codexinvestigations

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The End of One Chapter

Yesterday we took down the vinyls from the window. I'm sure they were quicker to install! We got a lot of attention from people as we were doing it too, but then whilst the exhibition was on they got a lot of attention as well, with people wandering past and then slowing down to look. I hope they introduced a lot of new people to the bookshop whilst they were up.

For those of you who didn't get to see the window vinyls we turned the front window into a double page-spread, with illustrations on the left page and a dialogue on the right.

The dialogue came from our publication and more specifically from a conversation we had about what we felt about the idea of 'codex'. The hope was that the slightly cryptic, but informal nature of the text would draw people in and intrigue them, starting a little dialogue within them about the nature of books.

I can't quite believe how quickly this project has come about and how much discussion and thought, and artwork (of course), it has created. Now the exhibition, and workshops are behind us, it will be great to spend some time with the publication and to continue to build on the ideas and thoughts started here.

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Thanks!

Thanks so much for all of you that got involved in the project, either through the talks, the publication, the workshops or the exhibition - it was a really memorable event.

So, now the publication is out there in the world.  We hope you enjoy it.

Keep posted for future developments from Collective Investigations and Codex: Between This and That.

For feedback, or further information please contact us at investigationsproject@gmail.com

(Chris)

Photo credit: Amanda Lane

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Clapham Workshop and Talk

Thanks to those of you who attended yesterday's Talk and Workshop at Clapham Library, it was a great event.  It was excellent to see not only how well loved books are, but also the creative ways in which people are making their own books.  Keep up the good work!

(Chris)

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On the first sunny and hot Saturday of the year most of the people were scattered on their picnic blankets around the green spots of London. Not us, though. We had something better to do!

Saturday saw our first workshops in the Shoredich library. For the first one, we had some very bright kids and a couple of exceptionally creative parents. I do hope to teach more groups like that - they could thread the needle by themselves (they could!), they could punch the holes in the right places, they did their folding and sewing by themselves. They were engaged and focused. They were curious and imaginative.

The second group brought a few more adults and the workshop turned into a kind of book arts surgery. Great to see all the interest!

The workshops ended at the Electric Showrooms with a very welcome glass of wine.

Or maybe two.

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This week we have spent a lot of time finalising elements for the publication.  It has been so satisfying to see the print process happening and really looking forward to seeing the final book.

Work for the exhibition is going well, expecially now that we have a little more time to focuss on it.  Really looking forward to seeing work in the space!  Just one more week to go.

The week was broken up by an interview for the University of the Arts about  the project and about life-post university.  The full interview is here:

http://blogs.arts.ac.uk/camberwell/2013/04/11/ma-book-arts-alumni-receive-arts-council-grant/

(Chris)

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Things seem to be moving along so quickly now, as it gets close to the exhibition.  Each day we will be profiling an artist, theorist or creative who has contributed to the publication, in order to give you an idea of how they might respond to the question of the codex.

(Chris)

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Skype and Book Design:

Over the easter weekend we have had a couple of skype meetings which have been a great way to keep the group together while we are in other places. We've been working over the last of the book design and its starting to look great. It will soon be ready to go to the printers. 

It has been a challenge but also really interesting at the same time. When you have a body of really varied work it is nice to put them together in a form that carries the idea of the codex. A compendium of different minds or codex of codices.

(George)

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This week we received the bookmark flyers for workshops we will be running at Shoreditch and Clapham libraries to run alongside the exhibition.

The workshops will teach simple, creative book making skills and are open to all. Please email investigationsproject@gmail.com if you would like to attend. Additional information is on the workshop part of this site.

Aside from the excitement of receiving the beautiful bookmarks, we are also almost at the end of preparing the publication. Soon it will be at the press and after that it will be at the launch on Friday 26th April at the bookshop (starting at 5:30). Things really are marching ahead!

(Chris)

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14/codex: between ____ and ____

MARK COCKRAM LES BICKNELL RICCARDO BOGLIONE MICHELLE BROWN PAUL COLDWELL ALI VAN DAM JANINE HARRINGTON SUSAN JOHANKNECHT SHARON KIVLAND PAULINE LAMONT-FISHER RICHARD PRICE STEVIE RONNIE ERIN K. SCHMIDT ABI THOMAS

Thank you! We are finalising the design.

http://collectiveinvestigations.tumblr.com/book

"If you describe something, it's dead, it's over. I think what we try to do is to do things that can't really be described, that can't be captured" (John Baldessari in Again the Metaphor Problem)

We had an uber-productive day, large part of which was spent working with texts: creating texts, moving texts, editing texts. Among them, was (still is) the one where we had to produce a description of the project for another publication. How easy and how difficult it can  be! We know the concept and we know the ingredient parts of the process. We know the composite parts of the book and the exhibition. We have the workshops planned. We have the readings and the listenings and other sources of research. And then we have the creative process, which often starts in a very orderly manner, before it diverts thorough the unpredictable into the inexplicable. Uh, the creative process...

So how do you write about your own work without reducing it to a set of semantic primitives? How do you translate into words a portrait (of the book) into 300 words maintaining intended fluidity of meaning? Can you?

{Egidija}

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This week started with a visit to Clapham’s very striking new library, a venue that will play host to one talk and three workshops during the project. The library is modelled round a spiralling, Guggenhiem-esque central space, which gives the whole place an airy, contemporary feel. It is nothing like the strictly utilitarian libraries I grew up using.

Shoreditch library, a couple of streets away from the booksrtbookshop, will also play host to workshops and a talk. This is another interesting venue. It is much more traditional than Clapham, but feels like it is really integrated into the local community.

The week was also dominated by an excellent conference at Winchester Art School entitled The New Art of Making Books (after Ulises Carrión), which featured some excellent talks by artists using books. It seemed fortuitous that it was happening so close to codex: between this and that - it shows just how relevant the conversation is right now. There were some really enlightening talks, of particular interest was a new project for the iPad by Helen Douglas and a look into the Penguin Great Ideas book cover designs by David Pearson.

(Chris)

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outside the box

___________ “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.” Groucho Marx. ____________ The last contributions for the book are dropping in. There is a range of views. Moreover - about 77% of people who agreed to write in are somewhere between superb and outstanding at “thinking outside the box”.   I am astounded by the span of thoughts and vocabulary used. Q1: Is it because those people are thinking their thoughts and not mine that they seem  so much more creatively insightful?

The ability to think in novel and useful ways has been the defining feature of humans. We invented the wheel, which is nothing like any of the mutations and instruments found in nature. We invented the codex so perfect, it had not changed it's fundamental structure for over a thousand years. We invented the electricity and the lightbulb. And then we coined the term "lightbulb moment".

This week's Horizon (still available on BBC iPlayer)) was about the brain and the insight and how all of that works: how without thinking logically and methodically we come up with extraordinary ideas. Insight moments, as it turns out, are fleeting and elusive - no wonder I struggle to capture them! They do not come from nowhere, but they are a result of a chain of events and they require awareness bordering obsession. Each problem has an insight bubbling in the background. It is the right hemisphere, apparently, that is capable to making far reaching connections. Q2. Do people, who are blind in the right eye - so all input information is first streamed to their right hemisphere - make more insightful associations?

In two weeks I am going to the lecture by Professor Vincent Walsh about lightbulb moments. I expect it will be currious and illuminating. ←This sounds like one of those James Bond puns. Very uncreative of me.

 {Egidija}

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Things are moving so quickly here. We have received some excellent contributions for the publication that will support the exhibition. The idea for the publication, which will also be called codex: betweenthis and that, has developed quickly over the past few weeks and will now be a significant piece of work in itself, featuring new artworks and writings from familiar names. The publication will look at the many ways in which the humble codex transcends its form.

The intention of the show (which will take place at the bookartbookshop) is to present new art created in response to the shop, a significant venue in the independent UK art scene, a place that is particularly central to the history of artists using books, text and language.

Spurred on by the excellent response to This Journey is a Book (below) I am keen to continue exploring the idea of the codex as catalyst for a journey.

(Chris)

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An insight into thinking. Between thinking and doing. Between imagined and real.

Its nice to be able to sit down for an evening and think about the work for the show. But what struck me was that there might be a lot of similarity between what we show in the book shop and what is already there. If only in terms of subject not in look. How do we make what we show more real is a challenge we face. To use the lovely phrase 'I cant see the wood for the trees' people might not be able to 'see the book arts for the books'. 

I'm not sure how we will overcome this until the project develops or if it is a problem at all.  Though I cant help but draw parallels between an element of Renaissance painting that is fresh in my mind from a trip to the national gallery on monday. The 'Cartellino'. Often found in paintings by Bellini. They are:  'a piece of parchment or paper painted illusionistically, often as though attached to a wall or parapet in a painting, commonly with the artist's name or that of a sitter... painted as a piece of unfolded paper with creases still visible. It creates the illusion of being almost part of the real, rather than the painted (illusionistic), space.'  http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/cartellino

Its as almost as if the painter wanted his identity to be more real than the painting itself. Almost as if to remind us that the artist exists in the real and that the painting is and echo of reality. In a way that is what every book in the book shop represents to the artist that creates it. It might be self centered to think so but the book shop is just a collection of stuff in which the 'realness' of the artists work lies.  A book is a closed space that houses the name of the artist but doesn't call upon the rest of the shop. It is a collection yes but does this collection only form the backdrop. I would imagine to most people who show work there it does. Will it to me, I'm not sure. It would be ignorant to discount it as just beautiful surroundings. 

(George)

sources:

quote: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/cartellino

img: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qOZydIzPFrM/Tf4vFP-lSTI/AAAAAAAAA60/B_T1IHkvaTw/s1600/Image+2.jpg

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This morning the mailbox received one more contribution to our book. The last few weeks have been framed by “contributions admin” and “contributions admin”. Plus some banking and printing. Plus very little and very rudimentary cooking - my kids did not mind swapping Ottolenghi for pasta and more pasta. Then there was a day in Hoxton, a large parcel to Pauline (http://www.burntbarn.co.uk/) with books and cards for the Leeds Fair. Plus a packed lunch, a few glasses of wine and two unnecessary casualties - one of them being a harlequin rasbora. The casualties have nothing to do with wine. Linchpinning the project and the family. Those last two few weeks were supposed to include 2.5 days of work for the project. In reality, they have included 5 days and 2.5. nights. Anyway. This morning our mailbox received one more contribution to our book. I look. I read. It is beautiful, sublime, thought provoking. Every new message reveals one more piece of a jigsaw puzzle, which is our book. A stupendously exciting experience! Linchpinning the book. Dealing with such a variety of amazing people have elbowed me into areas, subjects and topics that I was not aware of before, like informationist poetry and Armenian gospel bindings. I will try to cover those in a separate entry. Linchpinning the knowledge. Unfortunately, “contributions admin” has left little time to contemplate over my own work for the show. I have a number of ideas floating about, but no decisions or prototypes made. How am I going to use the space in the shop? How will it work as a collaboration between us and the shop? How will it work within the community of the street? Linchpinning the show. PS Here is one of my last week’s wonderful discoveries: Hedge Sparrows by Richard Price. Hedge Sparrows You don’t see many hedges these days, and the hedges you do see they’re not that thorny, it’s a shame, and when I say a hedge I’m not talking about a row of twigs between two lines of rusty barbed wire, or more likely just a big prairie where there were whole cities of hedges not fifty years ago, a big desert more like, and I mean thick hedges, with trees nearby for a bit of shade and a field not a road not too far off so you can nip out for an insect or two when you or the youngsters feel like a snack, a whole hedgerow system, as it says in the book, and seven out of ten sparrows say the same, and that’s an underestimate, we want a place you can feel safe in again, we’re social animals, we want our social life back, and the sooner the better, because in a good hedge you can always talk things over, make decisions, have a laugh if you want to, sing, even with a voice like mine!   (Egidija)

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We’re another week closer to the exhibition and Egidija, George and I have been speaking to artists, academics and professionals about the idea of the ‘codex’.  People have been responding enthusiastically to the idea, creating though-provoking texts and artworks around the theme. These will be collated into a publication, to sit alongside the exhibition.

Ideas for work have bubbling in the background.  The trip to the bookshop was excellent as it made us all very keen to respond specifically to the space.

(Chris)

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Last week we went to the bookartbook shop to look over the space together and check out the possibilities for our work and how it will sit in the space.

Its a great space to react to for the 'codex: between this and that' exhibition. As the work exploring the codex will be shown alongside other forms of book work. Roberts & Skeat in 'The Birth of the Codex'(1983) describes the codex as random access (as opposed to sequential access) which in a way represents the basics of a book shop. A space in which people dip in and out of information then choose to take this information away or leave it.

What we have to think about now is the challenges this will bring up in terms of how people view are work. Will what we produce get lost in this space? Or do we want it to merge within the shop. Are we presenting pieces of work that call upon the bookartbookshop as a repository for the codex or are we challenging it? 

(George)

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It’s strange to imagine that an object as simple as a book (just a series of leaves bound together) could elicit strong feeling. But as digital technology starts to mimic the book there seems to be panic over the fate of a thing we took for granted for so long.  Could it be the marriage of form and content that we enjoy? The one-on-one experience that this analogue device provides?  Or the way each one could be unique in our hands?

Codex: between this and that is a chance for us to reflect, to question and to move forward.  We hope to research and discuss and to create something new.  We hope you can join us.

(Chris)