Column

Writer

Libraries

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Publishing

Exhibitions

The article reviews several items related to art. Topics include the online publishing and art research website Ibraaz.org; the print collection _Art Criticism & Other Short Stories_, compiled by artist Helen Reed; the Tin Can Studio in Vancouver, British Columbia founded by artists Caroline Ballhorn and Brodie Kitchen that hosts radio shows and community events.

Noteworthy

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Art Museum Sep 1

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MOCA Toronto Sept

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Walter Phillips

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Editorial

For many of us, the context in which we encounter a book or a reading, and the community of readers with whom we share it, is often as important as the text itself. I find it difficult to conjure from memory the contents of a book without being able to recall where I read it, what I was feeling, the people around me, and other things that might have distracted me at the time. For all of us, these peripheral, affective experiences are essential to how we make sense of and incorporate what we read and how we recall it later. For example, I can’t think about Brillat-Savarin’s _The Physiology of Taste_ without also thinking about the small town on the side of a volcano in Sicily where I read it. It reminds me of honey, pistachios, porcini mushrooms, spring snow and the Ionian Sea. I can’t think about any of the essays from Walter Benjamin’s _Illuminations_ without also thinking of all the courses in which I’d read them as a student, or my own courses in which I’d taught them, or the many people with whom I’d discussed their ideas. Books that I read in my childhood or novels I’ve read recently evoke even more powerful memories and associations. The books read over the course of a life constitute an elaborate index of places, memories and communities, both describing and enacting a world read through their authors and their ideas, where the substance of the text and life of the reader are intricately woven together.

For these and other reasons, the spaces in which we engage texts, and how we physically interact with them, deserves special consideration. I always carry a book with me in hopeful anticipation of finding the right time and space to enjoy it, and I leave books in places where I think they might best be brought to life. While editing this issue, I found myself walking through the night to a collection of books kept in a cabin in the woods, where I sometimes stay. This small library includes, among other titles, an 1894 edition of short stories by Tolstoy, a book called _The Indian Tipi_, a 1950 research study titled _Folklore of Lunenburg County_, a rhyming dictionary, a cultural history of attitudes towards night, and an 800-page guide to lichens. I keep these books especially for this place. 

This issue proposes taking thoughtful pleasure in acts of reading as well as in the spaces where we collectively engage with texts: where we gather them, share them and read them. In her article _Soft Protocols_, Jen Hutton writes about the work of Dexter Sinister and their current project, _The Serving Library_, in terms of how they take up many of the material and social aspects of our engagement with print culture and invite a slow and immersive engagement with the processes of creating and reading texts. She notes that there are many texts where their value is based simply on their presence—which unfortunately happens all-too-often in academic or online publishing. Without a reader and a context to inhabit, a text is not complete—it doesn’t have any meaning or action upon the world. However, Dexter Sinister aims to create a context in which the contemplation and dialogue that’s essential to the meaning of a text can occur.

In _Performing the Library_, Adam Lauder looks at works by a number of contemporary artists who stage different kinds of libraries, engaging—sometimes through physical movement—the formal structures through which knowledge is organized and disseminated, often creating new connections between texts and between different political histories and communities. Lauder’s essay also deals with the idea of obsolescence, which has particular resonance as online texts replace printed pages, making increasing amounts of printed matter available as source material for artists. One particularly poetic use of discarded books is illustrated by _Jardin de la Connaissance_ (2010-11), an installation by Thilo Folkerts and Rodney LaTourelle, who collected approximately 40,000 books, configured them into walls, rooms, benches and floors, and then inoculated them with the spores of eight different species of mushrooms. Installed at Les Jardins de Métis in Grand-Métis, Quebec, the books became part of the landscape, exposing their ephemerality as they decomposed. While the artists describe this project as being about the relationship between knowledge and nature, it also evokes an awareness of the potential obsolescence of ideas and the forms by which they are stored and communicated. There is an enormous volume of books that are produced and discarded, or read and forgotten, that over time lose their purpose and value.

In this issue, _Read-in Manual_, an artist project by the Read-in collective, explores the social and political dimensions of reading. Here, members of the Read-In collective propose the formation of groups of readers who solicit a stranger to allow them to create an informal reading group in their home and collectively read a text that responds to this particular space. In a different way, Randy Lee Cutler’s article _A Practice in Reading_ explores the phenomenological experience of reading and how reading books has unique physiological qualities and spatial-temporal dimensions that distinguish it from the experience of reading digital texts. Cutler argues that we need to pay attention to the embodied experience of reading, and she invites us to consider reading as a practice like yoga, meditation or music. The practice of reading has changed considerably over history. For example, Cutler writes that silent reading didn’t become commonplace until about the tenth century, corresponding with the idea that reading allowed one to inhabit a reflective, interior space where the text could be more easily inflected by one’s thoughts and memories. With the wide availability of texts online, reading has become more fragmentary, associative and increasingly social, where one follows particular ideas through hyperlinked articles and Google searches, commenting on things they have read and sharing them with others, without necessarily having read and reflected on the entirety of an article. 

Libraries serve not just as spaces in which to house and organize knowledge about the world, but also to bring particular communities and ideas to life. In _The Whole Earth Library_, David Senior surveys the history of _The Whole Earth Catalog_, a directory of tools and sources of information about sustainable living published in various editions during the late 60s and early 70s. Senior begins with a proposal made by its editors, by building a library assembled from many of the books it describes. _The Catalog_ was in many ways a compendium of what were, at the time, seemingly obsolescent ideas, but which gained critical currency as part of the back-to-the-land and environmental movements that were taking shape at the time. Despite this, the catalog is remarkably forward thinking, in prefiguring the Internet by describing a new global consciousness shaped by ecology, communications theory and cybernetics, and operating as a hub for DIY culture. Like many of the writers and artists in this issue, this piece describes the co-evolving relationship between nascence and obsolescence, decay and regeneration, books and the worlds they describe, and libraries and those who bring them to life.

Amish Morrell is Assistant Professor at OCAD University, where he teaches Criticism & Curatorial Practice, and Visual and Critical Studies.

Editor

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An introduction is presented in which the author discusses the themes of the issue, including the physical context in which we engage with books and texts in acts of reading, a phenomenological analysis of reading, and artists’ exhibitions that touch on the notion of the obsolescence of the printed book.

Editorial: Libraries

Feature

David Senior is Senior Bibliographer at the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York.

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Environment

The article discusses the alternative information system and distribution scheme developed by editor and founder Stewart Brand called _Whole Earth Catalog_, a book which initiated the process of alternative information exchange. Topics include the counter-cultural and environmental leanings of the Whole Earth movement, and the cultural theorists associated with the alternative publishing project such as Norbert Weiner, Buckminster Fuller, and Marshall McLuhan.

The Whole Earth Library

Randy Lee Cutler is a Vancouver-based writer, artist and educator. She contributes essays to catalogues and art magazines as well as maintains an experimental relationship to pedagogy, gardening and walking. Her art practice takes up themes of food and sustenance through performance, video and textual strategies. In the intersections of gender, art, science and technology, she investigates the emergence of new cultural forms and expression. She is an associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, BC.

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Text

Language

The article discusses the science of reading in terms of psychological functioning and biological informational processing. The author details the etymology of the word reading including the Latin _legere_ which also means to select and pick. Topics include the book _A History of Reading_, by Alberto Manguel and the theories of Roland Barthes on the text and the reader.

A Practice in Reading

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International

Multi-disciplinary

The article reviews the 2011 international art exhibition _ILLUMInations_, at the 54th Venice Biennale featuring artists such as Nathan Mellor, Omer Fast, and Thomas Hirschhorn.

La Biennale Di Venezia 54th International Art Exhibition

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The article reviews several public artistic exhibitions which have engaged with the concepts and history of library services, including the 2007 _Arcades Audio Project_, by Kristina Lee Podesva, the 2009 _Border Bookmobile_, by Lee Rodney, and the 2010 _Bibliobandido_, by Marisa Jahn.

Performing the Library

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Artists Books

The article discusses the artist group Dexter Sinister, formed by artists Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt, and the duo’ initiative _The Serving Library_, an alternative publishing bookshop enterprise to spur information exchange and dissemination. Topics include the inspiration of philosopher Walter Benjamin, Dexter Sinister’s art archive website, and the increased writing by artists that accompanies, and is incorporated in, their work.

Soft Protocols: Dexter Sinister's Book and Library-making

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Chris Lee is a graphic designer and educator based in Buffalo, New York and Toronto. His research explores graphic design’s entanglement with power, standards and legitimacy. Chris is an Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo SUNY.

Designer

Publisher

Artist Project

Artist

_Read-in Manual_ is an artist project by the Read-in collective. The project takes the form of a reading group that explores the social and political aspects of reading. 

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Read-in Manual

Review

Kari Cwynar is a curator, writer and editor based in Toronto, where she is Director of Kunstverein Toronto and Editorial Director of _C Magazine_. She writes on contemporary art for publications and catalogues, contributes regularly to _Frieze_ and _Metropolis M_.

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Participation

Social

The article reviews the art exhibition _Models for Taking Part_, featuring several artists including Tobias Zielony, Artur Zmijewski, and Anetta Mona Chisa, on display at the Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, on display from February 19 to May 1, 2011.

Models for Taking Part

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Canadian

The article reviews the art exhibition _Domestic Queens_, featuring the artists Jim Verburg, Jason Hendrickson, Zachari Logan, Ryan Conrad, Liam Michaud, and Richard E. Bump (REB), on display at the Faculty of Fine Arts (FOFA) Gallery in Montréal, Québec, from February 28 to March 25, 2011.

The Domestic Queens Project

Kenneth Hayes is an architectural historian and a critic of contemporary art.

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Video

Installation

The article reviews the art exhibition _The Inhabitants of Images_, featuring the video and text art of Rabih Mroué on display at the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Toronto, Ontario, form February 5 to April 23, 2011.

Rabih Mroué: The Inhabitants of Images

Jovana Jankovic is a Toronto-based writer, editor and translator. She teaches in Centennial College’s Communications and Professional Writing program and works as a communications specialist for the University of Toronto. Her writing has appeared in _Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism and cléo: a journal of film and feminism_, among others.

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Found

The article reviews the exhibition _All Around_, featuring the artist Wim Botha, on display at the Galerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin, Germany, from April 29 through June 4, 2011.

Wim Botha: All Around

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Walking

The article reviews the exhibition _Mongrels_, a walking tour by Gina Badger in two parts entitled “Weeds” and “Elixirs,” which were part of the “Sonic Unconscious” exhibition at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, New York City.

Gina Badger: Mongrels

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Collecting

Economy

The article reviews the art exhibition _Waste Not_, featuring an installation comprised of hundreds of objects by artist Song Dong, on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, from October 2, 2010 through January 16, 2011.

Song Dong: Waste Not

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Animals

The article reviews the art exhibition _The Birds and the Bees_, featuring honeycomb-like sculpture by Liz Morgan, Karen Knorr, and Kristiina Lahde, on display at the Oakville Galleries in the Gairloch Gardens in Toronto, Ontario, from March 5 to June 5, 2011.

The Birds and the Bees

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Religion

The article reviews the exhibition _The Future of Décor_, featuring the video and installation art of Adel Abdessemed, on display at the Onsite Gallery of OCAD University in Toronto, Ontario, from November 26, 2010 to February 13, 2011.

Adel Abdessemed: The Future of Décor

**Annie MacDonell** is a visual artist whose practice is grounded in the photographic impulse to frame and capture. With interests that extend beyond photography, she makes films, installation and sculpture and also has a writing and performance practice. Her performances have recently been presented at le Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2012 she was shortlisted for the AGO AMIA prize for photography, and was long listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2012, 2015 and 2016.

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Photography

Body

The article reviews the photographic exhibition _Something Something_, featuring the photographs of artist Chris Curreri and his series entitled _Puppet_, on display at the University of Toronto Art Centre in Toronto, Ontario, from April 30 through May 31, 2011.

Chris Curreri: Something Something

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Performance

Jennifer Papararo reviews Frances Stark’s performance _I’ve Had it and a Half_ at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. (April 17, 2011). 

Frances Stark: I've Had it and a Half

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Myth

Pandora Syperek reviews the book _Shary Boyle: Flesh and Blood_ (2010), a collection of essays by Louise Déry, James Bewley, and Michelle Jacques, circulated as part of an exhibition curated at Galerie de l’UQAM. 

Shary Boyle: Flesh and Blood, with essays by Louise Déry, James Bewley, and Michelle Jacques

Politics

Harry J. Weil reviews W.J.T. Mitchell’s book _Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (2011)_ published by University of Chicago Press. 

Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present

_Jardin de la Connaissance_  (2010-2011) is an installation by artists Thilo Folkerts and Rodney LaTourelle. Installed at Jardins de Métis in Grand-Métis, Quebec, the project poetically explores the nature of discarded books. 

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Issue 111