovaand Universal War by Kruchenykh one of the Russian Futurist Artist, has hand written text along with expressive lithographs and collaged elements. The distinct feature this process had is that, every single copy of this book was significantly different from the other, thereby distanced the practice from the orthodox forms of bookmaking. This aspect one would say is the crucial innovation the Russian Futurism has brought forth with regard to artist’s bookmaking. It is said that the Russian Futurism had gradually evolved into constructivism havingMalevich and Tatlin as key protagonists. The Constructivist books attempted to create a new proletarian art for a new communist epoch For Instance The design and text based works of El Lissitsky’sFor the voice had a direct impact on the groups linked to communism.

In the time of Dadaism that has cultivated the anti-Art ideology, forms like artist’s books, periodicals, manifestos and absurdist theatre became the main manifestations. It published number of significant artist’s books, such as George grosz’s The Face of the Dominant Class which is a series of satirical lithographs about the German Bourgeoisie. The approach of Dada somehow found a language to confront the Institution of Art, and also engaged with the socio-political complexities with radical methodological alternatives.

Surrealism as a movement was highly motivated by the studies on psychoanalysis especially the works of Sigmund Freud. His path breaking work World of Dreams in one sense was a conceptual motivation to the movement. The contribution of Surrealism as a movement to the genre of artist’s books was, it has brought back the form oflivre d'artiste (that was existing in France around 1890’s) and subverted it. For example in one of the works by Marx-Earnst titled Une Semaine de Bonte Marx takes the found images from the Victorian books and creates a kind of a collage. This attempt subverted the idea of original image that was dominant in the form oflivre d’artiste and by using these found images, it thus diluted the significant/economic value attributed to this form of bookmaking historically.

In the period Post-world war –II when the socio-cultural conditions were re-structuring and the so called new understandings about the world were coming forth, the artist’s book as a genre served as a convenient form to situate, distribute and share the ideas and interests of the artists in an international arena, especially with groups that operate in disciplinary grounds. Many of the leading practitioners in the post-war period tried to look into this genre more critically; poets from Brazil, artists from Holland and Denmark tried to de-construct the conventional structure of the book. For example in one the works by Isidore Isou, the work challenges the viewer to reassemble the contents of an envelope into a sequence of narrative. This in one sense can be understood as a production of interactive space where the viewer has to look and reassemble the work.

Motivated with these kinds of attempts the genre became more consolidated. Many artists felt bookmaking as a critical form to engage with different concerns within social/cultural/disciplinary milieu. For example: Yves Klein in his works such as Yves: Peintures and Dimanchecritically dealt with the issues of Identity and duplicity and in one sense challenged the idea of modernist integrity. ArtistsGuy Debord and Asger Jornworked a series of collaborations engaging with the aspect of psychogeography, created from the found magazines of Copenhagen and Paris respectively, collaged and then printed over in unrelated colours.

While speaking in the trajectory of de-constructing the form of the book the significant figure that is noteworthy is Dieter Roth. He created books with holes allowing the viewer to see more than one page at same time. He was the first artist to re-use the found books, comic books, printers’ end papers and news papers in a strategic way. The aspect of distribution of books was de-constructed by an artist named Ruscha who was almost contemporary to Roth, he distributed the original editions of his books in the gasoline stations that he had photographed, thereby completely moving away from the conventional ways of book distribution, as adapted by the art world.

Some of the crucial shifts had happened with regard to artist’s bookmaking in the time ofFluxus. Fluxus was a performance art group that utilized genre of artist’s books in a significant way. In a conceptual level Fluxus negated the role of galleries and institutions of art and brought art into a communitarian setup. One of the important figure affiliated with Fluxus who is necessary to mention here is George Brechth, his series of scores like Water Yam which were largely text based attempts are key to the understand the method of bookmaking at that moment and this method share characteristics with the several other editions of the Fluxus.

Conceptual Art as a movement adapted the form of artist’s books in much more strategic way with artists like Sol Lewitt, Bruce Nauman, Jaroslaw Kozlowski having artist’s book as a centre to their practice. For Instance one of the early attempts would be the exhibition that happened in New York in 1969 that featured a stack of artist’s books. This exhibition featured largely text based works by artists such as, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Wiener and Robert Barry. As these two movements (Fluxus and Conceptual art) need much more critical focus the later posts in this blog will engage with these two significant events elaborately with specific references.

It is said that in the period later to these, around the 1970’s the genre of artist’s books started being institutionalized. The mainstream understood the aesthetic/historical significance of this genre and tried to absorb this genre in to it. Many of the Museums galleries started collecting the artist’s books, even the form entered into the institution of Art pedagogy as a subject of study. There is also a constant re-structuring and re-defining that has been happening with regard the artist’s books especially after the intervention of newer technologies in the art practice, the role and function of the form has changed and spread into wider spectrums.

Thus this attempt of a historical overview with random references of the artist’s books, bring forth some of the crucial instances/questions in to the discursive field. Firstly the relation between the text and the image, the significance of their intersection as initiated by William Blake and later explored by others. Secondly the idea that, the artist’s book as a form can be considered as an activist because it primarily/historically negated the gallery system, and served as a radical methodological alternative. Thirdly the various manifestations it has gone through in different social/cultural/political contexts and how its institutionalization exemplifies the practice where historical ruptures are conveniently framed in by the mainstream in due course of time. It is necessary to note here that this small overview took into consideration some of the important shifts the artist’s book as a genre gone through in a western context. My later attempts will try engage with this genre more diversely and critically by understanding the developments of this genre in different geographies and contexts.

On Expedition : Towards Bazaars of ‘Old’ Delhi

There comes another day. We all were out on a small expedition, to explore the Bazaars of ‘old’ Delhi. To begin with, the space where it started; we entered a Metro station, a sophisticated architectural space that staged us in a condition of drastic contrast between the interior and exterior of the city. When we reached Chawri Bazaar Metro station the contrast became denser, we walked out of this modern under-ground architectural space with the help of escalators and entered the ‘Choti Gallis’ (tiny streets) that are deeply crowded and awfully organized in their own way. These Gallis in a larger sense stand as memoirs of the city’s history, a spectacle of the city that has unique ambience. The streets with electricity poles that run one after the other, with wires hanging, intersecting and overlapping and specifically the orange boxes hanging to each pole add to its architectural beauty.

Passing from these Gallis our way lead to different Bazaars like Chawri Bazaar, Kinari Market and explored diverse variety of things they offer. The bazaars are interesting sites that stand as a collective, and provide things of similar type and variety. The heavily crowded Gallis, always with the voices of cycle rickshawala’s asking for the way (bhayyaji side……), made momentary interactions possible. Well all were tired and had a break for lunch with the delicious food the Dhaba offered and proceeded with exploration. This time the interest was for paper and thus proceeded to the bazaar where we get varieties of paper, finishing which, we headed to the metro station to get back.

The notion of ‘old’ city seems to be a problematic, as to, what this notion of ‘old’ is all about, as though these spaces are outside the ambit of transformations in the so called ‘new’ city. The concept of ‘old’ somehow freezes these spaces as mere memoirs of past history, thus distancing them from the ‘new’ idea of the city and its functioning. Within these contexts there is a necessity to critically look at the aspect of ‘old’ city as a construct and understand its relevance within the current day formations of the city.

This small expedition was a completely new experience for some of the participants of the residency, especially those who came from outside India, as it is a new idea of space, architecture and the city as a whole. For the others who are already familiar with these spaces, it was definitely a re-thought.

Beyond Boundaries

Cutting across diverse disciplinary paradigms, this International Residency deals with the idea of Bookmaking in general and Artist's books in particular. It is to critically re-think about the very structure of book, both in terms of its physicality and functionality. This is also an attempt to introduce new understandings of Bookmaking that forth come when artists from diverse disciplines such as Graphic Design, Advertising, Animation, Painting and Architecture unite. In another sense, this residency is a platform where cross-cultural affiliations occur, as artists come from different geographies and more importantly from diverse cultural backgrounds. These Intersections are ought to bring forth new cultural expressions, extending their enquiry to broader contexts.

In the year 2009, Khoj is looking to engage with the idea of design from its most obvious usages in industry and object design to its most abstract form and how these aspects can be explored in art making/ visual arts in various ways. In continuing with this thematic, this residency focuses on Bookmaking with a strong underpinning of design in all its various aspects.

To introduce the artists, Logaine Navascues studied Advertising in Lima, Peru, and has worked as a creative director, editor and designer. As a reader, writer and permanent seeker, she wants to re-think the book, experimenting with new formats and approaches to reading. Sebastian Cordova is an Architect based in Mexico; he sometimes participates in art related contexts with lots of narrative appetite. Aditya Pande is based in New Delhi and studied at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. His studio production oscillates between the fine and applied arts, two and three dimensions, the sensuously tactile and the aggressively optical. Sachin George Sebastian is a graduate in Graphic Design from National Institute of Design and works as a freelancer based in Delhi. As a paper engineer he loves to sit with paper all the time exploring the structural possibilities of the same. Meghana Bisineer is a graduate from the RCA London. She is a freelance animator, artist consultant on cross discipline projects and also a part-time tutor at the RCA London. Sukanya Ghosh is a painter and animator, she pursued painting from Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda and Animation from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She currently works as a freelance practitioner based in Kolkata.

Thus, having artists from different regions and cultural backgrounds, this residency in short, is an attempt to think beyond boundaries by intersecting, operating and overlapping diverse cultural and disciplinary understandings with specific reference to Bookmaking.