>> Sabrina Barren:
Thanks for everybody --
for coming out on this
absolutely gorgeous stage
to the November meeting of
the Washington Area Group
for Print Culture Studies.
I'm Sabrina Barren, with my
colleague, Elinor Shevlin.
We've been convening
this group for --
20 years, which is
kind of frightening.
But thanks, everybody,
for coming out.
We have a -- e-mail list.
If you're not on the list,
and you'd like to be,
talk to myself or Elinor.
We can get you on --
>> Elinor Shevlin:
In the back here.
>> Sabrina Barren:
-- on that list.
We have -- we do six programs a
year during the academic year,
and this will be the last
one for this semester,
this calendar year, and
then starting in February,
we will have February,
March, and April.
Mack Holt from George Mason,
a scholar of French history,
is going to be one
of the speakers,
a visiting Italian scholar
at Johns Hopkins is going
to be talking about
history of science and --
and then we have
an artist coming
from the Sorbonne who's going to
be here in the spring as well.
So we're looking
forward to the rest
of what's been a great
program this year already.
We're getting dinner
afterwards with the speaker.
It's a good place to get
to know one another better,
continue the conversation,
and if you'd
like to join us,
you're welcome to.
We go to Tallay Todd [assumed
spelling] down by the --
so please consider that if
you're interested in doing that.
We also like to hear from
anybody who would be interested
in presenting, or have any ideas
about people we should approach
for presenting to our group.
We -- print culture,
anytime, anywhere,
and that includes the digital,
as far as we're concerned.
>> Elinor Shevlin:
And manuscript, too.
>> Sabrina Barren:
And manuscript, too --
paper, electricity,
you know, anything --
[laughter] anything you can
read, phone books, I don't know.
Anything you can read.
We've had some great --
you know, we've had Cuban
art books constructed
out of found materials.
We've had Japanese
prints that --
I mean, we've just had fabulous,
fabulous, fabulous talks
over the years on a variety
of really interesting
-- interesting topics.
But if you have any ideas,
we're always keen to --
and so, Ellie's going to give
our speaker today a little bit
more of an in-depth
introduction.
>> Elinor Shevlin: Hello, there.
Yes, I'm so happy to
introduce Na'ama Zussman.
She's an artist and
a Ph.D. candidate
in the cultural studies program
at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem.
Her research, entitled
"Artist Books,
a Framework of Redistributions,"
draws critical attention to --
draws attention, pardon,
to the critical impetus
of artist books, and the
link between the aesthetic
and the political
that they provide.
Zussman holds a master's
degree in art and the book
from the George Washington
University's Corcoran School
of the Arts and Design.
It has taken me a little
bit to get used to --
to put the George
Washington in front of that.
Her thesis essay, which
received the award
for graduate critical writing,
discusses the coexistence
of artist books as
both map and territory.
During her studies, she
completed an internship
at the rare book and
special collections division
at the Library of Congress,
where she gave a talk
on digressional wanderings.
Zussman is a recipient of
numerous awards and scholarships
for academic and artist
merits, a guest lecturer
at various symposiums, and is
currently a research fellow
at ICRE, and that's the Israel
Center for Research Excellence.
She's also published an essay
on the production of place
in Sam Winston's work
in the April 2016
of "The Blue Notebook," a
journal for artist books.
Recent acquisitions
of her artist books,
"A Survey of the World,"
were made by the rare book
and special collections division
of the Library of Congress,
the Butler Library in
Columbia University,
and the Boston Athenaeum.
Let's welcome Na'ama Zussman.
[ Applause ]
>> Na'ama Zussman: I want to
thank you, Elinor and Sabrina,
for inviting me, and it's
an utter bliss to be here.
I thought we were
supposed to meet at noon.
>> Yeah [laughter].
>> Na'ama Zussman:
Oh, okay [laughter].
>> I moved today, though.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Okay.
I would like to open with Judd
and Renee Hubbard's
[assumed spellings] words,
as published in 2005.
"We still lack a generally
accepted and workable definition
of artist books, in spite of
many perspective commentaries
by American, British,
French, and German scholars,
who may not have always dealt
with the same subject matter.
We may even wonder to what
extent we can define artist
books in terms of genre,
or classify them
according to categories."
End quote.
The myriad literature on artist
books proposes a true reflection
of the difficulties posed
by these artistic phenomena,
and reveal the debate's
labyrinthian nature.
Hence -- and here, I'm relating
to Hubbard's concluding
clause --
we should wonder whether terms
as genre and categories are
at all appropriate when
discussing artist books.
In addition, we should wonder
whether these difficulties are
not directly related
to the very subversive
and critical essence
of the artist book.
In his essay, "Artist Books
Between Viewing and Reading,"
Warteets [assumed spelling]
discusses the difficulties
in rereading artist book.
And argues that these
difficulties are the main
virtue, since, and I quote,
"such a difficulty is directly
linked to their ability
to contest the institutional
norms of production
and reception that we have
inherited from literature
and the visual arts," end quote.
In my research, I try to
change the course of the debate
from category-based
to an observation
of the ways artist books
stimulate experience.
I try to divert the course
of the debate from the what
to the how, to examine
the nature of experience
in the artist book, and
comprehend how it weaves itself
in a non-accumulative way,
how it weaves its
own redistributions.
Established in the 20th century,
an artist book is an
idiosyncratic manifestation
of art, a framework of space
and time conveyed through modes
of redistribution of a
cultural object, the book.
For millennia, the book has been
emblematic infrastructure which,
through both its textuality
and physicality, has mapped
and been mapped by the
formation of civilizations,
cultures, and doctrines.
Hence, the designation of the
book as an imprinted receptacle
for an artist book is
a categorical moment.
Marked as a territory
of experience,
the artist book becomes
dominant territory
that maintains its
embedded repository power
through redrawn trajectories.
In addition, through its
attempts against fixation
on a predetermined world of
taxonomies and categorizations,
the artist book poses questions
on artistic proxy's consumption,
and its ability at
all to be categorized.
Not only does the artist
book question its validity
and strength of its grip on
reality, but also its identity,
and by that I refer to
some observation such as
that of Betty Bright
[assumed spelling],
who tries to situate
the artist book in one
of two poles, book or art.
In her own words, "Is it
a book, or is it art?"
And, by Specter's
observation of the practice,
"we dress up to go
out and look at art.
Undressed in bed, we read."
In this talk, I will
best portray the ways
in which our experience is
embodied in the artist book,
how it constantly oscillates
between the German duo
of erlebnis and erfahrung.
While erlebnis marks one's own
lived experience, relating thus
to concrete, stimulating
event, erfahrung refers
to the accumulation of
the experience over time.
And I shall elaborate on
this later in my talk.
The artist book leans
upon millennia
of books accumulating
experience, and as both notion
and form, while it
simultaneously is registering
against the grain of those
very same experiences.
Hence, it conveys a lived
and concrete experience,
and opens possibility
of experimentation
that breaks the perception
of what can be known,
thought, said, and done.
I start with the memory
of a book, of books.
That memory is engraved in my
experience, in the erfahrung
of my conceptual and
physical gestures.
It has shaped my
expertise in the book,
and this is how I
approach the artist book.
Book 91, also known as "The
String Book," was created
by book artist Keith
Smith in 1982.
Book 91 is a composition of
paper and string with no text
or image, a composition for
the evocation of experience.
The strings, knotted
to the pages and woven
through various-sized holes, and
are all bound to the physicality
of the codex form, bound to the
history of the book, and yet,
at the same time,
explore the boundaries
of the book as an idea and form.
Smith manifests the presence,
and at the same time,
the absence, and his
approach produces experience.
When the reader/viewer
browses through the book,
curves one's own way with
a string, there is a sense
of a tension between the memory
of given proxies of experience,
and the new path of
experiential use.
The act of reading/viewing
is shaped by the physicality
of the book, and in
turn, the reader/viewer,
in one's own reading/viewing,
shapes the physicality
of the book, and
those expect to be led
after a linear narrative
find themselves disoriented.
Book 91 goes against institution
norms of how to consume
and experience a book.
Those would shape
our experience,
and maintain a given order.
Strings in varied
lengths weave their way
through a complex pattern hole.
The reader/the viewer takes an
interlude, hastily looks back
to follow the path the string
took, hangs onto the string
to see what path
they are trekking,
what course of realizations
they are fulfilling.
Understanding that this is
not a regular usage of a book,
there is no textual or
image-based narrative to follow,
no churchly scriptua
for the literate,
no image for the illiterate.
The lack of security a linear
narrative would have given,
yet you are driven forward
following the string,
casting the shadows of
your own experiences,
obligated to mediate
and unfold it,
incarnating one's own
experience, igniting
and activating this
fear of occurrences,
projecting one's own narratives
in an incessant move
of research.
To borrow Dennis Schmidt's
[assumed spelling] words
about the transformation
of experience into text,
"It is a transformation in which
experiences are articulated,
structured, and woven
together into a text."
The strings, in turn,
respond to this mediation,
acting as both text
and image, and acting
and reenacting a story
told by the one who browses
through this book, recalculating
the grammar of the body,
enabling the freedom of
mapping in frank territories.
The book is then closed, open
and closed to new occurrences.
Each time this book opens,
new maps are projected,
new territories are established.
"Every time we turn the page,"
writes Dick Hagens [assumed
spelling] in his essay,
"A Book," "the previous
page passes into our past,
and we are confronted by
a new world," end quote.
Thus, Book 91 is eternally
liminal, situated in being
at experiential threshold.
It subverts as a natural
endeavor for resolution,
and its essence lies
in its continuous mode.
The whole being of Book 91 is
in the experience it conveys,
and has, always liminal,
keep oscillating between page
to page, between the
past and the new world,
between experience
and experience.
I would like now to
develop the eclectic notion
of erlebnis and erfahrung.
"Art," argues Caroline
Jones [assumed spelling]
at the preface of a captivating
symposium proceedings entitled
"Experience," "is a range
of marks, indices, rituals,
and materials that humans
make to stimulate perception.
We do these things to draw
upon prior layers of experience
in order to produce,
paradoxically, the
genuinely new."
Allow me to repeat on
this last sentence.
"We do these things to draw
upon prior layers of experience
in order to produce,
paradoxically, the
genuinely new."
While erlebnis denotes
a moment --
a moment in its full immediacy
that precedes all
interpretation, a subversive
and intuitive response
to the world,
erfahrung is an experience of
an external and objective event,
and the lessons one
learns from such events.
If an erlebnis is initial flash,
erfahrung is the arrangement
that transform it
into knowledge.
Like many German theorists,
Walter Benjamin distinguished
between erlebnis and
erfahrung, and understood
that erlebnis is a product
of modernity, and yet,
what set him apart was
his dialectic approach
to these two concepts.
This dialectic I find
in the artist book,
which manifests its
critical impetus
through perpetual oscillation
between erfahrung and erlebnis.
In this, I am also following
Benjamin's manifestation
of the dynamic relationship
of modernity with the past.
"The Second Encyclopedia
of Telon," 1991,
although it was a work in
progress, so it's formal years
of the creation were
1998 to 2003.
In the mid-1990s, a group of
German artists, Peter Milewski,
Inez Von Katterhaut,
Barbara Farner,
and Marcos Farner
[assumed spellings],
decided to give a
shape in reality
to the fictional encyclopedia,
"The First Encyclopedia
of Telon."
A fictional encyclopedia
denoting a fictional place
which appears in the fiction
story [foreign language],
written by Horheleuse Bakhaus
[assumed spelling] in 1941.
"In order to have an
experience through a book,
what the book says may
not be true in terms
of factual knowledge,"
argues Michel Foucault.
In fact, and I quote, "an
experience is always a fiction.
It's something that
one fabricates oneself
that doesn't exist before,
and will exist afterwards,"
end quote.
If that is so, is there any
importance at all in the fact
that Telon is fictional,
and consequently,
that there is an encyclopedia
as imitation of fictional world?
Considering this
fictional scaffolding,
here are some profound questions
that should be asked prior
to the realization of
such an encyclopedia,
and perhaps pondered through
by this group of artists.
How can an encyclopedia, a
manifestation of erfahrung,
of the accumulative knowledge,
define and describe
a fictional world?
How can a text, which
is completely fictional,
be concretely shaped?
How can this experience be
available for others to have?
Considering an encyclopedia
is a demonstration of reality,
what other shapes could it take?
In Telon, the spoken
language lacks noun, and so,
how can an encyclopedia, whose
usage of nouns is ingrained
in its purpose, depict
a place with no nouns?
How do you form experience?
As said, these questions
and assumption could have
been among what the artists
asked themselves.
Nevertheless, after a period
of time, a disagreement arose
over the realization
of the encyclopedia,
which led the group
to part ways.
Also interesting to indicate,
that although both realizations
are utterly different
from one another,
they are both entitled
"The Second Encyclopedia
of Telon."
I will explore Farner's
realization,
since I find their encyclopedia
to put forward question
the artist book --
question about the artist book
and its subversive
and critical essence.
In addition, Farner's
"Second Encyclopedia" poses
epistemological questions about
the relationship between reality
and knowledge, and how
knowledge is acquired.
Specifically, it opens up a
realm for experience in a world
which is completely fictional,
where you can experience
a fiction.
"On 'The Second Encyclopedia of
Telon,' and the deceiving sense
of recognition of text forms
and patterns one might draw,"
writes Barbara Farner, "a
link to the everyday life
of the viewer is forged,
yet without ever
trapping them in it.
Life is created,
not merely copied.
The works and texts point
forward to an imaginary moment
in time, a dimension which
perhaps never be," end quote.
Farner's "Second Encyclopedia
of Telon" is not end-oriented,
neither bound up with a desire
for resolution, nor closure,
nor predicated on a linear
succession of denotation.
In fact, Farner's "Encyclopedia"
is an independent entity,
a unit in itself, and
perhaps naming it the
"Second Encyclopedia"
rather than the first was
to elevate its independence.
This is an encyclopedia
with no main plot,
which generates situation,
activities, topics, and ideas.
"The Second Encyclopedia
of Telon" consists
of five green binders,
ordered alphabetically,
and separated by dividers.
"The choice of ring binders,"
as Farner remark, "is not only
because they allow us the
maximum amount of freedom
for the entries we are
producing in size and type,
but also because no
permanent order is dictated."
Additionally, and out of
the nature of a ring binder,
I would add the other --
the order of the entries in the
"Encyclopedia" can be
changed, added, and reduced.
That is to say, one can arrange
and rearrange one's own
experiences, so both immediacy
and interpretation
are interchangeable.
What entries are in
the "Encyclopedia"?
The five binders are an assembly
of varied and eclectic aspects
of life, as if they were
flashes of the shock experience
of erlebnis, yet
to be interpreted.
Digressed from any
structural and linear narrative
of an encyclopedia, from
memory to tea ceremony,
11 to technical report, fish to
surface, of gravity and levity
to spirit, history of the
manuscript to immortality,
beyond to the familiar objects,
storm plans to lilac whispering.
What is more, the physicality
of this encyclopedia
is respectively woven
with its functionality.
Varied formats, sizes, bindings,
paper sizes, typefaces,
dimensions, and more are all
interchangeably inhabit the
encyclopedia, and bound
to the experiential
trajectory it offers.
Another repeated
motif is the envelope.
Most information is
kept in envelopes,
attached to the dividers
or to the binder's rings,
and it is up to the
viewer/reader whether
to follow this trajectory,
open the envelope,
unfold the content,
and experience it.
Going through Farner's words
again, "The least of entries is
as if life is created,
not merely copied,
and the entries are subjective
moments of lived experience
in their full immediacy, waiting
to be transformed
into knowledge.
They are as well events
that allude to the fact
that Telon's grammar
lacks noun."
"Second Encyclopedia of
Telon," hence, is a subjective
and intuitive response to the
fictional world as depicted
in the first fictional
encyclopedia,
challenging hierarchies
and opening possibilities
of observation in a way
that breaks linearity.
"The strategies of the dominant
order are undermined and altered
by reading tactics --
" Michel de Certeau
in "The Practice of Every Life."
Spatial practice -- reading --
enables reader to be travelers
through paths on land
owned by someone else.
The text is of another person,
and the reader reinvents
the text, just like a tenant
who makes changes in
the rented property.
Reading, hence, changes its
object and introduces a desire
to rewrite it, and
establish a new order.
I find in de Certeau's
insights several vantage points
in "The Second Encyclopedia
of Telon."
The Farners, like
travelers, make their way
across fields they do not own,
of [foreign language], of Telon,
and of "The First
Encyclopedia of Telon."
They read and view
while they, themselves,
produce an encyclopedia of their
own experiential vernacular.
In turn, the readers/viewers/us
make changes
in the rented property,
disconnect Farner's work
from its soil, and offer great
possibilities of movement.
And this move obviously
can continue infinitely,
with no limitations.
Sam Winston, "Backwords
Alternate," 2014.
"Backwords Alternate" by Sam
Winston charts a framework
of experiences that raptures
and invents novel relationship
between the lived and
immediate experience,
and the accumulated one,
that which leans
upon one's expertise.
It is a drawing of
the constant movement
between erlebnis and erfahrung.
Winston, returning to
Caroline Jones' word,
draws upon prior layer
of experience in order
to produce paradoxically
the genuinely new.
"Backwords Alternate" is
the chronicles of the --
of the interaction between
Kenneth Goldsmith's work "Day"
and Sam Winston's work, and is a
documentation of the fabrication
of the poem, "Backwords."
"Backwords Alternate" is the
physical dossier of the records
of its making, which consists
of three sections sewn together,
correspondence in
uncreative writing,
letter forms, and
the drafted poem.
Accompanied to this dossier
are a letter-press print
and its printing plate.
Standing and watching this
work is impossible in terms
of its realization,
since experience it --
experiencing it requires
numerous body gestures
and operations that would
go through the experience
and organize it, of
opening, spreading, glancing,
accumulating, delving,
standing, sitting, reading,
viewing, surveying, and so on.
This -- of body gestures brings
back Babs Specter's [assumed
spelling] observation
about the practice --
the practices related
to the artist book.
"We dress up to go
out and look at art.
Undressed, in bed, we read."
In addition, it evokes
questions about bodily gestures
that perhaps are obvious to us
when we view art or read books.
How does, then, our body work
in relation to the artist book,
and how does our body go
through the experience
of the artist book?
"We have to go through
the experience,"
to quote Jack Luc Nincee's
[assumed spelling] words,
"or there will be no such thing.
What we call an artist
work is nothing other
than the organization
of this experience.
A work of art is
constantly at work.
It constantly opens itself anew,
constantly emerges," end quote.
The first section of "Backwords
Alternate," correspondence
in uncreative writing,
follows the immediate exchange
between Winston and
Goldsmith, and reflects
on the conceptual
formation of the work.
Goldsmith is known for
his work, "Day," 2003,
where he transcribed every
word, character, symbol,
and number of "The New York
Times" issue of September 1st,
2000 into an 836-page book,
while excluding any hierarchies,
which typically take the
form of typeface, size,
layout, and classification.
By presenting each sign of
"The New York Times" equally,
Goldsmith subverts a prominent
symbol of print culture,
contesting and breaching
thus the institutional norms
of production and
reception by turning it
into an initial flash,
that which precedes
the order of things.
What is more, "Day" is a
presentation of a reverse order,
in which the secondary
arrangement --
the knowledge, the lesson
one learns from events,
and the accumulative
experiences over time --
precedes the lived experience.
What is already oriented,
categorized,
and classified makes place to
the unprocessed experience.
Winston, hence, as the
correspondence reveals,
seeks to interrupt with part of
Goldsmith's poem, a work that,
itself, is already
the embodiment
of confrontational
experience to the one
"The New York Times" suggests.
The second section is
letter forms, the blueprint
of the work, the drafting
of the meeting place
between Goldsmith's poem
and Winston's own poem,
which is printed backwards.
Winston documents his
drafting of the redistribution
of Goldsmith, and
his own experiences,
and the cynic meeting
point of these two planes.
He challenges what is
already experienced,
while being both the
surveyor and the surveyed.
Winston's layouts and
letters are stripped
of their signifiers,
de-territorialized
from their previous regimes of
identifications and experiences.
To adopt Jacque Rancier's
[assumed spelling] words,
"the rapture of given relations
between things and meanings,
and inversely, invent novel
relationships between things
and meanings that were
previously unrelated."
Each of these meditative layouts
is, hence, a semiotic place
within itself, excluding
hierarchy of before and after.
Each, a place with absorptive
and elusive boundaries
that documents its history,
and at the same time, confronts
and negotiates with it.
Winston first charts a dialectic
of erlebnis and erfahrung
as if they keep oscillating
between one and the other,
freezing for a moment
to be delineated.
Winston conveys a landscape
of the meeting place of layers
of experience, of the
immediate, fragmented experience
with the cumulative one.
In addition, no one
can tell them apart,
and they can be found
ever present.
This is, then, a record
of the most likely infinite
possibilities of staging
of experience and the population
of the page, and it is not just
about the collapse of
hierarchies, but rather the open
up of possibilities
of experience.
Winston, hence, considers
both poems
as if they were raw materials,
critically initiated
lived experiences.
He delineates communities
of experience
that have no preconditions,
apart Goldsmith request
for using Times New
Roman typeface,
as shown in the e-mail exchange,
juxtaposing them while
maintaining their --
laying out while weaving
together two contradictory
forces simultaneously --
"The New York Times" issue
of September 1st, 2000,
and the autonomy of the
aesthetic experience.
The third second, a
drafted poem, is a journey
of its creation, as
Winston defines it
in the e-mail exchange, a
documentation of the formation
of Winston's poem "Backwords."
Winston documents this
accumulated process
of the forces that are involved
in his work, and the history
of his experience, starting
from 12 pages of his own script.
Nevertheless, this
section is a process
of a reverse accumulation
and alteration,
a process of subtraction.
And yet, despite lessening, a
drafted poem maintains its --
repository power until
it ends backwards.
Two more planes are added
to "Backwords Alternate,"
the letter press print
of Winston's interaction
with Goldsmith text, and
the poem, "Backwords,"
placed at the top of the
dossier, and the printing plate
of this print placed
at the bottom.
Yet both texts cannot
be read together,
neither on the plate,
neither on the print.
In Winston's words,
as documented
in the e-mail exchange,
"The poem 'Backwords' only read
correctly on the printing plate.
If it is printed, it is
backwards, but that, in turn,
makes your -- " "The New
York Times," he's writing,
to Goldsmith -- "'The New York
Times' text read correctly.
So neither text ever sits
together the right way 'round.
Sad, but true."
End quote.
Perhaps not so sad.
This is an eternal negotiation,
because these two planes,
the letter press print
and its printing plate,
function simultaneously.
The experience of each feeds
the other in persistent return.
Both Goldsmith and Winston's
texts alternate the role,
and work together regardless of
their supposed contradictions.
In this, "Backwords
Alternate" is an artist book
that documents its
history, cumulates it,
and at the same time, present it
as if it were a lived
experience, the erlebnis.
"Backwords Alternate" does
not produce consensus,
nor does it inscribe
given roles.
It is a meeting place of little
communities of experience,
which are borrowed from
heterogenous domains.
Winston, hence, weaves,
while maintaining this state
of negotiation, these
experiential communities.
In my research, I point
to the artist book
as a critical territory
of experience.
That territory of experience
is composed of the accumulation
of experiences brought by the
book, and its repository power,
and the lived experience
in its full immediacy,
that which precedes all
interpretation and reworking.
In addition -- and here,
I return to the preface
of my talk -- I argue that one
should doubt whether we can
at all define artist books in
terms of genre and categories.
In its constant oscillation
between the erlebnis
and erfahrung, and out
of the trajectories
of the lived experience,
the artist book rejects
any possibility of fixation
under absolute category.
The three artist books I
discussed illuminate this
oscillation each uniquely.
Book 91 manifests the
fundamental question of how
to experience the artist book,
and how should it be approached.
These questions are
raised in light
of the clear institutional norms
of reception that other artistic
and reading proxies maintain.
In addition, Book 91
subverts the natural endeavor
for resolution, and its essence
lies in its continuous mode.
"Second Encyclopedia of Telon"
raises epistemological question
about the relationship between
knowledge and experience,
and the extent to which
the experience is affected
by prior knowledge.
This, in turn, raises a question
about how to convey relationship
between experience and
knowledge in the artist book.
"Backwords Alternate" not
only charts a framework
of experiences that rapture
and invent new relationship
between the lived and the
accumulative experience,
but also delineates a
continuous oscillation
between erlebnis and erfahrung.
In this, in addition,
this work, as the others,
deals with bodily gestures.
How does our body work in
relation to the artist book?
How does our body go through the
experience of the artist book,
and how does our body change the
experience of the artist book?
These three artist books, thus,
captures the subversive essence
of the artist book, as an
idiosyncratic manifestation
of art, and show its
critical impetus.
Thank you.
And the books are here, but
maybe we are just getting
to the conversation now?
>> Elinor Shevlin: Yeah, yes.
>> Sabrina Barren: Comments?
>> I have a question.
You're talking about
the creation of objects.
What about the reception?
In other words, if an artist,
creator of an artist book,
has an idea, is there any
way of knowing whether
that idea is going to be
picked up by the person
who literally picks up and
looks at an artist book?
>> Na'ama Zussman: I think this
is a beauty with artist book,
and obviously, you
know, in your reading,
you reinvent the
narrative as well.
But I think that the artist
book enables this freedom
of experience, and there are
two levels of the experience.
And I mentioned this when I
spoke about Michel de Certeau's
"The Practice of Everyday Life."
The writer or the creator,
the artist, makes changes
in other people land, and the
readers of your -- do the same.
There are a couple of
layers of the experience.
It's not only the one
who
perceive/view/read/experience
the work, but also the artist.
>> Its interpretation
doesn't belong to the artist.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yes, yes.
But all -- but I've -- but
due to the nature, to the --
due to the nature
of the artist book,
which already carries
experience of its own heritage,
of its own culture, you already
have a layer of experience,
even before you start
creating the artist book.
The choice of -- to start a
work of art from a surface
that has its own
accumulation of experience
in itself is already
a layer of experience.
>> Elinor Shevlin: Yeah,
I actually have two kind
of different questions.
One relates to "The
Encyclopedia,"
and you were saying about
how it's a demonstration
of linearity.
And I was wondering
if you could say more
about that, for two reasons.
It's collaboratively
produced, and of course,
I've heard that before I saw
the other pages and everything.
But I would think that it could
have been created in stages,
and not from A to Z, or
however we often conceive of,
and just the fact that
it could move around.
And connected to that, because
-- and I'm thinking of --
I mean, it invites
-- the encyclopedia,
rather than a linear reading, it
invites discontinuous reading,
because you go in, and --
you know, so I was
struck when I was --
the encyclopedia,
with linearity.
Although, of course,
a book contain --
I mean, he talks about it -- in
here, really of kind of today,
mainly novels, and that's
about it, that are meant
to be read in terms of linear.
So I could see how you could
say -- but I was interesting --
if you could say more
of what you meant
about a demonstration
of linearity.
>> Na'ama Zussman: There
are two realizations
of this encyclopedia, which is
fascinating, but as I mentioned,
I'm dealing with
Farner's realization,
and the other realization is
by Milewski and Katterhaut.
It's a library, as well.
I think it's 50 volumes --
50 volumes of linearity,
master proofs of linearity,
and it's beautiful,
meticulously-done.
And I -- but I don't find
the experience there.
Beyond the well-crafted work,
I don't find -- it doesn't --
I don't think that their
realization evoke any questions
about experience, about the
connection between experience,
knowledge, reality, fiction.
And I do find these questions
in the Farners' realization,
and it's interesting.
I don't know why they actually
decided to work from A to Z,
because the whole essence
of the work objects this --
but I would say that this
is the only linear part.
>> Elinor Shevlin: Okay.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Other
than that, the whole --
I mean, the encyclopedia --
there is nothing about
linearity in this --
>> Elinor Shevlin: So
it was really the kind
of traditional construction
in the invocation to go from A
to Z, even though in
neither the production
or reception, it doesn't.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yeah.
I mean, you can browse
through the encyclopedia
without following the
A to Z, obviously.
You -- these are five binders.
You are free -- you
have the freedom to --
as a tenant, to make changes
in other person property,
as Michel de Certeau says.
And these -- also if --
you have the freedom to --
whether to open the envelope,
unfold the content --
which is very interesting.
So you choose what
content to read,
what content to experience.
Another thing that I find
very interesting is how --
what is the connection --
only at the beginning of this,
and I'm happy to hear
you -- your ideas.
But I think this encyclopedia
raises epistemological
questions, and I didn't think
about them before in relation
to the artist book,
and the connection
between experience
and knowledge.
And how do we know -- how does
our body know the experience
of the artist book,
and what do you do
when this is a realization
of actually something
that is completely fictional?
Where is the experience there?
>> Hi.
>> Elinor Shevlin:
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Go ahead.
>> I just have a followup
question about the Farners' --
or, Farner's "Encyclopedia."
How did the collaboration
break down, when it seemed
like it had the fluidity to be
such an exchange between people?
What transpired?
Do you know?
>> Na'ama Zussman: I
actually -- I don't know.
I don't know what's happened,
and I ask Mark, and Mark told me
to ask Babs [laughter].
I don't know what
happened behind the scene,
but looking at the two
realizations, it's obviously
that there was a dispute.
Because they are
completely different.
>> Yes.
>> Na'ama Zussman:
I mean, it's a --
and by the way, when I'm looking
at other Barbara Farner's work,
the encyclopedia's different
from her other work as well.
She's very craft-oriented
person, and this is --
it was like it's a whole
different trajectory
of her, yeah.
But I don't know.
I mean -- and I think it would
be interesting not to write
about it, but I -- if
you can gain more --
but I wouldn't write
Barbara Farner
and ask her what happened.
>> Yeah, no [laughter].
>> Na'ama Zussman:
I really don't know.
Yeah.
>> Sabrina Barren: Here's
another question, just to follow
up on the same thing, and
what Elinor was saying.
It struck me as she was
talking that I don't think
that encyclopedias are
probably actually written
in alphabetical order.
When somebody sits down to
create an encyclopedia --
>> Na'ama Zussman: That's true.
That's totally true.
>> Sabrina Barren: -- I doubt
that they start with A, and --
I mean, even if it's just
one person writing it.
And so, that had me
thinking about --
I'm one of these people who
works here in the library,
and is not trained
in the library.
So the ideas of discovery and
access were fairly new to me --
you know, I was already --
and I realized that a lot
of what libraries think
about is trying to make
material accessible or findable.
And so, that whole alphabetical
thing is simply age-old
convention to make
materials findable.
And so, I just was
thinking about that --
your page numbers being
another version of that.
And I was just thinking
about that in terms
of what you were saying at the
beginning, about interacting
with the past, and the
forms, and also sort
of making something
new out of it.
So it just struck
me as, you know --
the alphabetical thing is
about the presentation,
and maybe about the user, not
necessarily about the creations.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yes.
>> Sabrina Barren: I don't know.
>> Na'ama Zussman: I think so.
I think it's very interesting
point, and I'm almost --
I would say that I'm almost
positive that it wasn't done --
it wasn't done in linear order.
I don't think that the
other realization was done
in a linear order as well, but
this is how it's presented.
And this is -- this is the
accumulative experience,
the erfahrung that
we start with.
So -- and this is why I'm
speaking about this dialectic,
and the continuous oscillation
between the erlebnis
and the erfahrung.
How do you convey this lived
experienced out of something
that is already accumulated?
And this is why I
brought also Sam Winston,
because this is amazing, how
the work keep oscillating
between the layers of
"The New York Times,"
which is already an
accumulation of experience.
And then Winston turn it into a
flash -- a new lived experience,
and the whole structure
of his --
the formation of his
poem is going backwards.
So he starts with
his erfahrung --
again, the accumulative
experience, and go backward
until he ends at the
lived experience.
And I think this is -- I think
that this is how I
see the artist book.
I think that this is
a -- it's a very --
it's a dialectic artist
phenomena, very different
from other genres
and artistic forms.
And I think that I'm very
much into the critical impetus
of the artist book,
and I don't --
although many other artistic
forms wish to be critical,
political, I don't see this,
with the subversive trajectory
that the artist book offers.
I think this is very
critical form of art.
Beth?
>> So I went to Anton Kohold's
[assumed spelling] lecture
at the Codex Convention a
couple years ago, and --
>> Na'ama Zussman: San
Fran, yeah, two years --
>> -- yeah, San Francisco.
>> Na'ama Zussman:
-- three years ago.
>> Is it three?
>> Na'ama Zussman: I think so.
You were there three
-- I think it was --
>> Anyway, the only term
that was used was
creative differences,
and now it's -- yeah.
But I could tell you that when
I first started on my project
that involved the two sets of
encyclopedias -- two things.
It really took me a while to
realize that they were supposed
to be about the same thing --
and the second thing was
that they all have --
I think have interest
because the other set on --
which is very interesting --
is written in several
different languages,
and very often uses color
to show you the differences
of those languages.
So since I didn't
speak most of them,
it was all a guessing game
anyway, which I kind of enjoyed.
But I have to say I felt more
like I was being conducted
or led through the other
set, whereas this was a sense
of discovery in which
it didn't matter
that I didn't understand
half of what it was.
>> Na'ama Zussman: That's true.
>> I had so much fun -- it's
so much more interactive,
and again, you can choose
whether you go in and out,
and open it up, or how --
>> Na'ama Zussman: That's true.
>> -- and you have this sense
of a collection of ephemera
with some other stuff in there.
But I think that the tactile
sense of moving the pieces
of that book, and the idea with
a notebook that it's a work
in progress, that there's
never really an end to it,
because every new
person who goes is going
to give it a new experience --
I think is what separates it
from the other one, and, for me,
ultimately is more satisfying.
>> Does it remind you
of childhood at all?
>> Yes, to some degree.
That sense of discovery,
like when we were kids --
>> I'm thinking about
the binder.
>> -- yeah, exactly.
That's what I'm saying.
It's a work in progress, right?
Because when you bring
your notebook to school,
it's an ongoing experience.
>> Na'ama Zussman: And you
have -- it's very interesting,
because they have fine-press
prints there, but they're all
in this very cheap binder.
And I think this is fascinating.
The more I am involved in this
work, the more amazed I am,
the more experience I gain,
and it's -- I think --
yeah, I think it's an
amazing realization.
>> There was another question --
>> No, I thank you very much.
This is -- your talk
has taught me a lot
about artist books
and libraries.
You were talking about
categories and genres,
and how artist books
just don't' fit.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Reject, yeah.
>> And I realized -- and I'm a
cataloguer here at the Library
of Congress, and
that's what we do.
We put things -- and we put
all of Na'ama's books together.
We put, you know, Sam Winston's
books together, you know,
American history, and
it's very frustrating
for traditional librarians to
have to deal with them at all,
which is why so many
people want to say, "No,
no, no, it's sculpture.
Send it to the National
Gallery."
>> Na'ama Zussman: I
actually look at --
I actually looked
-- how do you call?
The -- this compendium of --
this dictionary of
how to -- the --
>> Elinor Shevlin: Cataloguers.
>> Na'ama Zussman: -- the --
yeah, but there is a name --
>> Elinor Shevlin: They
come out and -- yeah.
>> Na'ama Zussman: --
the Library of Congress
has its own catalogue?
>> Yes, yes, the
online catalogue.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yeah, so I
-- not the online catalogue,
the how -- the --
the categories, the
catalogue of the categories?
>> Subject --
>> Na'ama Zussman:
Exactly, yeah.
So this is actually -- I'm
mentioning this in my proposal.
I said -- well, after all
this labyrinthian experience,
I'm saying, well, but, there
was an achievement in 1981 --
I think it was 1981 -- that was
the Library of Congress decided
to use the term artist book.
And then, I found this
catalogue online, the --
this incredibly long amount of
subcategories, like you said.
So artist book in this,
and in different countries,
and artist book which are
more photography-oriented,
and so this -- and
it's an endless --
>> It's a real web, and
especially in the sense --
artist books end up in rare book
collections, and so the people
that are cataloguing,
and putting artist books
into categories are trained
in very traditional --
you know, usually
pre-1801 books.
And so, they're rectangles.
They fit on a shelf, and
they go in a straight line.
I mean, this is what we do, and
it's all about finding things.
You know, it's findability,
and so your talk has
helped me think about that.
And I for one -- I enjoy
cataloguing artist books,
because it is sort of a
mind-bending experience,
but many of my colleagues
are very happy about that,
because then they don't
have to [laughter].
And -- but anyway -- so -- but
your talk has helped me think
about this, and how -- it's a
real -- it's a real conflict,
in terms of how traditional
libraries are dealing.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yeah.
Yeah, it's --
>> These works of art --
and is it art in a book?
Because that's all --
>> Na'ama Zussman: -- yeah, you
know, it's very interesting,
because I also find it -- I had
a paragraph that I took out,
when -- at the end of my
discussion of Book 91,
where I said that I think that,
in order to gain the experience,
it should be shown not
through any glass partition,
but it has to be in
library, browsed through.
And then, my advisor read
the talk, and he commented --
he said, "Oh, so now
you're being normative
with all your objections.
What is 'it should be
browsed,' or 'should be viewed'?
You are moving from being
epistemological person,
philosophical, and now
you're talking in terms
of where it should be viewed,
what are the right conditions."
And it was a very interesting
remark for me, and also,
I find myself --
I'm tempt to say
that this book should
be browsed,
but I don't want to go there.
And I think that the artist
book, again, in its essence--
I -- doesn't wish to be
categorized also in viewing --
you know, in terms of
where to view it, or --
>> And don't tell me how
to look at this book.
>> Na'ama Zussman: --
exactly, and I don't think
that the experience
is -- I think that --
again, if I'm talking about
experience, experience --
there is a whole
spectrum of experience.
One cannot say that this book
should be browsed through.
You can have other
ways of experiencing.
>> Sabrina Barren: You had
another -- you had a question?
>> So I was just curious.
I love the books that you've
chosen, and the points
that you've made with them.
Were there any close runners-up,
other books that you thought
made these same points,
but you weren't able
to include them?
>> Na'ama Zussman: I did.
>> Just for time?
>> Na'ama Zussman:
In my research,
I'm just finalizing the
list of books that I'm going
to write about, which is
very different from the list
that was approved at
the proposal [laughter].
No, but this is okay.
I am going to write on "Unhappy
Readymade" of Marcel Duchamp,
and I think this is a very
interesting work that --
using Euclidean book is
literally dismantling the --
the experience of civilization.
Sorry?
>> You've always loved that --
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yeah, I did.
>> -- work.
>> Na'ama Zussman: I
do, actually, yeah.
And there is an Argentinian
artist, but I don't know
if I can pronounce
her name correctly.
I haven't practiced it enough,
and I saw one of her works
at MoMA's library
on Tuesday morning.
Her name is Mirfa der
Misache [assumed spelling].
Do you know her name,
this artist?
Der Misache?
>> [Inaudible] I'm
thinking maybe [inaudible]?
>> Na'ama Zussman: Mir -- no,
Mirfa der Misache, der Misache.
She invented -- I wouldn't say
even writing, but her subversion
against the Argentinian
government was
through the free
set of sets of --
free strokes that she invented,
and the piece that I --
the work I saw at the MoMA's
library was a newspaper.
Which is fascinating, because
it's -- it is categorized.
You have bold titles,
and you have the --
and you even have different
typeface, but it's nothing
about writing, and nothing
that imitate to be writing.
These are free strokes, but
the whole newspaper is --
and this was her way to
go against the government.
And I think it's
fantastic work, really.
The other work that I might
write about is On Kawara's
"I Met, I Read" -- "I Met, I
Read" -- the third one is --
"I Met, I Read" --
I don't remember.
Three -- three -- it
will come to me later.
He documents each of his
deeds on a daily basis,
where he went -- oh, who he met.
I think it's even
more fascinating
than his date paintings,
because at the end,
there are four pamphlets.
All the whole documentation
was done in 1969,
and the fourth pamphlet
is actually an interaction
between all the things --
all the people he saw, met,
all the -- all the places
he was, and this is amazing,
the continuous -- the infinite
possibilities of interactions
of his diaries, of
his documentation.
>> Sabrina Barren: Elinor,
you had another question?
>> Elinor Shevlin:
Yeah, I was --
it's half-question
and half-comment.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Okay.
>> Elinor Shevlin: And
it seems like the --
many of the books that you're
looking at are the 20th,
21st century artist books.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yes.
>> Elinor Shevlin: Yeah,
because I was really taken --
and they're very
different, and this kind
of bolsters your point
about experience.
But these works that have
also come out now playing --
that kind of -- they're
printed works.
They play with print.
Not all the time, but
sometimes, they seem very much
in response to our
digital world.
I'm thinking of J.S. Abrams
and Doug Dorse-esque
[assumed spellings],
with the envelopes
and everything else.
I'm thinking of B.S. Johnson,
"The Unfortunates," like a lot
of Ann Carson's [assumed
spelling] work ,
a lot of the work that comes --
but they're not artist books.
They're something
-- I'm thinking --
so, like, I'm thinking
of "Back to the Republic,
an Illuminated Manuscript,"
that you have artists
created this, too.
I think Kidd [assumed
spelling] did one.
Again, and most -- a lot of
them are book illustrators,
and they've decided
to embark on novels.
And this, for example, reminds
me of a page from either
"Revolution" -- Thurn's
"Revolution,"
where you actually have to
turn the book to read it,
or "House of Leaves," and it
also looks like performance art,
the installation
of text writing.
But what I really like
about this, that there is
so much experience and
movement on the page
without having something like --
where you should
-- performance art.
It can be done with print.
>> But there's also digital.
I mean, a lot of
these texts are --
>> Elinor Shevlin: Yeah,
they're only produced digitally.
They can't be produced
without the digital,
and these are not --
you're talking about --
that's another major difference,
because these are
produced letterpress,
or other ways, right?
But all these other works --
they're actually giving homage
to the printed word, but --
and print, and kind
of celebrating that.
But they couldn't
have been produced
without digital technology
to do them.
>> Sabrina Barren:
I was going to say,
that actually would be produced
in -- first in Photoshop,
or in Illustrator, probably,
and then done palmer plate,
and then printed letter-press.
>> Elinor Shevlin: Okay.
>> Sabrina Barren: Yeah.
>> Na'ama Zussman: That's true.
>> Elinor Shevlin: So it's
digital -- see, that --
all of this, and we don't have
some of these capabilities.
>> Sabrina Barren: Yes.
>> Elinor Shevlin: Which is
also rather ironic, sometimes,
in the sense of handcrafting.
These -- because of what you
said, they're not the same,
but they're kind of
a family, or an --
and they're, I think,
to experience print.
But they're doing
their narratives.
They're not -- and
they're different kinds.
Some of your books are
very much narratives,
but not necessarily linear.
They're experiences.
So it really is more of
kind of a supplement,
or kind of a complement
in to what -- make --
your talk made me think about.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yes.
I actually read the definition.
I can't recall -- who was it?
He said -- he -- open
his book, and said --
he mentioned three books --
Tristam Shandy [assumed
spelling], "Glas" by Derida --
I don't remember the third one,
but these are very nice books.
But they're not artist books.
>> Elinor Shevlin: Right.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Why?
Because they were
not done by artists,
and I totally disagree
with this.
And I don't think
-- I'm not here --
I would say even more than that,
I'm not interested in saying,
"This is an artist book, and
this is not an artist book,"
because then I object
my whole idea
of the constant oscillation,
and the rejection.
I think these are -- these
books are definitely --
evoke experience.
>> Elinor Shevlin:
Yeah, I definitely do,
but other books do in
different -- they have the --
they're more genealogically
akin to these books,
and I'm not getting in a
debate whether you want
to call them or not.
I see a difference in them,
but they're genealogically
connected.
You know, that's --
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yeah, I
saw also a wonderful spectrum
of the layers of experience at
the New York Public Library,
where different artists redid
"Un coup de des" of Mallarme,
which was very interesting.
Because this is -- you
take work that is --
already exists, and you
re-experience it again
and again.
I saw Marcel Boudar's
[assumed spelling] recitation
of "Un coup de des," which
was very interesting, yeah.
>> Elinor Shevlin:
It's a company.
Visual Design does that,
a publisher in London.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yes, yes,
Visual -- yes, yes, yes.
>> Elinor Shevlin:
Did Tristam Shandy --
>> Na'ama Zussman: I have --
I have Tristam Shandy
by them, yes.
>> Elinor Shevlin: --
yeah, they wanted to do --
it was Adam Thurwell
[assumed spelling], not Thurn,
that I was -- I knew
I had that coming.
Forgot his name.
>> [Inaudible] Delaware Library
-- our library director decided
that our special collections was
no longer two collector artist
books, and we asked her
what was an artist book.
>> Na'ama Zussman: And?
>> She had no answer.
And [inaudible] then,
you have to say,
"Well, what is an artist?"
It -- but you cannot
categorize --
I guess the only thing
one could say is,
you know it when you
see it [laughter] --
which may or may not be true.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yeah.
>> Sabrina Barren: Any
other questions or comments?
We should take a few
minutes to look at what --
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yeah.
>> Sabrina Barren: --
brought out for us.
>> Na'ama Zussman: Yeah,
but please let me browse
through the books,
because -- thank you.
[ Applause ]
