My Book Spine Poetry

As promised, here are my own poetic book spine offerings:

I'm sorry that the image quality etc isn't great. If you're friends with me on facebook, you can see it as an album (which may or may not be better) here.

Book Spine Poetry

I recently discovered the art of Book Spine Poetry, the act of making poems out of book titles or at least the titles given on the spines of books. It's a relatively straightforward idea, but as an art or poetic form its rather playful, taking titles as ready-made poetic phrases and linking them together to create a new poetic object.

The master of book spine poetry is artist Nina Katchadourian, whose Sorted Books project has been ongoing nearly 20 years. The Sorted Books project began in 1993 and saw the artist arrange books from numerous lookings - private homes to public libraries and specialised books collections. Whilst the artist herself claims that "Taken as a while, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncracies, and inconsistencies - a cross-section of that library's holdings", her work also producing some interesting literary results. Here are two of my favourites (my organisation of typed text):

Book spine poetry appears to be taking off on the web, perhaps because it seems to offer the same sort of authorly promise as web2.0 - it is an art everyone can do. Indeed, there are libraries in America holding Book Spine Poetry competitions. Another writer of Book Spine Poetry is cultural commentator and literary reviewer Maria Popova, who posted her attempts on her blog Brain Pickings. Again, two favourites:

Anyway, I thought I'd have a go at some Book Spine Poetry myself! If you're interested you can see my own Book Spine Poems on the next blog post here.

Find the Fragrant World

Anyone who knows me will know I'm slightly obsessed with the music of Yeasayer, having seen them play in June 2010 on Governor's Island in New York. I've been eagerly anticipating their third album Fragrant World, not due out until 21st August, and the wait has just got all the more exciting!

Back in May, an unexpected CD-shaped parcel was pushed through my letter box. On opening, I found it to be a letter from the Band and an advanced CD featuring the song "Henrietta". Dated 'May 1st, 2012', it read:

Dear Human Being,


Enclosed is a burned compact disc version of "Henrietta," a single from our upcoming album. We wanted you to hear it first. Please know you were chosen (1 of 200) at random from over 7 billion people on the planet earth. Pls share w/ the internets.


More details soon.


X- Yeasayer


I was of course insanely excited by this, played the CD straight away and instantly loved it! The band reinforced the online hype this physical release generated by lucky fans like myself with TXTSPK (textspeak) announcements on social media platforms Facebook and Twitter - HNRTTA. This was followed with the internet release of another track "Longevity", also promoted using social meadia - LNGVTY - with both singles available as free digital downloads to fans who preorder the Fragrant World album directly from Yeasayer's website.

Despite this excitement back in May ("Henrietta") and then late June ("Longevity"), I thought I'd just have to be patient for the album's release towards the end of August. I was wrong. Yesterday the band made the following announcement on both their Facebook and Twitter feeds:

Clearly, fans were being fed another cryptic clue. Yet try as I might, I couldn't make PSCYVOTV into a word or a track name, based on the tracklistings for Fragrant World on the internet. Today, the band issued the following letter/photograph:

We have received a message that we are on the verge of embargoed information being leaked through the cracks of the digital universe. Once again an attempt to tell the story before our months can spit. In order to have the edge we have created PSCYVOTV standing for PREEMPTIVE SELF-COMMISIONED YEASAYER VORSTELLUNG OR TRACH VISUALISER.


Using the talents of Yoshi Sodeoka we have created a moving visual for every song on our new album FRAGRANT WORLD and have hidden them all over the internet. The visuals will live on the web until Friday Aug. 3, at 8pm EST. You'll have a few days to find, listen, and most importantly, hear the album from our hands first. at 8pm sharp, PSCYVOTV will be removed.

A challenge has been issued - a kind of 21st century online whacky races for music lovers is underway. Wired magazine have already described the operation as a "scavenger hunt" for fans.

Yeasayer's game isn't just novel though; its downright clever, utilising what Henry Jenkins has called convergence: "the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between media industries, and the migratory behaviour of audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want" (Convergence Culture: 2). Yeasayer fans will access the music in digital and multimedia forums, before they get their hands on their physical CD. And for fans who do engage in this treasure hunt, the investment in the music itself is likely to be all the greater, since they have actively participated in its discovery/uncovery. For these fans finding the tracks is an immersive investment: Finding the Fragrant World means entering it.

I'll certainly be joining the search (and I'll do my best to keep you updated on twitter). For now, I'll leave you with the first track to have been found - Track 3. "Blue Paper".

So, "Blue Paper", "Henrietta", and "Longevity" all found: 3 down, 8 to go!


Here's an Update with links to all the tracks [though they'll be gone by Friday 8pm]:

1. Fingers Never Bleed
2. Longevity
3. Blue Paper
4. Henrietta
5. Devil and the Deed
6. No Bones
7. Reagan's Skeleton
8. Demon Road
9. Damaged Goods
10. Folk of the Schtick
11. Glass of the Microscope

Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature

Over the last few years, I've been involved in co-editing the The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature with Joe Bray and Brian McHale and I'm so pleased that it's finally been published (in June of this year)!

A taster of the book, by way of the table of contents and the editorial introduction to the volume, can be found on the website for Jacket2, an online magazine on modern and contemporary poetics.

For those interested, access it here.

"You've never experienced a novel like this"

About two and a half years ago, I wrote an essay on Steve Tomasula's award-winning new media novel TOC for a special festschrift on Tomasula's work for Electronic Book Review.

The collection of essays is now live on EBR's pages here, including my own piece ' "You've never experienced a novel like this": Time and interaction when reading TOC'.

Hope you enjoy!

The Book That Can't Wait

Buenos Aires-based bookshop and publisher Eterna Cadencia (with the aid of marketing agency DRAFTFCB) have created a profoundly ephemeral literary object in the form of El Libro que No Puedo Esperar, or to translate that into English The Book That Can't Wait.

What makes The Book That Can't Wait so unique is that it has been printed using special ink which, once exposed to the air, will begin to disappear.


The book comes securely sealed, air-tight, but from the moment it is opened, the words will begin to vanish. Within two months, the fiction contained in The Book That Can't Wait will seem to be just that - a fiction - having completely disappeared, the book and its blank pages the only surviving remnants of the stories they once contained.



The Book That Can't Wait is actually a special edition of The Future is Not Ours: New Latin American Fiction, a collection of short stories by emerging Latin American Writers edited by Diego Trelles Paz. It seems that the motivation for the special edition was to raise awareness of new writers - to make reading their works a priority and to provide them with greater exposure. And on all accounts this seems to have worked! The special edition sold out and certainly had a media-buzz surrounding it. Moreover, the marketing campaign won three Gold and a Bronze Lion at Cannes 2012. Here's the promotional video:

As for me, I'm still getting my head around the idea. Both the publishers Eterna Candencia and the ad agency DRAFTFCB contextualise the design by reference to contemporary anxiety over the death of the book, the threat of extinction to the book as physical object created by digital technologies. The Book That Can't Wait certainly engages in a self-effacing debate about its own materiality and immateriality. Yet as a reader and someone who appreciates the book as artefact, I feel strangely torn. On one hand, the concept of The Book That Can't Wait is beautiful and its transience is surely at the heart of this. But I can't help thinking that in three months from purchase date when I find myself looking down at empty pages, I might feel somewhat cheated. For now, like the future pages of The Book That Can't Wait, I'm lost for words.




(With thanks to my friend Tom Stafford for bringing The Book That Can't Wait to my attention.  Visit his blog Idolect.) 

Why We Broke Up

I recently read the book Why We Broke Up, a fiction written by Daniel Handler and featuring art by Maira Kalman. The novel itself is a story of first love, or perhaps first infatuation is the best way to describe it. Why We Broke up tells the story of Protagonist and geeky old-movie enthusiast Min ("short for Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom" p.18) Green's relationship with high school (American) football jock Ed Slaterton.


Why We Broke Up is a young adult book, and reads like one. I don't usually go for books in this genre (though I loved The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larson) but at the time I wanted something light and this ticked that box. Interestingly, when reading this, there is a sense of incredible hindsight: While I did find it reminiscent of experiences of one's first school boyfriend, what struck me was that although it is written for younger readers, perhaps currently in the throws of their own young romance, there are hints of awareness about the relationship at the centre of the novel that offer an adult retrospective, viewed from an emotional distance that Min couldn't possible have.

There are three things that interested me about the book, forming the motivations for me choosing to read it. Firstly, Why We Broke Up is written as a break up letter from Min to Ed. The letter of course guides the reader through the entirety of their relationship from start to inevitable end. However, this means that it is interesting from a linguistic point of view. In terms of deictics, it is written in first person (the 'I' representing Min) to a story-internal character 'you' (Ed). It also means that the book itself is the (anti-)love letter, and the reader therefore appears to have access to this personal dialogue.

On the left, you can see the opening page. It starts with the epistolary genre salutation, 'Dear Ed'. Typographically, these words are presented as handwriting, thus in academic terms, they are considered to function through discursive import by symbolising the act of hand writing, albeit transposed into the context of a printed book. While the font subsequently returns to a conventional looking typeface, the 'Dear Ed' is presented like this in order to intimate the letter format.


Secondly, Why We Broke Up is multimodal. Each chapter opens with an illustration from artist Maira Kalman. Moreover, the pictures are not mere illustrations. They form part of the narrative world since not only does Min directly comment on them, they are also narrative artefacts, objects that trigger stories in the genesis of Min and Ed's relationship. Indeed, the letter-book itself is supposed to come in a box that Min drops off at Ed's door, together with all these objects of doomed young love. The first image (which opens the second chapter) for instance looks like this:

The image depicts the box in which the letter and associated objects are supposed to arrive. The text, too, directly references it: "The thunk is the box, Ed. This is what I am leaving you" (p.3).

The third reason I chose to read this book was the most persuasive. In marketing Why We Broke Up, the "Why We Broke Up Project" was created.

I first heard about of this through The Guardian's life style pages (see the article I first read here) but it has its own website and is promoted on the back of the novel's dust jacket. The dust jacket states, "Min and Ed's story of HEARTBREAK may remind you of your own" and instead of endorsements about the book, features testimonies by famous authors (such as Neil Gaiman, M. T. Anderson, and Brian Selznick amongst others) about their own experiences of heartache. Similarly, the website says, "That's their break up story - What's Yours?" and invites users to post their own testimonies. As a reader, you can also search the testimonies by categories: "I can't believe how disgusting you were", "I can't believe there was someone else", "I can't believe you did that", "I can't believe you wore that", "I can't believe that's what you thought", "I just can't believe it", and "I'd take you back in a minute".

As such, the book becomes part of a larger dialogue in the form of the Why We Broke Up Project. With confessions that are both funny and tragic by turns, the Why We Broke Up Project offers an intimate yet collective insight into heartbreak, and it is this that I find fascinating.

Why did YOU break up?

In Homage to Graham Rawle...

On my walk into work this morning in Leicester, I encountered a solitary playing card lying on the pavement. Of course, it reminded me instantly of Graham Rawle's forthcoming novel The Card. So I hastily took a photo, and this is my homage to him...

Rawle's The Card isn't released until June of this year, and I am already eagerly anticipating its arrival! It looks likely to be a surreal mystery in which the protagonist Riley finds a card, in a similar way to my own discovery this morning. Riley's card however spurns hidden clues and coded messages that lead him down a secret trail...

Sadly, no such enigmas surround my card, a tattered 6 of diamonds. Even a random found card that Rawle mentions on his blog appears to hold more secrets than mine (read the entry here). Oh well... Perhaps I should inscribe my own message and disgard this card on the streets of Sheffield...? Suggestions on a postcard please... or perhaps that should be, a playing card.

The landscape of the book

Just a quick post on another artist making books into sculptural works of art, Guy Laramee. His books works come in the form of two projects, Biblios and The Great Wall. Interestingly, Laramee conceptualises both projects through a story of civilisations, perhaps in a way that offers links to the work of altermodernist artist Charles Avery (see previous blog posts on Avery's The Islanders and Onomatopoeia).

Biblios is based around an ancient peoples called The Biblios. The Biblios invented words for the world around them, and so that they these words didn't die, they began to collect them in libraries. Moreover, the Biblios believed that words contained the spirit of the thing they designate.

The Biblios, as a people, die out, and according to the legend which Laramee writes, "It is generally agreed that Biblios dies under the weight of their knowledge". To read all of Laramee's commentary on Biblios, visit here.

The Great Wall, on the other hand, is about a civilisation from the future, a Chinese Empire of the 23rd Century keen to chronicle the histories of "The Great Panics" of the 21st and 22nd Centuries. The result was a vast encyclopaedia entitled 'The Great Wall'.

Laramee's work are intriguing objects, blending the bookwork as art, with landscape and fictional archaeology. Interestingly, Laramee's own artistic statement links his bookart projects to the supposed death of the book in the early 21st century. He goes on to say:

So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. piles of obsolete encyclopaedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simple IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.

The Other Side - Ian Breakwell

Just about to finish in the new year is a showing of Ian Breakwell's (2002) short video projection The Other Side at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield. During his residency at The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea in 2000, Breakwell was apparently struck by the Pavilion's community, and particularly the tea dances held on the terrace. It is upon this dancing that Breakwell's film focuses.

According to the exhibition material, Breakwell wrote of the Pavilion tea dances: "There was this whole atmostphere with the setting sun, calm sea, cheesy music and old people gracefully dancing. It was almost kitsch but at the same time there was something almost magical about it." Watching Breakwell's film certainly evokes such kitsch magic.

In the film we see the terrace as the sun goes down, the camera moving back and forth while the old couples dance outside on the terrace. All of this is set to music from Schubert and features occasional close-ups of the couples in silhouette.

The movement of the camera, classical music, graceful slow movements of the dances and the soft colours of the setting sun make watching The Other Side a mesmerising experience. It lulls the viewer into a state of serene reflection.

When the film ends, the image fades to black and the music dies, replaced instead by the sound of the sea and gulls. In itself, such sound would not be unsettling; it might be calming perhaps. However, because the preceding film offers a hypnotic lullaby, the ocean sounds are disruptive. They puncture the tranquility and evoke a melancholic contemplation on our mortality and the paths of our human lives...

The Infernal Dream of Mutt & Jeff - Zoe Beloff @ Site Gallery

Site Gallery, Sheffield, is currently showing an exhibition of Zoe Beloff's work, entitled 'The Infernal Dream of Mutt & Jeff'. Having first encountered Beloff's work through Steve Tomasula's new media novel TOC, I was excited about seeing more of the artist's work.

The exhibition seemed to be divided into three key pieces: an animated film of Mutt and Jeff, the central characters of America's longest-running comic strip (created by Bud Fisher), a triptych film combining two old industrial films from the 1950s and a new film starring Kate Valk (of the Wooster Group NYC) and a contextual commentary which featured cronocyclography. All in all, the exhibition puts forward a complex network of works and ideas. The Mutt & Jeff film clearly evokes a sense of popular culture and of media society.

The triptych film is pretty fascinating. The two 1950s films which it uses are Motion Studies Application and Folie a Deux. Both are instructional: the former designed to achieve uttermost efficiency on the production line and the latter to educate viewers as to how to recognise a particular mental disorder. In itself, the pairing of subject matter is somewhat at odds, and creates a tension of meaning. The new film however complicates the art work further, adding another layer of meaning.

In the new film, Wooster Group actress Kate Valk can be seen 'going through the motions'. Her actions, be they related to product-assembly or mental illness are out of joint, out of time; indeed, they are often slowed down so that they become hyper-real, perhaps exposing the mechanics of a capitalist work force. At other times, Valk's actions move in sync with the participants of Motion Studies Application or Folie a Deux; setting up a further dialectic in the form of an alienation of self.

The Croncyclography in the exhibition was perhaps one of my favourite parts. The exhibition material explained, "Frank and Lilian Gilbreth photographed workers performing a task and wired with a light attached to their finger". Afterwards, the Gilbreth's created sculptures based on the light paths. Beloff's exhibition included photographs of Valk's actions in the film:

The croncyclographs show up productive motion of the body. Moreover, it shows up the relationship between time, motion, and capital. The fiscal value of the productive body is shown up in the photos and sculptures as a real and tangible thing.

Zoe Beloff: The Infernal Dream of Mutt & Jeff is on at Site Gallery until 21st January 2012, and is well worth a visit. You can also read an interview with the artist on ebr.

Occupy Comics

When writing the Introduction for The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature with Brian McHale and Joe Bray, I was thinking about the possible futures of experimental literature.

I wrote:

"The present experimental literature, of globalisation and/or altermodernism, seeks to challenge the forces of globalisation, internationalism, and capital markets. In keeping with such subversion, current events such as the 'Occupy Wall Street' campaign might fuel literary reactions. 'Occupy Wall Street' began on the 17th September 2011 in Manhattan's Financial District, and spread to major cities in the Western world. Other recent unrest is not unconnected: the 2010/2011 violent civil uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia stemming from political corruption, democratic deficiency, and fiscal problems, and in Greece and Italy in relation to the Eurozone debt crisis. We may, therefore, envisage an experimental literature that addresses what may be seen as the contaminated rule of capitalism."

Unbeknown to me at the time, but newly discovered, my predication was already coming to fruition in the form of Occupy Comics.

Occupy Comics is a project in its earlier stages. It stems from the conviction that the Occupy Wall Street campaign was originally promoted using art and particularly comic art.


This poster, for instance, designed to promote the campaign clearly draws not only on the iconography of street artist Shepard Fairey's O'Bama poster but also graphic art and in particular the cover art of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta.

The idea behind Occupy Comics  is to tell the stories of the Occupy campaign (without the demonisation that media coverage often injected) through art and stories.

Here's the promotional video:

For more information about the campaign, you can go to the Kickstarter site or to Occupy Comics.

Altermodenist Fiction

I've recently completed editing The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, with Brian McHale and Joe Bray. As part of the collection, I wrote an essay on 'Altermodernist Fiction'. Obviously, I can't share that here, but I'm sure a few details won't do any harm!

Altermodernism is, according to Nicolas Bourriaud, the cultural milieu in which we now find ourselves. Bouriaud introduced this conception of the present epoch and its artistic movement in the most recent triennial at London art institute Tate Britain in 2009. The exhibition, which Bourriaud curated, continued the Tate's triennial project in showcasing the best in new British art. The exhibition featured artists such as Charles Avery, Peter Coffin, David Noonan amongst others.

In the exhibition catalogue, Bouriaud reveals that, to some extent, altermodernism has a literary inspiration: the writings of W. G. Sebald. As such, in my essay 'Altermodernist Fiction', I consider the features of contemporary experimental altermodernist fiction. As I explain, altermodernism is "defined by an implicitly politicised aesthetic resistance to globalisation, refusing standardisation, stability, or stasis". Moreover, altermoderist fiction (in line with Bourriaud's consideration of altermodernist art practices are characterised by the treatment of Form, Time, and Identity.

In the essay, I provide analysis of four texts: W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, Liam Gillick's Erasmus is Late, Brian Castro's Shanghai Dancing, and Charles Avery's The Islanders.

12 Months of Neon Love

Beginning on Valentine's Day 2011, and set to finish in 2012, Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater's collaborative project 12 Months of Neon Love doesn't seem to be a million miles away from Jenny Holzer's work. The project is UK Arts Council funded, and presents romantic song lyrics (1 a month for a year) in red neon on a rooftop in Wakefield.

Heading closer to completion, here's a few the images so far:

Well worth checking out the website!

Postmodernism at the V&A

Back in October, I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London to see their latest exhibition Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990. I intended, of course, to post about it much sooner, but life got in the way a little...

The exhibition sought to provide an introduction to Postmodernism for the general public, offering an insight into its manifestations in a number of different arts, from art, design, and architecture, to film and fashion. I have to say that I really enjoyed it, but I was disappointed that postmodernist experimentation in the literary arts was almost completely neglected. My visit was rather a long time ago now and so, rather than attempt to review the exhibition, I'm just going to mention two works that seemed particularly powerful and evocative to me.

The exhibition started with the death of Modernism and the uprising of Postmodernism. The museum information stated that while any attempts to date the shift from Modern to Postmodern has been controversial and contested, Architecture critic Charles Jencks points to the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project (with its embodiment of modernist design in concrete with its simple lines) in St. Louis at 3.32pm on 15 March 1972.

At this point in the exhibition, the work of Italian architect and designer Alessandro Messini was cited. His art work, Destruction of Lassu Chair (1974) seems to perform and embody the rejection of modernism.

A Lassu Chair, simple and and pure in form and design, was set on fire, photographs laying witness to it as a burning sepulchre. The images captured by the photographs embody an attack on modernist design, the end of an era, and the emergence of a new cultural moment.

The second piece that I instantly loved was an image of a light installation by Jenny Holzer (whom I've mentioned previously in relation to the avant-garde art collective Franklin Furnace - see here). The installation in question, quite typical of Holzer's neon and light projection work, was installed on a billboard between 1984-6.

'Protect Me From What I Want' is beautiful in the way it speaks directly to deeper human emotions while simultaneously working with its location and environment to offer a critical commentary on consumerist desire and capitalist economy. I love this.

Anyway, that's enough from me.
There's still time to see the V&A's Postmodernism exhibition - its on until the 15 January 2012. There's also a basic but interesting powerpoint, intended as a teacher's resource for those interested here.

Gomringer at DMU

In September, Eugen Gomringer visited the UK as part of a celebratory tour of his life's work. As such, Gomringer spoke at the Royal Festival Hall in London, De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester, the University of Derby, and Shandy Hall (home of 18th century author Laurence Sterne) in Yorkshire, amongst a few other places.

Born in 1925, Gomringer occupies an important place in the history of European art and poetry as the founder of the concrete poetry movement. His tour involved readings, talks, and exhibition openings.

The event at DMU exhibited works from the Conz collection, a selection of artworks donated to DMU by Italian art collector and avant-garde publisher Francecsco Conz. The donation, organised by Nicholas Zurbrugg, then Professor of English and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts at DMU, coincided with Eugen Gomringer's first visit to the University in 1996.

L to R: Francesco Conz, Eugen Gomringer, and Nicholas Zurbrugg

From the early 1970s, Conz began to work with experimental artists, such as key members of the Fluxus movement who were dedicated to exploring art in mixed media forms. Through his publishing company Editions Conz, he also produced large scale ink-on-canvas prints of concrete poetry, among which featured many of Gomringer's concrete poetry creations. Gomringer's works from the Conz donation have been exhibited in the Clephan building at DMU, home to the department of English and Creative Writing, and the Faculty of Art, Design, and Humanities.

The actual exhibition of large canvas prints is impressive. I've obviously seen and read about Gomringer's works in academic books and journal articles, but it really was a different experience to see them for real. There were four pieces which I particularly liked. The first two can be seen below.

L to R:

'memoires, memories, memorias' (1983)

'wind' (1953)

As with all his concrete-poetic works, Gomringer makes use of white space to explore the visual possibilities of the sign. 'wind' is rather self-explanatory, the scattered letters evoking a sense of dynamic motion, the letters themselves looking as though they have been blown by wind. 'memoires, memories, memorias' is somewhat more complicated. Gomringer writes the word 'memories' in French, English, and Spanish, arranging them to form a square, but with one side missing. In his talk, Gomringer mentioned this saying that he had deliberately left this absence, for another language, something else, perhaps beyond the sign.

Another of my favourites was 'kein fehler im system' (1969), shown below, which translates as 'no error in the system'.

The clever thing about 'kein fehler im system' is its playful performance of seeming error, amidst a clearly patterned system. With each repetition of the line, the 'f' from 'fehler' moves one position to the right, thus causing an error in terms of correct language use. However, at the same time, there is clearly a system, a code, which structures this concrete-poem. The code itself is exacted perfectly - there is no error in the system - evolving the text until it arrives full circle at 'kein fehler im system' after its series of permutations.

Finally, I can't not mention Gomringer's most famous piece, 'Silencio' (1954).

Again, Gomringer arranges language so that it performs. Here, the word 'silence' is arranged repeatedly in a rectangular shape. To look at, the block black repetition of 'silencio' appears visually noisy. And yet, in the centre, Gomringer leaves a perfect white space. A blank, which iconically depicts its meaning (and creates a synaesthetic mapping), the visual emptiness metaphorically performing sonic silence.

All in all, the Conz collection at DMU is remarkable. It adorns the walls of the second floor of the Clephan building, outside an undergraduate lecture theatre. Its presence there is understated, subtly imposing, and I do hope those who walk past it take note!

Altered Book Workshop

Last month, my friend Alice and I took ourselves along to an Altered Book Workshop, here in Sheffield hosted by the Creative Action Network. The idea behind the workshop was to explore the ways in which old or unwanted books can be transformed into art objects and sculptures. Anyone who reads this blog (and particularly has read the posts on the book-sculptures of  Isaac Salazar and Brian Dettmer) will know that I am interested in the material form of books and their creative potentialities. With this workshop just on the doorstep, it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up! ...Time to get involved and have a go myself!

Charlie Hill, a Sheffield-based mixed media artist, was running the workshop and she began by showing us her own work in altered books as well as work by other altered book artists. Charlie introduced us to two artists in particular for inspiration.

The first was Su Blackwell (who incidentally is from Sheffield!). Her book-sculptures create intricate and complex scenes, often from the realms of a fairy tales and folklore. They really are beautiful delicate installation pieces - See for yourself:

Above: Top Left: 'The Extasie' (2006);

Bottom Left: 'The Baron in the Trees' (2011); Right: 'Hope' (2009)

What I wouldn't give to own one! ...and if you'd like to see more, there is a full gallery on her website.


The second artist was Nicholas Jones, an Australian sculpture. His work is much more about the the ways in which the pages of books can be folded or cut into in order to create new shapes and designs:

Above: Top Left, Bottom Left and Centre are taken from Jones'

'The Tower of Learning' exhibition at Pablo Fanque, Sydney, 2008;

Top right: 'The Blue Wave'; and Bottom Right comes from

'The Garden of Forking Paths' exhibition at Geelong Gallery, Victoria, 2009.

And if you'd like to see more of Nicholas Jones' work, he also has a gallery on his website.

Obviously, seeing these artists works, we had a lot to wonder at! Though I warn you now, this was a beginner's workshop, so don't expect to much! In the workshop, we learnt mostly about the different techniques for folding in order to create new shapes, revisioning the book as it were

This was my greatest achievement for the day, which I've decided to call 'leaves', playing on the pun of the pages themselves being leaves (homage to Mark Z. Danielewski, of course!):








And this is part of the process of folding, created by my friend Alice.







Dan Williamson was also at the workshop and he created three really good pieces, all of which can be seen on his lovely photo blog: 'This is not a refuge', 'donkey cabbages', and 'The Spring and the Egg'.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day. It made a nice change to be more creative!