Books opening up.

ACTION/INTERACTION: BOOK/ARTS

COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO CENTER FOR BOOK AND PAPER ARTS

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

JUNE 8-10, 2007

The Action/Interaction: Book/Arts conference consisted of a major invitational exhibition, three keynote conference speakers, eight guided discussion sessions, an open mic night for readings and performance works, and one technical presentation. In its first year as a source for the book arts community, the conference completely subsumed the Festival of the Book, the third fair hosted by Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. Action/Interaction was a relatively open environment offering opportunities to engage through dialogue. For an audience accustomed to hearing about book craft, channels were opened to include other media's influence. Discussion leaders and attendees began to address the book medium's relations outside its own social bounds as well.

Action/Interaction's first keynote speaker, Audrey Niffenegger, is known among book artists for her hand-colored etchings with aquatint that make for fictions of mostly pictures. Since the publication of a bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife (2004), Niffenegger has become better known as a novelist. Nifenegger spoke to the differences between her projects of pure writing versus predominately image-based books, such as The Three Incestuous Sisters: An Illustrated Novel (2005), which was published by Harry N. Abrams Inc. in a much larger edition than viable using hand-printed methods. Niffenegger also reported she is embarking on a serial for the United Kingdom's Guardian Unlimited newspaper as well as reading screenwriters' disputable attempts to adapt The Time Traveler's Wife for an upcoming feature film. Niffenegger is a case in point for the conference's parallel discussion session, "Artists' Books and Mainstream Publication," lead by Jen Blair of Columbia College Chicago. Blair and those present contended over decisions faced by book artists pursuant to attention from major publishers. Tactics for improving artists' books distribution, profitability, and the Internet's potential for opening up new audiences were also debated.

The potential for linking to new audiences was at the core of questions in another parallel session, "Considering Artists' Books Online," moderated by Amanda D'Amico and Phoebe Esmon of University of the Arts (UArts) in Philadelphia. The moderators questioned the general functionality of the in-progress Web site. Johanna Drucker, founder of Artists' Books Online, was in attendance for the discussion and positioned the project as an archive providing access to certain books in their entirety, rather than simply an aid for locating artists' books or an advocate for the medium. D'Amico and Esmon stimulated their discussion by picking apart Artists' Books Online's metadata fields and glossary.

Terminology remains a central point of departure as evident from the session "Shaping a New Critical Discourse for the Field," lead by Mary Tasillo of UArts, as well as "Beyond Artifacts: Book Arts as Practice," lead by Andrew Eason of University of West England. In yet another parallel discussion session, "Crossing Boundaries: New Conceptions for the Book," moderator Jonathan Lill's (Museum of Modern Art Archives) approach was to phenomenologically compare artists' books to other media like architecture and monumental sculpture in a lively philosophical debate.

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Even more energetic was Marshall Weber's keynote address directed primarily at students whose attention he captured by calling for revolt. Weber's talk was inspired by the conference moniker of "Action" as well as its locale, Chicago--historically known for student protest and uprisings against the city's infamous one-party politics. Weber provided a brief history of Chicago's revolutionary past including violent unrest surrounding the 1968 Democratic convention and the "Days of Rage" in the fall of 1969. His talk featured such social groups as the Students for a Democratic Society turned the Weathermen Underground, the Black Panthers, and the Chicago Seven, including Abbie Hoffman. Though only indirectly related to books, Weber's history was supported by examples of Columbia College Chicago student Drew Mattot's public work wherein he asked sidewalk passersby to make a paper pulp portrait of President George W. Bush. For his part, Weber invoked the aggressively playful spirit of Hoffman later that evening during the conference's open mic night. In the ironically jingoistic fourth section of his performance, the shirtless Weber sat with his profile facing the audience while erotically rubbing his crotch until an American flag protruded from his pants like an erect penis.

A performance such as Weber's, along with the multimedia readings by Preacher's Biscuit Books (of which this author is co-publisher), demonstrates the potential for a wide-range of voices in the book medium. The parallel discussion session, "Artists Book and Contemporary Art," lead by Katie Baldwin, Lindsey Mears, and Katie Murken of Tango Book Arts, framed a conversation around the idea that books have characteristics such as "visual language," "interactivity," "containment," and "temporality" that correlate to other media prominent in contemporary art and society. The group offered suggestions for how we may see electronic media, environmental works, and even standard communication devices such as cell phones with text messaging as book forms.

Expanding influences did not lessen the number of books to be seen, however. Hundreds of books were displayed in the Center for Book and Paper's gallery as well as the college's Conway Center. The pluralistic exhibition was coordinated by Bill Drendel to show the scope of book arts throughout the United States. Action/Interaction requested that thirty-one institutions--universities, nonprofit arts organizations, book arts centers, etc.--independently jury exemplary works from their regions. The result was an enormously scaled and varied exhibition with all manner of production and format represented. Though most of the work was made in the last five years, on the surface it was infrequent for subject matter to be culturally contemporaneous. An exception was Ben Blount's H.D.I.C. (2007), which utilizes graphic language and cutouts of Illinois State Senator turned Democratic Party Presidential candidate, Barak Obama. Also noteworthy are the myriad innovations Drendel used to exhibit the books including magnets, filament, and other prosthetics. His mastery proved an excellent illustration for Judith Hoffberg's guided discussion of "Exhibiting Artists' Books: Problems and Solutions."

Drucker, the conference's last keynote speaker, built on her prolific career as a writer and theorist by presenting several projects including the artists' books Damaged Spring: Pink Noire (2003) and Testament of Women (2007), and an in-progress piece investigating three-dimensional modeling for subjective meteorological reports. For the latter, Drucker made light and dark cloud-like graphics to correspond with various pressure systems, i.e. stress levels. As she described it, the graphics may eventually be used to forecast a day's personal weather report. Currently, her methodology and sign system is collected as a research report in a simple volume to be published in the near future. Drucker also disclosed her approach to recent drawings as well her use of corresponding images and texts for Damaged Spring. She closed with a sneak peak of page spreads from her anticipated collaboration with artist and designer Emily McVarish titled Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide, due from Prentice Hall in January 2008. It will include the virtually anthropological representation of the graphic designer's toolbox for each era covered. Previewing the history book segued nicely into the last parallel discussion sessions including "Graphic Design and the Book Arts" guided by Karen White of University of Arizona. Every person participating in the session recounted where book arts are situated in their respective educational programs, as well as the obvious dovetailing of graphic design with making books.

Mergers of this type were the greatest benefit of the Action/Interaction conference. The conference organizers' call for discussion sessions, as well their exercise of pluralism with regard to exhibiting books, was answered by artists, students, and educators open to influence outside the traditional book format. In general, all those who spoke and lead discussions showed their interdisciplinary approach to book arts. Hopefully, those who attended took notes on opening up the book medium even more, as the potential for much further debate and complex discourse on the subject remains vast.

TATE SHAW is a book artist and co-publisher of Preacher's Biscuit Books in Rochester, New York. He works with Journal of Artists' Books and Artists' Books Online. He is coordinating the 10th Biennial Book Arts Fair and Conference at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 2008.