Punching the Keys
2006; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1543-3404
Autores Tópico(s)Digital Humanities and Scholarship
ResumoMost of Edgar Allan Poe's minor essay Marginalia (1844) consists of the writer's verbatim notes in the margins of media publications he had collected. We circumscribers feel the need to get involved with the text in hand. Perhaps we are trying to limit the authority of the text through our active jottings. Or maybe, not wanting to talk with food in our mouths, we write down our observations to forget our own voice, thus making an author's ideas easy to swallow. Whether we are highlighting our approval, encircling differences of opinion, or trimming out the perimeter with asterisks, check marks, and brackets, one thing is certain: we make our marks outside the official printed lines. In Marginalia, Poe states (as an aside) that the reader reads really much, finds his capacity to read increase in geometrical ratio. Artists' books have always operated along the margins of the art world and media culture. To be taken seriously as visual literature, books require more readers, researchers, and critical thinkers as well as better electronic resources that are by some means connected. An agreed upon set of terms would make this development easier. knockout combination of blows was made by Johanna Drucker, one of very few heavyweights in the field, during a lecture entitled Critical Issues/Exemplary Works at last year's Book Arts Fair and Conference (Book Arts--The Next Episode, November 19-21, 2004) hosted by Pyramid Atlantic, a nonprofit contemporary arts center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Brad Freeman, well known as an exemplary artist and the publisher of JAB, the Journal of Artists' Books, coordinated the Pyramid Atlantic conference. JAB began as exactly what its acronym, in fighting terms, signifies. At first is was a one-shot deal, a poke at the sculptural objects that reference the idea of the but don't actually have any of the functional qualities of a book. (1) In the first issue (JAB 1, 1993), Freeman makes a clear distinction between clever gimmicks and projects that use [where] the text and meaning is revealed over time, [that] utilize paper to support the language, citing the computer-driven kinetic sculptures of Janet Zweig as an example of work with real book-like qualities. Certain people fought back. Book sculpture proponents sent heated retorts aimed at Freeman and Drucker's reviews and essays. Drucker, Freeman, and New York City poet Joe Elliot, later joined by Zweig and Cynthia Young, became JAB's editorial board, and published every angry reply, usually flanked with a follow-up response to continue the debate. Drucker was the ringer, supplying a solid foundation of articles for JAB. Freeman states, If I needed something written, Johanna could write it and would write it well. Strengthened by responses (including around three hundred individual and institutional subscribers, occasional production support from institutions such as the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University in Alfred, New York; the State University of New York, Purchase, where Freeman taught from 1994-99; and Nexus Press in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as many fellow artists such as Phil Zimmermann and Clifton Meador [both JAB contributors]), Freeman sought to tell the world about these people who are making books. With an interest and background in the documentary photography of Robert Frank, Walker Evans, and W. Eugene Smith, Freeman sought to show things that are hidden from the rest of the world. His first book, for instance, was a documentary photo and story piece about a group home for people with multiple disabilities where he worked as a house parent in the early 1980s. When he showed the finished artists' book to his grandmother she said, This isn't art, it's sociology. She was right, Freeman jokes. Over time JAB changed from a forum to expose the art Freeman liked into a venue that recognized any serious, energetic, and thoughtful effort. …
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