The suggestion of an extract from Jeanette Winterson’s Art and Lies novel was, I confess, mine. From the moment I’d read the book, years and years ago, I’d been enthralled by her vision of the Library of Alexandria:

300BC. The Ptolemies founded the great library at Alexandria.

400,000 volumes in vertiginous glory.

The Alexandrians employed climbing boys much in the same way as the Victorians employed sweeps. Unnamed bipeds, light as dust, gripping with swollen fingers and toes, the nooks and juts of sheer-faced walls.

To begin with, the shelves had been built around wide channels that easily allowed for a ladder, but, as the library expanded, the shelves contracted, until the ladders themselves splintered under the pressure of so much knowledge. Their rungs were driven into the sides of the shelves with such ferocity that all the end-books were speared in place for nine hundred years.

What was to be done? There were scribes and scholars, philosophers and kings, travellers and potentates, none of whom could now take down a book beyond the twentieth shelf. It soon became true that the only books of any interest were to be found above shelf twenty-one.

It was noticed that the marooned rungs still formed a crazy and precarious ascent between the dizzy miles of shelves. Who could climb them? Who would dare?

Every boy-slave in Alexandria was weighed. It was not enough to have limbs like threads, the unlucky few must have brains of vapour too. Each boy had to be a medium through which much must pass and yet nothing be retained.

At the start of the experiment, when a book was required, a boy would be sent up to get it. This could take as long as two weeks, and very often, the boy would fall down dead from hunger and exhaustion.

A cleverer system seemed to be to rack the boys at various levels around the library, so that they could form a human chain, and pass down any volume within a day or so.

Accordingly, the boys built themselves eyries in among the books, and were to be seen squatting and scowling at greater and greater heights around the library.

A contemporary of Pliny the Younger writes of them thus:

Fama vero de bibliotheca illa Phariaca, opulentissima et certe inter miracula mundi numeranda, siparis ventisque mercatoriis trans mare devecta; nihil tamen de voluminibus raris ac pretiosis, de membris scriptorum disiectis fractisque, de arcanis Aegyptiacis et occultis devotis, quas merces haud dubio sperarent nostri studiosi, renuntiabant nautae, sed potius aulam esse regiam atque ingentem, tecta ardua et cum solo divorum exaequata ut dei ipsi tamquam in xysto proprio vel solario ibi gestare possent; quibus in palatiis tecto tenus loculamenta esse exstructa et omnes disciplinas contineri, nec tamen intra manus studentium venire sublimitas causa. Maxime enim mirabantur tantam illiam sublimitatem quantam nemo vel scalis vel artificiis machinarum evadere posset, nisi tantum turba innumera puerorum, quibus crura liciis tenuiora, quibus animus ceu fumus in auras commixtus, ut Maro noster, per quos denique multa transmittenda sed nihil retinendum. Illi enim circum bybliothecam in tabulates semper in altiora surgentibus collocati, ratione propria quadam ac secreta inter se mandata permutare poterant et intra tam breve tempus unius diei quemlibet librum demittere.

There is no system that has not another system concealed within it. [my emphasis] Soon the boys had tunneled behind the huge shelves and thrown up a rookery of strange apartments where beds were books and chairs were books and dinner was eaten off books and all the stuffings, linings, sealings, floorings, openings and closings, were books. Books were put to every use to which a book can be put as long as it is never read.

Jeanette Winterson, Art & Lies (London: Jonathon Cape, 1994), pp. 4-6.

Isn’t it marvellous? Everyone else in BAO thought so too, or at least enough of us to form a posse while the others did Paper Wrestling (I did PW as well, cos I’m a sucker for participation).

But you know, when it came to actually making the response, I got stuck. There were just SO MANY ideas, most of which involved altered books, and then I had to move house and studio and my year just went pear-shaped. One morning, as I am wont to do, I woke up having dreamed the book I wanted to make. It seems my subconscious never sleeps. And the book had nothing to do with the Library of Alexandria, except…

except that the internet is our LofA now, isn’t it? It holds more than anyone could hope or dream of being able to read in one lifetime, and just like the LofA, it could be destroyed quite easily. All it would take is the inability to generate electricity. Simple. That was my dream, and my starting point.

So I wrote my own story, modelled on the structure of this excerpt (without, of course, the brilliance of it being, you know, Winterson’s writing) and made a book that is unstable. I’ve done this before; the topic interests the hell out of me.

I wanted it to look groovy (ahem) but utilitarian. So the binding is simple wire spiral binding, but on both sides of the book (there’s also a cover that wraps around, spiral-bound on the opposite sides, so the initial view of the work is of a totally encased spiral-bound object) and the pages unfold outwards from the middle. The paper is acid-free, but the ink used to print the book is from my cheap domestic inkjet printer, the kind that pretty much every household has these days, the kind that are cheaper to replace than fix. It isn’t fancy photo-grade archival ink, and it will deteriorate over time. The final question, the one that lingers in my head on almost a daily basis, is printed on the last page, the back of the book, in silver letterpress ink:

It should still be there when the rest of the book is fairly unreadable.

The images, at the risk of Too Much Information, are close-up photos of my jeans taken when I was sitting bored at the dentist while my son was getting his braces fitted. I took one by accident, and then liked the movement of the fibres and threads. I helped it a bit in Photoshop, just enhancing the ‘connection’ twinkles, but the crappy printer created the rest of the atmosphere by itself. Don’t fight it, go with it, always a good motto.

Nothing beats holding the actual book, but I also scanned it and made an online copy. Seemed to complete the circle a bit. It doesn’t quite fit into the template provided by issuu, but that’s not surprising! Click on the link below and see the book in action for yourself.

Quagmire BAO3

If your browser won’t load the image, click here to be taken to the digital file.

The hard copy is 240 x 92mm, printed on two weights of Kraft paper and hand-sewn in a horizontal format. If you would like to purchase a copy, wave your mouse over the top of this page to find the red drop-down Duckshop link. Or contact me directly.

For images of the production, have a look at my letterpress flickr set. For the story of its production, click here.

I have a growing habit of celebrating elections with a souvenir, and this 2010 Federal Election was no different. To celebrate a small window in female supremacy, may I present the Chicks Rule range at Cafe Press.  Apologies: thanks to my residency abroad, I didn’t get to produce anything printed by hand, but I couldn’t let the moment pass… there are t-shirts, both long and short-sleeved in sizes that fit everyone from babies to large people, plus stickers, mugs and totes.

Artist’s book. Manipulated digital inkjet images in a hand-bound black-paper-covered coptic-sewn photo album. Vintage button tie. 210 x 152 x 18mm. Edition of 2. Canberra: Ampersand Duck, 2005.

Family photos are redolent with memories and associations. When one member of the family chooses to die, everything changes. Images are no longer simple narratives or innocent souvenirs; they become tainted by what is left behind.

Contact me for more details or to purchase. I will send you an invoice that can be paid by Paypal, EFT or cheque.

This is part 4 of 4 posts. For details about the physical aspect of this book and the original premise, go to the first post, here. 2nd post. 3rd post.

Essentially, this is an on-line recreation of a book consisting of three sets of postcards revolving around a set of short writings by Henri Michaux.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

IX

X

XI

XII

This is part 3 of 4 posts. For details about the physical aspect of this book and the original premise, go to the first post, here. 2nd post. 4th post.Essentially, this is an on-line recreation of a book consisting of three sets of postcards revolving around a set of short writings by Henri Michaux.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

V

VI

VII

VIII

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

II

III

IV

Digital images, laserprinted text, pen, ink and gold paint on paper, custom perspex cover. Unique, Canberra: Editioning & Artists Book Studio, NITA, 2000. Currently with Arki von Optropp, Artist’s Book Dealer, Sydney.

This is the first of four posts on this book. 2nd post. 3rd post. 4th post.

Made during my visual art degree, when I was having a major crush on the writings of Henri Michaux. This is a work about translation. Henri Michaux was French, but there are debates on how French his French was, as he played merry hell with the rules. This set of writings is arranged as one side of a correspondence, and I extended this to include my own explorations into the text.

I made three sets of postcards, and they are all included below, since my unique copy seems to have disappeared with a dealer I haven’t heard from for years, and I spent a lot of time thinking about this project and would like to look at it more often myself.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The first set is below. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over three more blog posts: II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

I