An interview with Elisabeth Tonnard

Artist Elisabeth Tonnard interviewed by art critic Agnieszka Gratza.

Agnieszka Gratza: Could you tell me about your background and how you came to work with the artist book format?

Elisabeth Tonnard: My background is mostly literary; I studied literary theory and comparative literature for my first degree in the Netherlands. A study of the classics of Western literature: not very experimental at all. There was no component in it on artist books or conceptual literature. After that, I started writing myself but only with great difficulty. You study the classics so much that at first you think, ‘There's so much out there already, what can I contribute?’ As time went on, spontaneously I began making some works that had a more visual component but they were literary and had to do with language. My first book is the reworking of a poem by T.S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. It's a series of poems I developed out of one strophe by applying Tipp-Ex, the correction fluid, to the existing text and seeing which meanings would come out when you covered up some parts. I could turn the word ‘what’ into ‘hat’ by making the letter w white, for example.

  Let us go then, you and I. Acquoy, 2003. Image courtesy Elisabeth Tonnard.

That work was made very quickly; I then spent two years trying to get it published in Holland. It did not fit any literary publishing house, nor any art publishing house. At the time I did not have much knowledge of artist books at all. I knew artists but not artists working with books. I come from a family of artists yet I've always kept away from art, focusing on literature instead. After commenting on my work, an uncle who was an artist suggested that I apply for a grant to publish this book myself. After two years of trying to publish it with a publisher, I got a grant and I was able to publish it myself. I worked with a printer and a binder but I designed it, determined the content and chose the paper.

  Let us go then, you and I. Acquoy, 2003. Image courtesy Elisabeth Tonnard.

AG: Thinking about your wider publishing practice, the books that you make are largely, if not exclusively, self-published in Leerden, your home town. How do you go about publishing them?

ET: They are published wherever I am living. I published some in Berlin and some in Rochester, New York when I lived there. It works differently from book to book. I am currently working on a book I printed myself and that I'm also binding myself, regrettably, I have to say, because it's really too much work. I have a type of inkjet printer that I like to work with. I never used any kind of letterpress or traditional printing press techniques. I mostly have books printed at printing houses and most of the time it's digital printing.

AG: Your catalogue of books lists over 40 items that appeared between 2003 and 2018. Some books are published in limited editions, others as open editions. What dictates whether they are one or the other?

ET: It's sometimes a matter of what I felt like at the time, I have to confess. It's also down to practical issues. I once made an edition where I thought I would make 30 books and I got stranded at 29. For technical reasons I wasn't able to make any more, so then it became an edition of 29. On another occasion, I bought a stack of paper at the paper factory and I could only make so many books out of that one stack. I like the idea of an open edition in the sense that it is then not limited though in a practical sense it may be. You can do it when you do a digital print run. You could make a hundred copies, for instance, and if they're sold out you order more. But the paper you used in the first instance or the printer may have changed, so it ends up being different to the original run. Over the years I've found that it's actually really inconvenient to keep a book available. You just want to go on to the next project when it's sold out and not have to think ‘How did we do that, again?’

AG: Although technically you're not a publishing house, it's very much a business that you manage yourself. You have a webshop and you process orders. Nine of your titles are listed as sold out. The books range in price from 0 euros for The Invisible Book which sold out instantly to 985 euros for the special edition of Song of Myself, which stands out because the other ones are much more reasonably priced. What is special about it?

ET: The special edition of that project I printed myself. It's also quite large, A3-sized, and it comes in a portfolio. It's a very limited edition of seven copies only. That all adds up to a higher price. It's also the last copy that's left now. The price was actually raised. The book version was printed by a printer as a cheap small paperback.

Song of Myself. Leerdam, 2015. Image courtesy Elisabeth Tonnard.

AG: Song of Myself was presented at Friends with Books in 2015. It was at once installed, as part of the group exhibition curated by Savannah Gorton, I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library, and presented on a book stand alongside other books you've published. For me, one of the appealing features of a number of your books is that they come in bound versions that can also be deployed as installations. Could you explain how that worked at Friends with Books?

ET: It was a special edition of the A3 sheets that was shown there. I should first say a little bit about the content of the book. It's called Song of Myself: American Renaissance and it's based on Facebook status updates. The title is a quote from a poem by Walt Whitman. I first found one by Edgar Allan Poe that read ‘Edgar Allan Poe likes his own link’. So I started collecting those updates by Edgar Allan Poe but then I also thought of other authors from the time when he lived, the American Renaissance: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne. I found it extraordinary to think of all those authors doing these very shallow things. Just imagine Emily Dickinson posting a photo of herself. But then what would they actually do if they lived now? The installation at Friends with Books, which took place at the Hamburger Bahnhof that year, was spread over a single wall. I really liked the fact that I could install those sheets of the special edition as a grid on the wall because where people post their updates on Facebook is also called ‘the wall’. So it made sense to show it like that.

Above and Below: Song of Myself (special edition). Leerdam, 2015. 

Installation view in the exhibition I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library,

Friends with Books: Art Book Fair Berlin at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2015. 

Images courtesy of Elisabeth Tonnard.   

AG: Your books strike me as both formally and materially inventive in so far as you experiment with format, typography, layout and even paper brand which all have a meaning you attempt to convey.

ET: I take this into consideration with every book. At the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, which is where I began to learn about artist books, I worked with an archive – the Joseph Selle collection of photographs – housed in the same building. I made a book out of that collection called Two of Us. It combined digitized materials from the archive in which I saw a pattern of doubles walking next to or behind each other in the street with a poem by Baudelaire about seeing the same old man several times over in the street and how uncanny that was. The double is a literary motif, that of the doppelgänger. Going back to the materiality of the book, Two of Us was designed as a novel, in other words not published or printed on shiny coated paper that you see in an ordinary photo book, which would have been great for showing the images. But I wanted the whole book to have a literary feel, to look like a novel on the outside, with the kind of paper that evoked a novel. It also has text on the same pages as the photographs.

Two of Us. Rochester, NY, 2007. Image courtesy Elisabeth Tonnard.

AG: A collection of your poetry in Dutch recently came out published by het balanseer in Ghent, not self-published in other words. Is that the direction you're heading in or are you still excited by self-publishing?

ET: I will definitely keep self-publishing but I see the poetry work that was published by that publisher as a separate thing. Within the field of literature, at least in the Netherlands, it's definitely not regarded very highly to self-publish. That means nobody wanted to publish your poetry. It's best as a writer to publish through the regular channels and in literary magazines. But for artist books that's different; I find that the best work is self-published. Of course it's really developed now, much more than when I first started. There are a lot of artist book fairs now where you can see work. That wasn't so much the case when I started self-publishing.

AG: Joachim Schmid's name crops up in some of your book projects, like The Invisible Book, The Lovers and Joachim Schmid Works, but have you ever worked together or collaborated on a project?

ET: We haven't been able to do that yet. We've responded to each others' works. For instance, he made E-Book, based on a letter he wrote to me. He left only the e letter and everything else he made white, referencing my procedure with Tipp-Ex. He then photographed es in the cities we visited together. And then I published Joachim Schmid Works, showing photographs of him working on that E-Book. He's known for never taking any photographs, so it was a little joke on my part to show that he's constantly taking photographs. But we haven't done an actual project together.

Joachim Schmid Works. Leerdam, 2016. Image by Elisabeth Tonnard.

Joachim Schmid Works. Leerdam, 2016. Image by Elisabeth Tonnard.

AG: Do you ever work collaboratively with people on your books?

ET: I don't think so actually, other than with poets who are already dead. (Laughs.)

AG: Why is that? A book project, at least in my experience of editing an artist book, can be a deeply collaborative experience, for better or for worse. Because of the nature of that particular project, I ended up working closely with all the contributors, the graphic designer, the printer, the binder. And suddenly the project felt out of my control.

ET: That's exactly what I try to avoid though I do collaborate with binders and printers. But I don't have them say how it should be done. I ask for their advice and sometimes they have good ideas but I try to keep it within my vision.

AG: Would you say that's one of the advantages of the artist book format? That you can go with your vision?

ET: Yes, absolutely. The advantages include speed, if you don't have to ask everybody what they think. I made some of my books really quickly, in one night, and sent it off to a printer. You can go as slow or as fast as you want, really. But the end result is a coherent piece and not some sort of Frankenstein's monster book. 

Indirections #1-8. Leerdam, 2018. Image courtesy of Elisabeth Tonnard.

Indirections #1, inside view. Leerdam, 2018. Image by Elisabeth Tonnard.

 

Marina Sorbello in conversation with Chiara Figone from Archive Books, Berlin

MARINA SORBELLO: Archive is many things: publishing house, exhibition space, design studio... Tell me: how did you start and how would you define your work?

CHIARA FIGONE: When Archive started, in 2009, we intended to launch a journal which would focus on artists using archives in their practices. Hence the name Archive Journal. Almost immediately, however, we realized that we were dealing with topics which would require the expansion of our publishing activity beyond the journal, and we started producing artists’ books as well as experimenting with other formats.

    Archive Kabinett in Dieffenbachstraße, 

    Berlin-Kreuzberg, 2009

We consider artists’ books as a space of autonomy for artists. We are particularly interested in artists taking up the role of editors in order to assemble contents relevant to their research. So, artists also play a vital role in shaping Archive, as they work with and on content often differently than authors or academics do, especially in the relationship between text and image.

In addition, we publish anthologies and readers on a broad range of topics which nevertheless still revolve around notions of archives, as well as around the practice of film-making. Video as a medium has long been a central preoccupation of ours, and this preoccupation has also had wide-ranging impact on the way we produce books. As a medium, video has a unique relationship with time which needs to be reflected upon and addressed in the process of publishing a book. This not only means that books dealing with video need to interact with the experience of time imparted by the work itself – be it by reflecting it, explicitly calling it to attention or contrasting it through the experience of time imparted by reading the book – but also to address how the production of video work as a process leads to a different relationship with the book. Often, we address the impossibility of integrating the work itself into the book by integrating a lot of the materials artists collect and produce during the research phase of their work, which then become integral parts of the book’s content, and adds another dimension to how the artwork itself is understood.

Shortly after we founded Archive, we opened our first location in Berlin, on Dieffenbachstrasse. There, Archive became a hybridized space, which served as a bookshop, but also as a library and a space for discussion and sharing, thus playing a very important role by allowing the creation of a network of relationships which have also influenced our editorial line. Quite a few of the books we have published were the result of relationships established through Archive Kabinett. The exhibition space is a more recent development, after moving to Müllerstrasse. A development which has allowed us to further explore the medium of exhibition and present contents across different formats. Archive defines itself through this methodology of working in parallel, organically engaging with the space of the book and the exhibition space.

Archive Müllerstraße, Berlin-Wedding 2017

MS: How do you choose the artists you work with? Do you accept proposals, or do you seek authors based on your own editorial research?

CF: We do both. In some cases, we have contacted artists whose work we consider would be an important addition to our editorial line, but it has also worked the other way around, with artists contacting us because they felt Archive would be able to engage with and present their work in a measured and reflective way. Overall, the most important thing for a publisher is to remain committed to an editorial line, to establish a clear perspective. We thus often seek content which we feel would contribute in broadening and clarifying that perspective. As a publishing house, we not only think of our titles as individual works but also as participating in a broader web of meaning. We choose to publish works not only based on quality, but also on how they will engage with other titles we have published, on whether or not the works will benefit from the conceptual frame Archive provides and, vice versa, whether the title itself will add a layer of nuance to the network of concepts Archive considers its editorial line.

MS: So if I understand correctly, the books you publish are co-edited by the artists and someone from the Archive team... by the way who is Archive, exactly?

CF: I always say “we” because Archive is an extremely fluid group. There are a few people, such as Paolo Caffoni and myself, who have been part of Archive from its inception, people that were based in Berlin only for some years and were instrumental in the making of Archive such as Nicola Guy, people that are with us since many years such as Lilia di Bella, Pia Bolognesi, Alima de Graaf and Annika Turkowski, but also people that started recently and are already making a difference such as Caroline Bourrit, Binta Diaw, Ines Juster, Fatou Kiné Diouf, and Gaia Martino. Broadly, Archive is a collective endeavour: at the moment there are nine of us working at Archive, but that number can fluctuate between two and ten at any given time. To function at its best, Archive would ideally need ten full-time people. This relative instability is partly a consequence of the absence of structural support, as lack of funding can mean we cannot afford having more people working on some projects. We are lucky in that people support us and participate in our activity on a voluntary basis. We wouldn’t be able to afford permanent positions such as Head of Publications or Editor in Chief for the journal.

While this is a situation which has, in a way, been imposed upon us, it must be acknowledged that it is a situation which we have exploited to our advantage: it means that we all participate in all the different facets of Archive, from shipment organization to editorial work, which encourages dialogue and collaboration, an ethos which has informed, and even defined, Archive.

Exhibitions Archive Müllerstraße

MS: You mentioned the issue with lack of structural funding. Let us talk about finances: how do you fund your many activities?

CF: Funding is very difficult, partly because publishing in the art field is a very specific niche which is nevertheless regulated by much broader funding systems and markets. This makes it quite difficult to produce independently – and, in fact, we do not think of or refer to Archive as an “independent” publishing house – because the production of our publications is so tightly conditioned by the broader cultural system, specifically to the public funding system and to private donations. We could say that we are independent from certain systems when we think about what we should publish but on a production level we have to take into acount forms of dependency… To answer your question, finding ways to fund our many activities is a constant exercise in imagination and flexibility: we apply for public funding, prizes and grants, run a design studio, teach at institutions abroad, etc. In practice, it is impossible for us to compartmentalize different projects and practices, so we fundraise for Archive as a whole in order to finance projects and books.  

MS: You successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign last summer.

CF: Yes. It was our first, and probably last, crowdfunding campaign. Despite thinking it is an interesting model, we don’t consider it a sustainable fundraising solution. In terms of financial sustainability and independence, there are a lot of expenses that we cannot crowd-fund. A great example is running costs: as a publishing house, we were unable to write applications to cover rent, electricity, telephone bills, etc. Every publication needed to have its own funding, which is devoted specifically to it by the funding body. Running an exhibition space certainly allowed us to apply for different types of funding.

Last year, for example, Archive was one of the recipients of the Berlin project spaces award, which takes into account running costs, which rarely happens. This 30.000 Euro grant gave us the opportunity to focus on the program and, crucially, allowed us to develop a sustainable ecology between our publications and our exhibitions.

Unfortunately, this is not a grant that one can receive every year, which means that this year we couldn’t count on receiving comparable funding. This can actually become quite detrimental to our activities, because it means some of our attention is diverted towards funding applications and deadlines which is a much more exhausting process than one would expect. It is a vicious cycle in a way, because we lack the funds to ask for funds properly and efficiently, that is, to hire someone who would be uniquely devoted to writing grant applications…

MS: Ideally, in your opinion, how should or could the funding of small-scale publishing houses work? Do you have a vision?

CF: Firstly, small-scale publishing houses deal with the same issues the entirety of the publishing field deals with: scarcity and precarity of bookshops partially due to new online businesses, the decreasing popularity of print media despite increases in number of books being published, the lack of financial margin to deal with high costs of printing and shipment… In the cycle life of any book, there are obstacles at every turn.

These problems are exacerbated in small-scale publishing houses such as Archive because we cannot work with larger distributors due to the fact that we produce books which not only belong to a very specific niche, but also produce them in relatively small quantities. Additionally, online platforms such as Amazon has proven not to be very effective for publishing houses of our size, and, most importantly, selling through them provokes dissonances because, from an ethical perspective, Amazon’s system is not one we wish to support.

Finally, there are other difficulties tied to the fact that Archive publishes art books. From a practical perspective, publishing art books involves costs that one simply does not have to deal with when it comes to plain anthologies and text-based books. Beyond that, there is a lack of understanding of what publishing in the field of contemporary art actually is. It is not a for-profit business. It cannot be. On this last point, there has been some positive developments, notably with Berlin establishing a new award for publishers based in the city.

We think there are ways in which this situation can improve, however. Bookshops still seem like the best platform for publishers like us, as they provide a context in which each publication’s meaning is enriched by its proximity with other publications. Bookshops also allow for relationships between public and publications to form in a way that cannot be replicated online; many bookshops are also functioning as cultural places, hosting events and readings and thereby helping the contents in finding readership.

Ideally, small-scale publishers would work more collaboratively and function like networks or cooperatives do: sharing costs, resources, know-how, applying jointly for funding. We could share storage space, support distributors and people who would deal with funding for all members of the network. This seems like it would be a positive development, but there is no way to know if it would really work like that, especially considering the publishing field seems inexorably competitive…

It could also be interesting to see more cooperation, or at least exchange, between the academic and art worlds. Academic publishing has managed to achieve a kind of sustainability that the “independent” art publishing context lacks, but art books tend to circulate more outside of the boundaries of their own sector in a way that academic publications do not. More interaction along these lines seems to me like it would be mutually beneficial.

Berlin, October 2018

An Interview with Beatrix Pang of Small Tune Press

Beatrix Pang, founder of Small Tune Press, interviewed by Ingrid Chu, art critic and curator.

Susanne Burner, Vanishing Point: How To Disappear in China Without A Trace | 消失點：如何在中國無跡可尋 
(Revolver, Berlin/Small Tune Press, Hong Kong, 2011)

IC: Why did you start Small Tune Press?

BP: Small Tune Press began with my general interest in all things experimental and not mainstream. I enjoyed reading and collecting comics, magazines, zines, art books, flyers, posters, listening to weird stories, and watching cult movies. I also learned a lot about producing images when I was studying photography, but lacked the knowledge about their presentation and dissemination. So, I got to know many international artists' works through reading their artists' books in the school library, and then wondered if any Hong Kong artists ever published books which could be read by other readers overseas? After that, I co-published the debut issue of a photo magazine called KLACK, and then one year later I started Small Tune Press as a response to create and develop a space for alternative artist publications. Also, so I could give myself the time to gain more knowledge about printing, production, and distribution.

Beatrix Pang's art publication collection; KLACK magazine shown in cabinet 

IC: Why is it important for the imprint to be Hong Kong based?

BP: There are various choices of paper and printing technique support in Hong Kong that makes it a good place in terms of resources and for experimentation. The area where my studio is located in the southern side of Hong Kong Island is called Wong Chuk Hang. It also used to be a printing district from the 1970s to the 1990s in Hong Kong, so where many printing factories were located. After all these years a number of printing houses still remain and run their businesses, as well as paper suppliers. This is a great asset for Small Tune Press to be able to stay in the neighbourhood and have them provide support for artists’ book production.

Small Tune Press studio view

Small Tune Press studio view

IC: I’ve seen Small Tune Press publications in many museums and art bookshops, but you also participate in international art books fairs such as Friends with Books this year. As platforms to share artist books have begun to appear more frequently in Hong Kong and elsewhere, how do you see this developing in terms of opportunities for artists and STP?

BP: It is exciting to see the blossoming of art book fairs everywhere! These definitely provide platforms for many creatives to present and expose their printed works in a rather friendly and autonomous environment. These platforms also become a space to exchange and appreciate books for both authors and readers alike, and in a less conventional environment than say a regular library or a bookstore. 

Collection of Book Fair materials

IC: Online platforms are becoming increasingly popular, but perhaps here more than elsewhere they run the risk of censorship that remains an ongoing concern. What relationship if any do you have to digital publishing? How does this affect your work and your your distribution methods if at all?

BP: Although Small Tune Press doesn't produce electronic publications, the online social media channels have become a powerful tool to promote events and information about the print publications. This allows for different ways to describe and promote the book that in turn gets people to think more imaginatively about the physical book even in the virtual space, and finally triggering the desire to further explore its contents, learn more about its maker, and then ideally purchase the book!

IC: What do you see as the future for independent publishing in Asia?

BP: Independent voices remain restricted and obstructed in many places in Asia under different cultural, social, and political circumstances. However, the people making books still find different ways to experiment, express, and deliver their voices broadly. Resources are still a critical issue to many developing Asian countries as well, especially in terms of printing technology and available materials, not to mention the chances to exhibit and distribute to overseas platforms, such art book fairs like Friends with Books. But the diversity of cultures and languages in Asia means that there are still definitely many possibilities for exchange within and beyond the region that can, and are being developed.

Small Tune Press (STP) is an independent art book and zine publisher founded in 2011 by Beatrix Pang, a visual artist and cultural researcher based in Hong Kong. Committed to providing opportunities for artists and creatives from various backgrounds and disciplines, it produces experimental art books and zines in different subjects and mediums for distribution in small editions. STP has also been featured in a number of international art books fairs, exhibitions, and programmes exploring the possibilities for publishing in generating new knowledge around the recent art of Asia. 

All images courtesy of Small Tune Press.

Ingrid Chu

September 22, 2017

An Interview with Claudia de la Torre of back bone books

Claudia de la Torre, founder of back bone books, interviewed by Birgit Rieger, art critic.

BR: Can you tell us about the starting point of back bone books? 

CT: back bone books is a self-publishing project which I founded in 2011 as part of my artistic practice. I started it because of the need to publish my own work, which often takes the form of a book. Learning by doing. As Paul Auster writes in a passage from From hand to mouth: “The-work-to-be-done-that-is-done-in-the-process-of-doing-it.”

BR: How would you describe your programme?

CT: Conceptual. I really put emphasis on why is it a book and not another thing. Every decision gives meaning to the book. The printed method, distribution and edition. Some books are unique, while others are printed on demand. I am an artist and not a graphic designer, so my approach to book-making is different, I guess. I make books because of the possibility of movement and intimacy they bring. Books have to be activated, there is a need for a user rather than just an observer. I do everything from scratch. The editing, distribution, conceptualization. In the last year I've been able to collaborate with people I deeply admire. I'd say Back Bone Books makes artist books or books in collaboration with artists.

BR: What is the title you are most proud of? How did you edit it?

CT: Each one of them is special in its own way. Some of them are set and done in one night, while others need patience and a longer "incubation" time. I personally feel attached to Knaurs Lexikon Moderner Kunst, because it is a round book. It is unique and exists as a part of a bigger work. I basically cut-out the information of the original lexicon, and each of the pages became "unique," reminiscent of a Modernist painting. The three-dimensionality of the book as an object is visible though the overlapping of images. Repetition makes the difference evident. I'm proud of the 25 books thus far, and more books are to come.

BR: In your artistic work you often deal with found material, found book pages, found book titles. You have a collection of analog photographs which you re-arrange and present in book form. In the book Headshot for example, you present photographs from your collection with shots from heads. Another book is called Ten (unknown) gasoline stations. Where does your interest in found material come from?

CT: If I simplify things, I have a love for collections and rearrangements from my father. He has a very large collection of stamps and bills, and we used to spend hours together arranging and rearranging it. I feel like a DJ, sampling from every place just to do my own mix. In the act of putting things back together one can re-imagine them and be surprised by unexpected juxtapositions that bring new meanings. Headshot shots just came from my collection, while Ten (unknown) gasoline stations images come from a website with a purpose of getting information about things people upload.

BR: You also seem to have an obsession for encyclopediae and lexica. For Farbnamenlexikon  you took a colour lexicon edited in Germany in 1950, chose 50 descriptions found in the book, and combined them with 50 images from your photo archive. You also worked with Knaurs Lexikon Moderner Kunst and an encyclopedia for birds. Why lexica?

CT: A lexica as well as an encyclopedia–are books with a goal to organize information by means of language. What stays in? What is left outside? How is the world edited? – I'm interested in those kind of questions. I mean, how to order colour without the use of descriptions?

BR: The book itself is in deep crisis. Do you think the future of the artist book is digital? Would digital versions be an option for your own production?

CT: I don’t think the book is in a deep crisis. I actually think that digital versions are just one more option, though screen will never beat paper. I'm actually at this time working on a book by the name of Books you cannot read on a Kindle.
"The car is faster than the bicycle," said Eco, "but cars have not made bicycles obsolete and no new technological improvement can make a bicycle better than it was before. The idea that a new technology abolishes a previous role is much too simplistic."

BR: You live and work in Berlin and Mexico City. How do you divide your time between the two places?

CT: As an artist I'm pretty much flexible. So ideally, in summer I'm in Berlin and when it gets bitter cold I go to Mexico.

BR: Let’s talk about the interaction with an artist book. Are your books made for viewing, a new reading experience, collecting? What is the experience that you want to achieve?

CT: I want the books to be activated, to get dirty, get lost and found again. No gloves, please!

BR: What are you bringing to Friends with Books: Art Book Fair Berlin?

CT: I am bringing three new titles. I'm very excited about them! Point Break, which is a collaboration with the graphic designer Maxime Gambus. A book printed in Riso that you have to tear apart to create waves given by the white of the paper. Zieglergasse 26/19, which is back bone books’ first newspaper publication, containing photographs that Samantha Bohatsch took while living for some time in Vienna. I will also bring Blind Booking which is a fold-out poster book made in collaboration with  Robert Hamacher. We went on a blind booking trip, ended up in Sardinia and discovered a new territory by getting lost, just as Christopher Columbus did.

BR: You also do an intervention at the fair. What will it be about?

CT: It is a satellite work derived from a book I did for the exhibition The Liberated Page, which is now on view in Geneva. It is a site-specific work using Café Moskau’s atrium courtyard windows. It takes its starting point with the window being viewed as a white page, and the space is connected with footnotes extracted from diverse books as a medium.

Claudia de la Torre is an artist born in Mexico City, she studied at State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe and runs the independent publishing house Back Bone Books.

December 8, 2014

Birgit Rieger

An Interview with Helen Douglas of Weproductions

Helen Douglas interviewed by Birgit Rieger, art critic.

Helen Douglas and Telfor Stokes, Chinese Whispers, 1976

BR: Helen Douglas, you have made bookworks since 1972 and joined Weproductions in 1974. In the early days you and your partner Telfer Stokes produced paperbacks. Could you tell about your starting point?

HD: My own starting point was the investigation of image in relation to book. So for instance, Threads, published in 1974, developed from my exploration of thread threading within and through the book: front and back of the page/s in sequence. It did not involve photograph: I took the physical art work of threaded pages to the printers, who made page scale 1 to 1 line copy and printed offset.

When I began to collaborate with Telfer Stokes, the camera became the means, the vehicle of exploring image and book. It enabled tone and dimension in rendering the image on and illusionistically within the page, as well as constructing the page/s of the book. So for instance in Chinese Whispers the pages of the open spread are constructed as a corner cupboard and this becomes all part of the narrative sequence. What we thought of as happenings: happening in the book. The pea pod opening from the spine with the reader opening the spread, the cabbage pealed to the heart, the fingers leafing each leaf of the book.

BR: Has your perception of what a good artist book is changed since then?

HD: Fundamental to my understanding of a good artist book is the concise use of the physical form of the book, its pages, paper and print in the shaping of the conceptual and visual expression of the artist: making something concrete whether as visual narrative and/or as fleeting visual poetics. Over the years the book has continually reinvented itself for my different expressive needs. As well as the codex form, the concertina and related scroll form have opened up possibilities for the shaping of visual narrative. So have the inextricably related areas of print, paper and binding.

Deuchar Mill, Helen Douglas’ home and production place

BR: You have lived and worked in the countryside of Scotland for many years. Can you describe what your home is like?

HD: I live in the Scottish Borders, an area of Scotland traditionally known for sheep farming and wool – woven tweed and knitted – textiles. My home at Deuchar Mill, is in the Yarrow valley, renowned for its ballads and beauty. The hills around are steep, and grazed by sheep. Trees only grow in the gulleys and by the Yarrow River.

Telfer Stokes and I converted Deuchar Mill into a house and studio/workshop in the '70s. In the 1980s/90s we did all our own offset litho printing and pre-press camera work. This summer with much help from Angie and Si Butler, I got the Vandercook letterpress printing again.

Helen Douglas’ workshop

BR: Nature is an important element in your artistic work. To which extend nature influences your way of book making?

HD: It was a choice to live in the countryside. The day to day living with nature all around me inevitably leads me to working with it. I find it wondrous. Out with the camera, I begin to be lead and something begins to grow. Chinese Whispers was the first published book to consciously bring in the spiral growth of nature in its shaping. Clinkscale in its accordian form, opened out to the expansive green field as an arm’s breath from the chest. In many ways this opening out to the open minutely interconnectedness of nature that I experience bodily has influenced how I work with the flow across the page. This way of working has also been inspired by Eastern looking, with their understanding of nature and their painting/hand scroll/book tradition.  

Helen Douglas and Telfor Stokes, Chinese Whispers, 1976

BR: The book in itself is in deep crisis. Do you think the future of the artist book is digital?

HD: Yes, I do believe the book is in crisis. People say they love books, but nevertheless they are, more and more, buying digital. And that is only going to increase. Industrial printers, the underbelly of book production and publishing are going out of business. Printers will survive and so will books – as a niche specialist market, as a Fine Art. You could argue this is exactly where the world of book meets that of artist book. But when I began to make artist books, exploring the book as physical object and container for the visual we used industrial “non art” means such as offset, perfect binding, in contrast to the livre d’artiste tradition. The books were not conceived as limited editions, but part of the every day – and placed on bookshelves not collectors’ cabinets!

Now times have really changed. The boundaries between artist book and livres d’artiste have gone, traditions are merging and the digital is everywhere, with photography, computer, digital printing, to e digital. And artists working with code have a whole new medium for making art publications. While I can see this potential and would like to explore this further, I do believe my DNA in making is still with books, paper and print. 

BR: Do you still produce hand printed editions at Deuchar Mill? What exactly does this mean – “hand printed”?

HD: When in the late 1970s we set up our own workshop with the Vandercook letter press, offset litho press, and associated prepress dark room we never spoke or wrote about hand printed editions, although we did all the printing. It was our way of taking control of production and producing books in the most economic way we could.

By the late '90s with the digital revolution the computer (rather than dark room) became the means by which to originate, in colour, the manuscript book. In the same period, industrial offset litho printing costs came down (because of digital competition) and it was possible to print industrially once more.

However with industrial printing choices of paper began to become restricted –  if I wanted to keep prices affordable – and I began to want more variety of paper, acknowledging also that the whole field of book publishing and artist books was shifting to an overt emphasis on the textural hand held feel of the book. In 2006 I began to experiment with making small digital archival ink jet printed editions in my studio, using fine light papers – unimaginable with offset – such as Chinese Xuan paper and Japanese Toshu. I conceived as these books as hand printed limited edition books, which is exactly what they are. I’m involved in every part of their making. The beauty of making these books, is I can make more experimental books without huge cost because I’m not producing a 1000 copies. The downside of all this is they are labour intensive to make and therefore more expensive to those who want to buy my work.    

BR: You do produce your own books and you collaborate with other artists. With whom do you work? 

HD: I collaborated with Telfer Stokes for many years. This was an artistic collaboration of the deepest kind sparked by a shared visual and conceptual sympathy. I collaborated with the sound artist Zoe Irvine on Illiers Combray, a joint collaboration in that we spent time together when gathering material, but we then worked completely independently making our respective work, me the book, Zoe the sound CDs for the whole. My collaboration with writers has tended to happen later in the process of making. Marina Warner/A Venetian Brocade and Rebecca Solnit/Unravelling the Ripple. In both cases the writers were approached with my visual idea and much of the book fully formed. In this way they have worked to the visual concept, rather than the visual working to the text. 

BR: Do you collect artist books yourself? How do you interact with artist books? Store them? Use them?

HD: In the early days artists used to send each other books all the time, by post. So quite a collection has built up over years. I also used to buy artist books at book fairs, books I liked, books with a quality of something I wanted to know more about and perhaps achieve in my own work. Recently at fairs there is such a huge tidal sea of tables and books, I honestly feel rather overwhelmed. And don’t buy as much as I used to. I keep my artist books on a bookshelf and look at them, like I would a book.

Helen Douglas, In Mexico in the Garden of Edward James, 2014

BR: What will you bring to Friends with Books: Art Book Fair Berlin?

HD: I will bring a range of Weproductions books that are still in print, as well as current recent work, also my new book In Mexico in the Garden of Edward James. I spent seven days exploring the fantastical, surreal Edward James’ Garden Las Posaz at Xilitla.

I don’t show scrolls at book fairs, for although related to my books they are too fragile and need more space. I like to show the span of my work, as often younger people, have no idea of the early books or the thinking that went into making them. Sometimes my stand can become a bit confusing because of different periods of books and different qualities of their making. But I stand behind them and I enjoy seeing what people are drawn to and what they might like to buy. I can learn a lot from just watching people looking at and handling my books. And I enjoy the conversations that can ensue in showing my work.

Helen Douglas is an artist and publisher based in Scotland and practicing since the 1970s, renowned for her poetic visual narratives.

December 7, 2014

Birgit Rieger