Altered Books

I've been grappling with the concept of altered books for a while now, inspired especially by Karen's Whimsy's reliquaries. Initially, I admit I found the whole idea abhorrent. You did what to that book? AAAIIIIIEEEE! You can't be a book lover and not find the prospect of ripping, folding, painting, cutting, gluing, burning (shudder) and just generally defacing a book horrific, even if it results in art. It makes me a little faint just to think about it.

On the other hand, there's a sort of transgressive appeal to it, too.  Remember all those textbooks your friends were fined for in high school after doodling in the margins and shredding the covers (of course, I was never fined but we all know people who were).  Didn't you secretly have just one text you would have loved to wreck? I'd have gladly macerated my Algebra II text by the end of the year. It's a wonder I didn't. This impulse may in fact have led, years later, to a minor plot to collect disused algebra texts from school depositories and secondhand shops to use as end papers in a now-defunct project. (Oh the subtle workings of the Unconscious!) There's a project going on over at Wreck This Journal that's something like this, but with the blank pages of a journal, the ultimate goal being experimental in nature.

Well, it seems the altered book form has been kicked up to the next level.  I ran across this little movie by Alex Itin (below) on the site if:book, a blog which concerns itself with the future of the book. We've had hypertext, hypertext become paper novels, and ebooks, and now we have the motion picture altered e-book, which combines the text of Moby Dick with bits of Orson Welles dialogue and clips and a rock and roll soundtrack:

,

which started out looking very much like a loose-leaf altered book:

. It's a weird cross between an animated story adapted from a book, a flip book, and an altered book. Using the actual text of the story as its backdrop makes the whole piece a sort of meta text was well: story creates images, images create story. A chicken or egg loop of causality.

Maybe that's how I need to approach altered books in general: taking one completed form and using it not just as a matrix for another art form, but as a comment on the original. The altered books I seem to like best operate this way. Others seem to be collages or sculptural objects at best or uber-scrap books at worst. As collage, many of them seem to be so similar as to be indistinguishable in style. They use many of the same elements: ephemera and scrap booking materials. As sculptural objects that's less true because the artists seem to be bolder about altering the actual shape of the book as well as its pages. At the latter level, there's a very fine line, I think, between an artist's book and an altered book.

For instance, the book I'm building for Carlos, the body is as fragile as the thought that holds it in place, is going to have some sculptural elements to it, and some altered text elements as well. We'd talked about printing the text backwards and having mirrors in the cover to facilitate the reading, but that looks like it's not going to be feasible at this point. So I've been thinking about other ways to distort the text and still leave it readable, and also ways to put the title on the cover. We've settled on papers for the cover, one of which (a rusty red Nepalese paper) will be glued tight to the boards and the other (a Thai fabric backed, which is partially made of gauze) will only be glued around the edges to make it a little looser. Carlos & I had talked about using some kind of "found" object in the book, but we'd been stumped as to what to use.

I had a brainstorm Saturday night and woke up thinking about microscope slides. As it happens, I've got eight prepared histology slides left over from a lab in college, and e-bay (have I mentioned how much I love e-bay lately?) has some nice inexpensive collections of prepared histology/anatomy slides for not very much too. I've decided to build little pocket drawers into the covers that the slides will pull out of (on both the English and Spanish covers). And to keep that theme, I'm going to buy blank microscope slides, "mount" a very fine tissue paper on them, and stamp the title on it (I think I'll have to have stamps custom made). I think I'm going to use four slides because there are these great chipboard mailers they mount in quite nicely. I'll cover them in the Nepalese paper, and inset the mailer in the cover, and hold it closed with a strip of artificial sinew and a bone clasp (which I've been dying to use).

And the text itself will be pamphlet sewn and then just a little mutilated, somehow. Cut, run partially through the shredder, overlaid, watermarked, splattered, maybe overpainted with masking fluid and watercolors. I dunno. All that stuff. The latter technique is one I picked up from looking at altered books, so I feel indebted to the form there. So it's not entirely impossible that the two forms feed into each other.  This is one of the things I like about both altered books and artist's books: the kinds of materials and techniques seem to be pretty much limitless. Or limited only by one's imagination.

I hope mine keeps expanding like this. I like it.

Comments

[Kate]

Man, I know what you mean about messing up books. I'm intrigued by the concept of altering books, but can't bring myself to do it. That, and making handbags out of books... I really want to try it, but the idea of gutting a perfectly good volume? ::shudder::

I wanted to drop you a note and let you know that I'm linking to you from my new bookblog. I found your blog via the Book Arts Forum and really enjoyed reading it. Looking forward to seeing more of your work!

[Lee]

Handbags? Out of books? Ooooh, where? Tell, tell!
And thanks for the link, Kate. I've linked back to you too, having found your blog the same way this morning. We've got a little mutual admiration society going here. :^)

[peacay]

Guilt free altered book art. Must have own vandal.