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<\/p>\nBy Michalis Pichler.<\/p>\n
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Image: Artist’s Book as a Term Is Problematic (pedestal problem)<\/em>, Michalis Pichler, 2019<\/p>\n According to Stefan Klima, three issues dominated the debate around artists’ books (from about 1973 to 1998): publishing as an explicitly political act and the desire to challenge an art establishment; publishing as an implicitly political act and its challenge to imagine a new kind of reading; and finally, the very definition of what an \u201cartist’s book” might be.”[1]<\/a> While the first two issues are still pressing today, the term \u201cartist’s book” now sounds outdated.<\/p>\n To talk about the <\/em>artist’s book in the singular (as opposed to artists’ books as a collective plural) was always paradoxical, because the field has always been extremely heterogeneous. That heterogeneity might be aptly described by the term bibliodiversity<\/em>. With an allusion to the (post)Darwinist concept of biodiversity, Fran\u00c3\u00a7ois Benhamu has described a publishing environment wherein one finds \u201cseveral species, but some are present in huge numbers while others are very scarce, and the ones with many copies are likely to eat or prevail over the others. This is what is happening in the book world<\/a>.”[2]<\/a> In contrast to commercial, mainstream, mass-market publishing of normal and normative books and publications, the bibliodiversity is much greater in the realm of publishing as artistic practice, artists’ books, conceptual publications, cuckoo’s eggs, wolves in sheep’s clothing, sheep in wolves’ clothing, art as books, books as art, books as something else, primary information, bookworks, catalog exhibitions, and hybrid and entirely unclassifiable cases.<\/p>\n \u201cArtist’s book” as a term is problematic because it ghettoizes, enforces the separation from broader everyday practices and limits the subversive potential of books by putting an art tag on them. Robert Smithson discusses this process of cultural confinement when he critiques the \u201cportable object or surface disengaged from the outside world […] Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffective, abstracted, safe, and politically lobotomized, it is ready to be consumed by society. All is reduced to visual fodder and transportable merchandise.”[3]<\/a> Even when books are housed (entombed) in institutional libraries, their sequestering in \u201cspecial collections” and \u201crare book” collections mean that access to them is usually further complicated, typically putting restrictions, rules, limits, and the protocols of institutional bureaucracies between interested readers and the books they might want to experience. Any institution \u00a0(including art libraries, exhibition spaces, and schools) that is serious about such material should acquire at least two copies of each item\u2014and keep one of them on an unrestricted open shelf.<\/p>\n While extended discussions have taken place around the term, including heated debate over whether and where to put the apostrophe in artist’s book<\/em>, Lawrence Weiner once cut through the Gordian knot by concluding: \u201cDon’t call it an artist’s book, just call it a book.”[4]<\/a><\/p>\n A book is a sequential collection of pages, loose leaf or bound, and it is circulating in multiple reproductions. But today, we are no longer only talking about books anymore\u2014more capacious than book<\/em>, the term publication <\/em>is better because it can encompass digital files, hybrid media, and forms we have yet to imagine.<\/p>\n Publishing <\/em>or publications <\/em>as an umbrella term would include any form of circulating information, including books, zines, loose-leaf collections, flyers, e-books, blog posts, social media and hybrids, as long as they are (or are meant to be) viewed or read by multiple audiences.<\/p>\n Moreover, the beauty of publications in contrast to white-cube gallery exhibitions lies in their ability to circulate in less controlled and potentially uncontrollable ways: \u201cWords on paper seem to be not such a bad historical recording mechanism, because I know my books have gone all over the world, and they can’t kill them all.”[5]<\/a> (V. Vale)<\/p>\n The other beauty of publishing is that it permits a great degree of efficiency, or, even better, sufficiency, if one’s lifework fits into a plastic bag\u2014and one is proud of that.<\/p>\n * A different, longer version of this text appears in the introduction to<\/em> \u00a0<\/em>Publishing Manifestos<\/em><\/a>, a co-publication of MIT Press and Miss Read<\/a>, entitled \u201cPublishing Publishing Manifestos.” <\/em><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Stefan Klima, Artists Books: A Critical Survey of the Literature<\/em> (New York: Granary Books, 1998), 7.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Fran\u00c3\u00a7oise Benhamou, \u201cLes assises et leurs suites. Comptes rendus des assises internationales de l’ \u00e9dition ind \u00e9pendante et programme pr \u00e9visionnel d’action 2008\u20132009 de l’Alliance des \u00e9diteurs ind \u00e9pendants” (Paris: International Alliance of Independent Publishers, 2009), 28\u201329.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Robert Smithson, \u201cCultural Confinement,” The Writings of Robert Smithson<\/em>, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979).<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Lawrence Weiner, in conversation with the author, unpublished interview, November 25, 2013.<\/p>\n