There is a shadow publishing system behind the one we know

[imomus]

The best way to communicate the excitement of the art books weekend we've just had in Berlin (Miss Read, the Motto Self-Publishing Fair, and Kiosk: Modes of Multiplication) is to tell you that it evoked the excitement 14 year-old me felt putting together a family magazine using an IBM Selectric typewriter, a Letraset catalogue, and the photocopier at my dad's office. In talks by Zak Kyes and Stuart Bailey that autonomous, polymath, slightly insurrectionary excitement recurred when they described taking over the publications rooms of various institutions (the Architectural Association, the Whitney Museum).



Zak came across as rather more saintly and institutional, whereas Stuart (who appears, from his accent, to be Scottish, but has already picked up some LA twang) is more inclined to paint himself, pointedly, as a pirate, provocateur and parasite -- he happily admits, for instance, that Dexter Sinister developed the idea of "performative design" (producing an issue of Dot Dot Dot magazine live in a gallery, for instance) as a way to raise cash when the grants ran out. Here's a mirrored image of a writer Bailey recommended in his talk, the peripatetic Pole Stefan Themerson:



"Critical design" is a term that came up a lot in the presentations, because for these polymaths design is synonymous with thinking (which reminds me of the REDESIGNDEUTSCHLAND idea, the basic concept powering my Book of Scotlands; that nations can be redesigned too). There was also a focus on the non-separation of style and content; design is not just a slick envelope you wrap around someone else's content, but a process in which the two arrive together, bounced off each other by enthusiastic de-specialised renaissance people, or generalists. In these accounts, a shadow publishing system began to emerge behind the one we know, something like the Court in Kafka's Trial, or -- one of Stuart Bailey's favourite images -- W.A.S.T.E., the alternative postal system in Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49, represented by the muted Trystero post horn.

Two things seemed to be on everyone's lips over this weekend: translation (in which material is inevitably lost or "wasted", but gets replaced by something else), and the relaunched (and self-translating) Korean graphic design magazine GRAPHIC, brilliantly re-designed by young Amsterdam-based Korean designer Na Kim, whose blue hat was bobbing around all weekend.

GRAPHIC is now bi-lingual (English and Korean) and is in the process of getting worldwide distribution. Its summer 2009 issue on Self-Publishing was very much in the spirit of this Berlin weekend, even down to the slightly perplexed sense that we'd seen a lot of covers of attractively obscure underground publications without knowing what exactly -- if anything -- was inside them. But if form and content have been thoroughly melded, and the professions of designer and writer de-specialised, perhaps the cover / inside distinction has become unnecessary. Maybe what awaits beyond the cover is simply more covers -- obscure, intriguing, and expertly curated ones, wrapped around each other like the skins of a print onion.



Finally, an image of the scrambled Freud editions by artist Simon Morris that I mentioned the other day. Freud thought there was a system of shadow meanings behind the explicit meanings of language; Morris reveals a second Freud hidden behind the Freud we know.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The forthcoming Kiosk catalogue and the In Numbers book on artist's publications--Berman's Semina, Finlay's Poor.Old.Tired.Horse, Ray Johnson's Book of Death, etc--from Andrew Roth give me the happy impression that a more nuanced sense of book history and possibility than just 'artist's books' is (re?)emerging. It's exciting! Also lovely to see Stefan Themerson (one of the few artist/writers to register and embrace Kurt Schwitters' presence in Northern England after the war, publishing Kurt Schwitters in England and Schwitters'/Hausmnn's PNINN under his Gaberbocchus imprint) in this context--I was reading Franziska Themerson's cartoon of Ubu this weekend. And thanks for the Graphic tip!

Thomas

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Speaking of the Finlays, pere et fils, I was just reading an account on the Bella Caledonia blog (http://bellacaledonia.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/book-of-scotlands/) of my Book of Scotlands which calls it "reminiscent, or even derivative of Alec Finlay’s earlier Without Day". I've never actually seen a copy of Without Day, so my book certainly isn't derivative of it. That said, Ian Hamilton Finlay is a big presence in the book. With Ivor Cutler and Alasdair Gray and possibly R.D. Laing I'd say he's definitely a magisterial presence in my imagination. Alec Finlay also -- he was one of the first people I sent a copy of the book, and his Justified Sinners influenced a couple of Scotlands. I must get hold of Without Day: Proposals for a new Scottish Parliament. (http://www.librarything.com/work/3270958)

But, as I say in this entry, the main influence on The Book of Scotlands came from its commissioning editor, Ingo Niermann, and the idea (spun out in REDESIGNDEUTSCHLAND and Ingo's book Umbauland) that you can "redesign" a country.

Anyway, here's some of Eck's poetry (http://www.alecfinlay.com/audio.html).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Some glimpses into Without Day, via Amazon:



Cover by the excellent Chad McCail (video of his work (http://www.edfest.tv/?watch=080715_Chad_McCail.flv)).

[(Anonymous)]

Aha, Eck is one of my oldest, closest friends and I'm sure he'll send you Without Day happily--I'll send him this post now. It came out in about 1999, I think? A lovely project, sympathetic with BoS ("derivative" is ridiculously unimaginative). Yes, Ian is a "magisterial presence" in my constellations also; if you're on Facebook, Eck recently started a Little Sparta fan thing that you could join, with wondeful archival pics of the early days of the garden. Also you could read the wonderful selection of letters edited by Thomas A Clark, published by WAX366 and available from Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh. Here's a wonderful letter to Michael Schmidt (of Carcanet), from 1980, tirading against poetry:

"Also, I am not literary. Poems go on about unimportant things. They don't tell you whether you are expected to believe them or not. They use too many words. They suggest desks. They are usually written by people who have no feeling for language, and who think language is words. What baffling stupidity."

Moments of almost Chris Morris in there.

In fact my own modest plan to construct what could be loosely called an 'indoors Little Sparta', founded on 'furniture' and on medieval philosophy of rhetoric (that's obscure I realize) rather than neo-classicism. From Ian the Renaissance emblem form fell into my lap also--such a love of, and feeling for, 'forms' in that sense, of discovering and renewing them, and seeing their relation to (for example) concrete poetry: the garden inscription, the one-word poem, the 'detached sentence', the bird table, the stile, the bench, the emblem, etc.

Thomas

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm already connected with Eck on Facebook, and I joined the Little Sparta fan group a month or so back! Eck's already given me so many free books, I feel bad asking him for another, though!

Language sometimes is words, of course -- I'm just listening to The Poet of Sparty Lea: In Search of Barry MacSweeney (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mf3ds/The_Poet_of_Sparty_Lea_In_Search_of_Barry_MacSweeney/).

I like the idea of an "indoors Little Sparta". What's your second name, if I might ask, Thomas?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I like a couple of Barry McSweeney's books--Blackbird has some nice, dense clusterings as I remember. Thanks for this link! I'll listen this evening. That's great you've joined the Little Sparta group, the photos there are lovely. The model of Little Sparta invokes, for me at least, Giulio Camillo's memory theatre (even if nobody knows quite what that looked like). I don't feel close to IHF's sense of the "non-secular" in relation to the garden, although it's curious how such declarations of certain spaces as 'sacred' seem to magnetize 'desecration', as the Apollo temple was (by Strathclyde Region, in 1980); thinking, at least, of Wallace Berman's similar contretemps with the law, in LA in 1957. To me what's more magical about Little Sparta is that feeling of moving through a lovingly-constructed sign system, or series of overlapping systems--which arose with such beautiful unfolding logic--concrete>objects/inscription>emblem>garden--and being drawn, oneself, into the collaborative construction of thoughts. Really it's the considered housing of information in order to ingest (eat) and reconstruct it as thought that I find especially attractive. (I re-read Heidegger's "Building Dwelling Thinking" essay earlier, since all of those words bear so closely on these matters. Alas it falls to one to rewrite it, as the dependence on isolate rural life is of no use at all.)

And--it's Evans. I'll let you know in ten years when it's underway! At present Providence RI is seeming a likely location, but lack of money is as ever a factor. Didn't stop Ian and Sue, of course.

Thomas

[spanghew.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

The Crying of Lot 39? That must be the secret, hidden Pynchon novel behind the novel we all know, The Crying of Lot 49! Perhaps it can be revealed if Lot 49 is run through a computer program that reconstructs it, word for random word, in a new, secret order.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Lost 10 lots, that's lots! What a W.A.S.T.E.!

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

...the first bears the date 1531; it is the epigraph to De Incertitudine et Vanitae Scientarium, composed by the Kabbalist and astrologer Agrippe of Nettesheim in the disillusioned latter days of his life. He says...

Among the gods, all are shaken by the jeers of Momus.
Among heroes, Hercules gives chase to all the monsters.
Among demons, Pluto, the King of Hell, oppresses all the shades.
While Heraclitus weeps at everything,
Pyhrro knows naught of anything,
And Aristotle glories in knowing all.
Diogenes spurns the things of this world.
And I, Agrippa, am foriegn to none of this.
I disdain, I know, I do not know, I pursue,
I laugh, I tyrannize, I protest.
I am philosopher, god, hero, demon and, the whole universe.

from The Nothingness of Personality - Borges



Genka (http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/09/genka-illustrations-by-tadanori-yokoo/)

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

thanks for the tip on Graphic and Na Kim... what a breath of fresh air!!!!

really.

Started in on the Book of Jokes yesteday... very nice first sentence (or that would be first paragraph actually... )

WTC

[(Anonymous)]

There's recently been an incredibly powerful short series on the UK's Channel 4 about the Twin Towers, broadcasting previously unheard and unseen personal telephone calls and camcorder footage in real time.

I know that you were in NYC when the planes hit, and I would interested to read your account and see the photos you took. Have you posted something on the net which you could link to?

D.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Great! Every writer's dream: a review sentence by sentence!

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

well... ;)
ah, I'm not going to go over 'every' sentence... just thougth... 'blah blah blah...becasue of the taste of my fathers cock' or however it goes...

is quite the intro... really sticks with you... at least me.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's an Arto Lindsay joke!

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

oh, haha. good one.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I must be going mad -- I just found a copy of Without Day on my shelf! Eck must've given it to me along with Justified Sinners and The Order of Things.