An essay on Booklyn Style

(A version of this essay was first published in the Artists’ Book Yearbook 2003-2005, editor Sarah Bodman, 2003, Impact Press at the Centre for Fine Press Research, University of West England, Bristol, Great Britain.)

Another version of this essay was given at the Eighth Rutgers University Annual Book Arts Symposium .

Notes on the curatorial guidelines of Booklyn’s collection Development Department

By Marshall Weber with assistance from Amy Ferrara, Emily Larned, Mark Wagner, and Eleanor Whitney.

History
Booklyn is a non-profit, artist run organization located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York. Our mission is to promote artist books as an art form and an educational resource, to provide the general public and educational institutions with programming involving contemporary artist books, and to assist artists in exhibiting, distributing and publishing artist books, prints and related interdisciplinary art internationally. Booklyn originated from the Bookmobile, the distribution vehicle of Christopher Wilde’s Artichoke Yink Press originally located in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1997 the paucity of distribution resources for AYP’s innovative publications prompted Wilde and accomplice Shon Schooler (entymologist and proprietor of Blue Barrel Press) to drive a trailer load of artists books around the United States. They put this artwork directly into astounded librarians’ and curators’ hands. The Bookmobile was an instant success; artists suddenly had a nationwide distribution network directed by a respected publisher, artist and curator of artists’ book. Librarians and curators could now make one efficient appointment with the Bookmobile and see the work of numerous artists and presses. For all concerned a visit from the Bookmobile was vastly preferable than having to organize and suffer through dozens of potentially uncomfortable individual meetings.

In 1999 two years after relocating in New York City the Bookmobile outgrew the car and ramshackle trailer that Christopher and Shon had toured throughout the United States. AYP then spawned Booklyn, which started as an informal association of about ten artist/staff-members running the organization in New York and ten other represented artists from across the United States. In the next two years, as its reputation for both fiscal and curatorial integrity grew, Booklyn has expanded to over forty associated artists and one hundred affiliated institutions, with various programs serving thousands of people every year. Recently Booklyn initiated its international Booklyn Bridge program. The ‘Bridge’ assists American institutions in developing international and multi-lingual artists book collections while helping European and Asian collections in developing their American artist book collections. At this time Booklyn Bridge represents ten artists from around the world (England, Belgium, France, Germany, and Japan), works with ten European collections, and has a distribution partnership with Editions Despalles in Paris, France.

Why?
Booklyn flourishes because there is a basic need in the book arts field for an organization committed to serving the public and professional artists. Booklyn is possible because there is an enthusiastic group of publishers, artists and institutions committed to the maturation and expansion of the field and medium of artists books. Artists books have recently re-entered the validated palette of media used by contemporary artists as defined by the artworld and academia. This validation has prompted a renewed enthusiasm for artists books by colleges, their students, and public and private libraries. Artists books are the rare books of the future and librarians appreciate the form as a valuable tool for both reactivating their collections and as bridges to the future of the library as a multi-media depository of interdisciplinary knowledge.

Although the book has always been a ubiquitous media for artists globally, recent interest in artists books has re-conceptualized the form as a dynamic new integrated art and literary medium. Artists books now share the same cache of other new genre media (including digital, installation and performance art) while still maintaining a historical alignment with book craft, literature, printing, and photography. It is the ability of the artist book to integrate both new and traditional media that makes it such an exciting medium to work with at this time. We have just entered another liberating, art historical moment similar to the one when painting and drawing were liberated from documentary work by the advent of photography. The book and printing press have been freed from their literary and imagistic constraints by the ease and access of digital reproduction and a hungry artworld seeking new media. Printers! - you will never have to print another wedding invitation again! But you may have to get a day job and work with cranky artists late at night; every techno-cultural transition phase comes with plusses and minuses.

Style
Taking full advantage of the above described new found freedom Booklyn staff and associates interests range from traditional bookforms to the semiotics, performative and interactive aspects of the book. ‘Book’ can mean arranging the planting of people in the ground as a part of an exhibition pairing antique and contemporary botanicals (as in the Vegetable Mind performance of the Parallel Botany exhibition). ‘Book!’ can also mean poet Jen Benka reading the entire text of her "A Re-visioning of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States." (one poem for each of the 52 words in the Pre-amble) at the book’s publishing party at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC.

While Booklyn has no rigid curatorial guidelines, the staff, board and associated artists have a vague consensus regarding Booklyn curatorial prerogatives. The books published under the Booklyn imprint and the books represented and exhibited in Booklyn collection development and exhibition programs follow these curatorial prerogatives.

1. No dead people. We love dead artists and writers, some of our best friends are dead. But we feel that enough people in the field deal with the dead. So it is rare that you will see art or writing by dead people in Booklyn books. We’re here for the living, hopefully to extend their state of existence as long as possible. Exceptions will be made for: recently deceased associates (a rare and tragic but unfortunate necessity); appropriate use of dead people’s work in exhibitions, research, scholarship; and with art and writing about historical subject matter (especially with previously unpublished material by dead people as used by living artists and writers.)

2. Be fresh! Booklyn likes new art, books and writing and while we are proud to be multi-generational and loyal to associated artists, Booklyn focuses on new work and is committed to assisting emerging artists and writers enter the field.

3. Commit to the codex. Booklyn likes all kinds of art and books, but we are most interested in books that follow the codex form because this form is the most appropriate for the integration of art and literature that sparks our fuses. Exceptions, yes of course, for instance - we love Robert The’s lathe cut books and we love Xu Bing’s giant scrolls and etc. etc.

4. Use fusion. Many Booklyn artists are using interdisciplinary approaches to explore ways to create books where form reflects content. Booklyn is very interested in the interface between traditional and new media. For example combinations of handmade paper, magnetic paper, video books, illuminated manuscripts, digital printing and letterpress, are of vast interest to Booklyn curators. On a similar note some Booklyn artists continue to be fascinated with doing odd things that destroy copy-machines (please note that this comment does not imply the advocating of copy-machine abuse).

Coherent and harmonious integration of material, subject, structure, and technique within the generous paradigm of the codex is a typical Booklyn mantra. We like a good look-see and a good read and we like our hands to feel and think and see as well.

For many Booklyn artists the book is a cultural or material reference point explored in various related art media. Booklyn supports work in all media (such as performance, installation, photography, printmaking, video, digital imaging and internet projects) if it expands or is concerned with aesthetics, form, literature, reading, writing and other subject matters relevant to book art and history.

5. Down with anti-intellectualism. Booklyn is not about modernism or material fetishism. Unlike much of the moribund book arts scholarship of the last century Booklyn is not fixated on reducing artists’ practice into clever categories. I’m going out on a limb here because there is no solid theoretical consensus within Booklyn but there is a distinct post-modern tendency for Booklynites to think about the artist made book as a personal antidote to mass spectacle. To hope that the artist book can be an intimate and tactile alternative to the vaporous (and too often virtue-less) virtual (un)reality of consumer culture. Booklyn imagines that the book provides individual with a combination of aromatic, cinematic, graphic, literary, and theatrical perceptions that cohere in an emotional, intellectual, sensual, and visual experience which then catalyzes a strange mix of affective and cognitive processes in the readers brain! In this (con)fusion of neurological activities, where the semiotic codes of written language intermingle with the abstract perceptions of imagery, sound and touch exists the potential for the most vivacious aesthetic experience (thank you Elaine Scarry, Reading by the Book, Farrar, Strauss, Girard, 1998).

6. Content-wise, Booklyn has a rigorous editorial practice in regards to literary from and content and subject matter in general. Booklyn depends on the input of artists, editors, musicians, photographers, and poets and other writers. We see content and form as inseparable. A great book must have good, mature writing of literary value and subject matter that is either urgent to our times or timeless in its urgency.

7. Let’s be honest. Though Booklyn is not a political organization either legally or culturally. With just a few (and welcome) exceptions the political ideology of the associated artists spans the leftist rainbow from neo-liberal to anarchistic (and I mean anarchy in a good way). This is not as much of a political goal as it is curatorial prerogative. [Secret note for the fine art press people: Booklyn is the place you go when the content of your work has become too radical for your (former) dealers and subscribers!] In term of non-fiction Booklyn curators are primarily interested in books about feminist (and feminine) literature, history, political and social critique, social science and poetry. In terms of fiction the curatorial prerogative focuses on personal narratives (i.e. ‘zine diaries) and poetry. Of course Booklyn is very interested in writing and art that dismantles the whole fiction/non-fiction dichotomy. As a small independent publisher we advocate for freedom of expression and freedom of the press and we are committed to supporting dissenting, provocative and controversial literature.

In terms of realpolitik Booklyn does have specific social goals. We are committed to expand the diversity of our board, staff, associates and audience in terms of race, class, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. We embrace the global movement for civil, human and environmental rights and we support art and literature that benefits that movement. For example, we are now donating the net proceeds from the sale of artist’s proofs from David Rees’ infamous Get Your War On book to the Adopt-A-Minefield program of the United Nations. We look forward to expanding our participation in these types of projects.

8. No navel gazing. Booklyn creates multi-media exhibits about real world topics that might actually interest the public (see exhibitions below). We use innovative installations to provide a total environment that is punctuated by intimate reading spaces where the audience can handle the books exhibited. Committed to making the book arts accessible to a wider public; Booklyn curates and produces thematic exhibitions of artist books and related media for galleries, museums, libraries, schools, universities and other public sites. Exhibitions are modular and available in various configurations. Current touring exhibitions are described below.

…even the birds were on fire…
Parallel Botany
Vegetable Mind

9. Encourage populist tendencies: a report from the field by Booklyn board and staff-member Amy Ferrara. "Sara and I participated in the World Water Day activities on Saturday in Bryant Park (yes, at the exact time and one block away from the start of the Anti-War March!) and worked with some really cool kids on making books!! It was so much fun. We created 3 different pieces about water (two fun pieces with collage & very little text, and one hard-facts text piece with some illustrations) for them to color and fold. I think we had about 10-15 kids stop by in a couple of hours and many of them had just been in the park with their parents who had been at the anti-war gathering. One kid (maybe 5 or 6 years old) had already chosen his profession as "book maker" according to his father. Others just kept on coloring and chatting, and they all got a free clown nose for participating. We had a sheet of instructions for kids who were walking through but couldn't stop to work, so they could take the papers home and work there. We had Booklyn brochures available too. I told the bookmaker kid's father to look us up for future kids workshops!!"

10. A Note on the Pseudo-democratic multiple. While Booklyn certainly encourages democratic practive in both aesthetic form and political practive, in no way is this encouragement meant to prioritize one form of artistic practice over another. A unique book may have accessible form and content and thereby attract an audience of thousands of readers (for example "Christopher Wilde designed "Import/Export", a unique collage book, for mass audience use, it been exhibited in numerous formal and informal settings and was recently displayed at the Frankfurt Bookfair where almost two thousand people read it in entirety!). Thus we have the possibility of a democratic unique book. There is nothing inherently democratic in the cost, form, or edition number of any book. And one must certainly question the ideological intentions of those using the term ‘democratic’ in an aesthetic construct that has actually excluded many artists and writers from getting support for their work as well as actually imposing artificial curatorial limitations on the theory and practice of collection development. The final irony is the fact that academics in powerful cultural institutions supported primarily by non-democratic capitalists would have the chutzpah to define ‘democratic’ form and production for artists and writers.

In Conclusion: The Big Picture
As globalization and its attendant corporate control over governmental policy increases we see a fracture between the traditional relationships between government and academia and the arts. The governing class’s access to sophisticated propaganda and military technology has terminated the traditional relationship between intellectuals and those who govern. Those in power are no longer literate intellectuals (as exemplified by Bush and Berlusconi), they are as much the victim (and target) of corporate cultural hegemony as the underclass. A global culture of television-watching, magazine-reading, MacDonalds-eating consumers will not preserve any inclination to support the arts, the independent press or the hybrid phenomenon of artists' books. And the consolidation of corporate control over the publishing industry and the overt alliance of the media with corporate interests further de-prioritizes the preservation of a diverse and free press.

With this in mind it is urgent for artists, non-profit arts organizations and academia to ally in the preservation of multiple systems of alternative and independent cultural production. As the book arts field expands and matures out of its origins in the genteel world of fine press, private patronage, and antiquarian book-dealers the field must resist the incursion of private interests and control or risk dissolution into the banal corporate culture. Booklyn believes it is crucial to form an international network and database of artists, collectors, educators, book art organizations, and collecting and exhibiting institutions in order to construct a progressive institution that re-prioritizes literature and the arts as resources for human development and provides a critical apparatus to oppose the venal and destructive tendencies of corporate consumer culture.* To initiate this project it will be necessary for the field to reexamine and define its relation and responsibilities to academia, the arts, literature, the free press, the publishing industry, and the general public. In this war torn world of environmental and political crisis it is the responsibility of those with the means (and privilege) of cultural production and distribution to preserve and develop the full spectrum of creative practice and to assist in imagining and enacting solutions to the worlds problems.

*(Please note that Booklyn does not confuse all popular culture with corporate culture, popular and corporate culture are often integrated [i.e. popular culture is often appropriated by corporate mechanisms] but they also have discrete origins, forms, functions and intentions - this is an apt subject for further discussion.)

Two Final Points
Booklyn aspires to look beyond itself and into the field. While we now work closely with many organizations in the field we look forward to increasing the level of interaction and collaboration. At this time book arts organizations have no central association, Booklyn would like to propose the initiation of a dialog exploring how such an association could form.

Booklyn wants to be a model for how artists can take the means of production and distribution into their own hands, thus, both support themselves and developing and sharing the aesthetic and educational resources of artists books with the world. With this in mind we look forward to assisting other Booklyn style artist organizations to form and flourish. Let’s talk.

This page is maintained by Marshall Weber.