The Book as Archive

XIV Symposium of Mexican Students and Studies. "Knowledge into Solutions", 2016

We review the role of Book-art in Mexico in the XXIst century as a collective memory preservation device. This means several artists use it to narrate events related to Prehispanic tradition, History, violence, impunity and corruption. In order to support this thesis we use two main concepts: Marc Auge's Ruin (Auge, 2003:158) and Ana Maria Guasch's Art as Archive (Guasch, 2011:43). Finally, we present three cases in which Book-art becomes collective memory: Juaritoz magazine (Ciudad Juarez), Leñateros workshop (Chiapas) and Zafarrancho Tales (Michoacan).

Modern Philology, 2016

Citeseer

Drawing on the UNESCO categories of tangible and intangible heritage, this essay examines how the “Memoria de los Moriscos” exhibit and catalog reveal the practical challenges of displaying physical manuscripts. I propose that the tangible Morisco manuscripts serve a commemorative and esthetic function and are primarily exhibited as “heritage,” a flexible category that encourages an affective engagement with the physical manuscripts. The texts that the manuscripts contain, however, are activated as texts and studied as such in the exhibit catalog, in absence of the physical books. The “Memoria de los Moriscos” project thus reveals the challenge of producing an exhibit that simultaneously captures the physical presence of the exhibited manuscripts and the meaning of the texts they contain. Through display of tangible Morisco manuscripts and a philological curatorship of their texts, the exhibit and catalog also shed light on how evidence is culled from material objects.

New German Critique, 2020

Archiving and Questioning Immateriality Proceedings of the 5th Computer Art Congress

Remediating Mamá Pina’s Cookbook is an interactive four channel video installation that explores the role of women as agents and producers of the archive. By resorting to Bolter and Grusin’s concept of remediation, the installation proposes a way in which female reproductive labor, ephemeral and domestic forms of writing, and material culture —traditionally viewed as outside of the archive— could be placed as central foci of the archive through the use of digital technologies. At its core, the installation also questions the material permanence of the archive and plays with the instability of digital technologies —or its anti-archival disposition.

Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie IV, Historia Moderna, 2022

Limp, laced-case binding in parchment on sixteenth-century Mexican printed books 2 Volumes Volume 1, 2013

With the arrival of the Spaniards in the New World, the way of living of the indigenous population who habited Mesoamerica was blended with the traditions and customs of the European settlers who arrived as conquerors, and the emigrants from Europe that arrived later searching for fortune or a better kind of life from the one they had left behind in their land of origin. This encounter of cultures gave rise also to a technical and cultural exchange, and in the case of Mexico, this clash of cultures and techniques is well represented by the printing press, which was established in 1539 with the specific aim of accelerating the evangelisation and education of the Indians. As a consequence of this development, Mexico was turned into a centre of innovation, with the first printing press using movable metal type to be set up outside Europe, and other trades that support printing, such as bookbinding, were also developed. This thesis investigates the influence of the Spanish and other European bookbinding practices on sixteenth-century Mexican limp, laced-case parchment bindings by the analysis of the features of the bindings of Mexican printed books from that period. In addition, by the analysis of the materials and techniques used to bind these books, as well as the specific structural characteristics of the bindings, the patterns of work that could be described as typically Mexican in the sixteenth-century, are also identified. The research is divided into two parts: the first, theoretical, explains the historical context of Mexico during the sixteenth century when the printing press and bookbinding were developed. The second part concerns the archaeological study of the books as artefacts. For this purpose, thirty-nine sixteenth-century Mexican printed books bound in limp, laced-case parchment covers were analysed. The analysis of the features of these bindings, which form the majority of the whole sample, made possible the identification of Mexican patterns of work in the sixteenth century. Given the lack of information and of complete studies of the craft of bookbinding in Mexico in the sixteenth century, this thesis aims to enhance our current knowledge of the history of bookbinding as well as of the booktrade and the market for books in Mexico.

Library Philosophy and Practice, 2005

Script and Print 36.2, 2013