SPEAKERS AND GUIDED DISCUSSION SESSIONS

Speakers

Johanna Drucker
Johanna Drucker, the Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, is both a practicing book artist and poet as well as an active scholar in the fields of book arts and media studies. Author of the seminal work, The Century of Artists’ Books, she has also published extensively on the topics of modernist typography, visual poetics, graphic design, the history of the alphabet, and the need for a new framework within which to understand contemporary art. Drucker has been a galvanizing force in the book arts with her insistence on the need to develop a critical vocabulary within the field as well as criteria for evaluating artist’s books.

Audrey Niffenegger
Audrey Niffenegger is the best-selling author of The Time Traveller's Wife and faculty at the Columbia College Chicago MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts. Several of her artist's books have been recently republished in trade editions and she is currently working on her second novel.

Marshall Weber
Marshall Weber, artist, curator and co-founder of the Booklyn Artists' Alliance, vigorously promotes the expansion of the books arts into a contemporary interdisciplinary arts practice through the exhibition, publication and sale of artist's books, works on paper and related installation and performance works. He recently co-formed the Organik art collaboration (with Christopher Wilde and Kurt Allerslev) and the band/performance group The Quantum Mechanics (with just about anybody).

Guided Discussion Sessions

The Guided Discussion Sessions wlll provide a forum for conference attendees to actively engage with other artists, students, and educators in the field to discuss topics of common interest in order to reveal a broad range of perspectives and help shape the discourse of the field. Discussion leaders will begin the session with a presentation which frames the issues and then open the floor for discussion. Sessions will run in two parallel tracks with pairs of concurrent discussions.

Guided Discussions 1: Saturday 11:15 - 12:00

1A: Shaping a New Critical Discourse for the Field - Mary Tasillo, University of the Arts
How can we forge a new type of critical discourse which incorporates creative formats, disparate perspectives, and the wide variety of media that are pertinent to the book arts? How can we liberate our discussions from a focus on form and create a radical criticism befitting our discipline?

1B: Exhibiting Artists' Books: Problems and Solutions - Judith Hoffberg, Umbrella Online
Who should exhibit artists' books (museums or libraries or...)? Why must we exhibit them? How and where should we exhibit them? How can we invite people from different disiciplines to see the book not as a nostalic artifact, but as works that can explain different approaches to technology, science, fantasy, narrative, history, economics, and politics?

Guided Discussions 2: Saturday 1:30 - 2:15

2A: Beyond Artifacts: Book Arts as Practice - Andrew Eason, University of West England
How can different roles and practices within the book arts, rather than the identification of formal elements of value within its artifacts, provide a framework to engage with the field? How might we think about the artist's actions and intentions instead of focusing just on the resulting artifact? How does this reshape our understanding of the field as a place for action, both for the artist and the reader?

2B: Artists' Books and Mainstream Publication - Jen Blair, Columbia College Chicago
Is it desirable for book artists to pursue mainstream publication? How do we develop strategies to familiarize editors and publishers with our artistic aims and convince them of the salability of our books? If mainstream publication is not the answer, how do we create more opportunities for distribution and sale?

Guided Discussions 3: Saturday 2:30 - 3:15

3A: Crossing Boundaries: New Conceptions for the Book - Jonathan Lill, MoMA Archives
As books are needed less and less as conveyors of information in our society, how can book artists refashion them as a locus for pure expression and imaginative experimentation? How can we move away from parochial and antiquated methods and definitions (fine printing and binding, traditional ideas of text and image interaction, dusty concepts of subject and content) and explore other forms of visual and textual production? What can we learn from comic books or Meso-american, Middle Eastern, and Indian manuscript traditions and ideas and styles of text and images which differ so profoundly from those of our print tradition?

3B: Considering Artists' Books Online - Amanda D'Amico and Phoebe Esmon, University of the Arts
How can the electronic database, Artists Books Online, best serve the book arts community? Is it designed to attract people from outside of the discipline? Is it a critical catalog designed primarily for the dissemination of information within the book arts community? How does it relate to the ongoing discourse within the field regarding the creation and maintenance of a canon?

Guided Discussions 4: Sunday 11:00 - 11:45

4A: Graphic Design and the Book Arts - Karen White, University of Arizona
What are the crossovers between graphic design and the book arts? How can book arts and book arts collections be used to inspire experimentation in graphic arts programs. How could the relationships between these fields and overlaps in practices be used to improve both graphic design and book arts education?

4B: Artists' Books and Contemporary Art - Tango Book Arts: Karen Murken, Katie Baldwin & Lindsey Mears
How can the four characteristics of books: visual language, interactivity, containment, and temporality, help to situate book arts within the greater realm of contemporary art? How do they give structure to the artist's book and help us redefine the book as art at a time in which art is moving in a direction that is increasingly accessible and collaborative?

Additional Activities

Editions Class Presentations: Friday 6:30 -8:00 pm
Graduate students Jill Lanza, Joseph Lappie and Liz Wolf, who have just completed a year-long course called 'Editions,' will talk about the processes, challenges and triumphs of completing an artists' book edition. This course is part of the MFA Interdisciplinary Book & Paper Arts program at Columbia College Chicago.