Books Opening Up

Abstract

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 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, 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 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. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 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. …