Book As Exhibition
Book As Exhibition
Book As Exhibition
:: I'..
by Anna-Sophie Springer
Rather than running for three weeks, the show ran for one hundred and seventy-five pages.
—Alexander Alberro on Seth Siegelaub's The Xerox Book (1968)
As our fiction is allowed into the museum, the art is allowed entrance into the fiction, invited
into rooms blown into an imaginary void, galleries unfolding in impossible succession...
—Mark von Si:!tAz'^e&., New Dystopia (2011) ^
Tn 1981, Berlin theory publisher Merve Verlag celebrated the release of its iooth book: Harald
1 Szeemann's Aí«.fí«»? der Obsessionen. In the editorial note at the back of the book, publishers
Heidi Paris and Peter Gente reflect on editing the book from a loose collection of textual material
given to them by Szeemann in Switzerland the previous year: "Number 100 is perhaps just the
point to show that the obsession of making books and the obsession of making exhibitions are
a becoming.... Sometimes we find ourselves exhibited through Szeemann; sometimes we exhibit
Szeemann through our book series."' While for the curator Szeemann the "museum of obsessions"
famously constituted a central concept in his approach to exhibition-making, in the context of
the following pages the phrase is of particular interest in its role as the book's title: by naming
the book a "museum," the phrase underscores the possibility for the medium of the "book" to be-
come an exhibition space in itself Lionel Bovier, the founding director of publisher JRP/Ringier,
affirms this sense of mutability in a short text on independent publishing from 2004: "Editing
a book can be very similar to curating a show. As an independent curator, I always considered
the exhibition as a medium and, in that sense, it can take very different forms, even that of a
book."^ Here, Bovier testifies to a noticeable trend in contemporary art publishing. In parallel
with "curating" increasingly expanding beyond the traditional museological responsibilities and
conflating roles once clearly defined, the book as exhibition space has also claimed more territory
since the 60s. Strategically, by focusing on the curatorial space of the book, we gain an insight
into how the practice of the "curatorial" is being shaped in the larger field.
37 Colle¿lions
the book
Page spread from Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium
is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, 1967, 159 pages, 18 cm, zooi ed.,
Gingko Press, Berkeley, CA., pages 33-34.
PHOTO: PETER MOORE; COURTESY OF GINGKO PRESS
C116 Winter 38
Robert Barry and Joseph Kosuth, Siegelaub with. Not only are texts and images here used "The book is a real space
inverted the usual order in which things were to reflect on each other through juxtaposition
done by starting to focus on shows in the form and collage, but also, in order to read certain and certain bookworks
of cheap, mass-produced publications as the spreads, one literally must use an actual mirror
"primary"'"* space of presentation. Along with
Lawrence Weiner s hoo^^Statements (1968), The
to read reversed text—clearly a strategy for play with this reality by
McLuhan to underscore his idea that "the book
XeroxBook {1968) and One Month (March 1969)
were two curatorial group shows that discarded
is an extension of the eye."'^ translating and infolding
The same year as publishing the book, to
the necessity of the gallery exhibition altogether.
Exploring notions of difference and repetition
"massage" his message further into his audience, architectural spatiality
McLuhan collaborated on three additional multi-
as well as of display, publicity and ownership,
these publications significantly helped to pro-
media extensions all with the same tide/concept: and objecthood onto and
a TV show for NBC, a vinyl record and (again
duce new art forms in tandem with revolution-
ary exhibition formats. And indeed, all kinds
with Fiore) the fourth issue oíAspen magazine.
This multimedia engagement let McLuhan sit-
in-between a books pages. "
of different frameworks were tested. A project uate the book as one specific medium among
dealing inherently with the idea of time—with- others, each with their own idiosyncratic "in-
out the intention to ever be realized in any gal- ventory of effects" produced, respectively, by
lery space—was the calendar project One Month such things as page turning, audio-visual edit-
curated by Siegelaub, who allocated to individ- ing or the cut-up in art and music. About the
ual artists a single page assigned to a single day. Aspen issue McLuhan said: "[Magazine] means
One Month cleverly played with the traditional a storehouse, a cache, typically for explosives."'*
duration of a gallery exhibition, in this case While real explosives were not included in #4,
one that would run for the 31 days of March it did contain a double-sided poster with all of
1969, and yet the architectural space was shift- the book's pages and a print of a circuit board
ed to the space of the page shown by itself for on the box's exterior: a neat visual metaphor
the duration of each assigned day. for the connectivity and conductivity at the
While the book's greatest asset since Guten- centre of McLuhan's media critique."
berg has been the mass-produced creation of
virtual space, it is important not to forget its
real material properties of being relatively cheap Connectivity and juxtaposition are also affirmed
and mobile." The book is a real space and cer- by Lucy Lippard as pivotal strategies in the edi-
tain bookworks play with this reality by trans- torial field: "The double spread is ground zero
lating and infolding architectural spatiality and for the...bookspace. One image speaks for itself,
objecthood onto and in-between a book's pages. another criticises it. One image can be power-
Without connecting back to a physical gallery ful, another can disarm it, stoke it up, change
show, these range from accordion fold-outs its meaning entirely, begin a new sequence, say
such as Ed Ruscha's theatrical Every Building more. And in the book the sequences continue...
On The Sunset Strip (1966), to purely text- offering unlimited possibility to say something
based, conceptual editions like the previously complex and provocative."^" When "curating" is
mentioned Statements by Lawrence Weiner, to understood quite openly as a creative and criti-
cinematic flip-books such as Cover to Cover by cal agency for the production of knowledge with
Michael Snow (1975). While Weiner famously a performative element, this definition can easily
refers to his texts as "sculptures," Ruscha under- be extended to include the curatorial. Think-
stands his printed photographs as "readymades." ing of the editorial and the curatorial side by
The relationship of flatness and depth is a core side opens up another productive reading for
topic for the more than 7.5 metre-long paired the "double spread" as a metaphor for the dip-
panorama of the Sunset Strip, about which tych of book and exhibition as two components
Ruscha once said: "It's a Western town in a oion^gestalt.
way. A store-front plane of a Western town Recently, with Dystopia ¡New Dystopia, writer '
is just paper, and everything behind it is just and critic Mark von Schlegell created an eccen-
nothing."" A contemporary iteration, Olafiir tric hybrid between book and exhibition through
Eliasson's Your House (2006), for example, uses the means of fiction. As exhibition co-curator,
the three-dimensional volume of the book as a von Schlegell first "wrote" the group exhibition
pregnant space to carve out the negative space Dystopia in 2011 at Musée d'art contemporain
of his own house as scaled model. This way, by de Bordeaux and subsequently published New
turning the pages, one passes through his home Dystopia, a "novel-as-exhibition-book."^' A self-
slice by slice, revealing each of the interior rooms. proclaimed follower of "weird theory," von Schle- ,_
Here, architectural space becomes a paper model gell's narrative might be difficult to comprehend. -'
in book volume. In its aim to "celebrate and devour the genus
Yet another publication from the late 60s catalog,^"'-^ the book, however, is one of the most
that addressed the book space in the most radi- interesting experiments in producing a space that
cal of ways, even if not typically considered a exists virtually in-between the book and the exhi-
work of art, is of course Marshall McLuhan's bition. The key technique here is a kind of de-
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory ofEf- territorializing spiral: to allow literary fiction
fects (1967): a theory book on the effect of into the museum by inviting a writer to become
media and communication. Go-authored with a curator who then folds this experience back
graphic designer Quentin Fiore, The Medium into a work of fiction. Using a typical science
is the Massage very much wants to perform its fiction trope, the book for von Schlegell becomes
theoretical content by experimentally producing a "time machine" or a "wormhole."^' Together
the sensory effects it is analytically concerned with the writing (whose chapters are organized
Volumes.. Golledtíons
xtterman and Brian O'Doherty,
ispen no. 5+6, Fall 1967.
? MAGAZINE; IMAGE COURTESY OE BRIAN O'DOHERTY AND
THE GETTY RESEARCH ÍNSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES.
955,000
AH EXHIBITION ORGAMIZED BY UUOY LIPPARD
THE VANOOUVEH ART OALiERY
JANUARY 13 TO FEBRUARY 8, 1970
557,087
art council of the Seattle art museum at the Seattle art museum
Cj i-tMluUur*t -NYC
i It i'*iC I
C) —•
•éattk hook, , é
Í : (6K->57K
^„unoil president
of m m s shown.
1 addenda to artists' cards
GEORGE NICOLAIDIS
June 17, 1931
September 6, 1939 OF A c m . KfEClALLÏ A THICK«
U^TS, A.EA INHABITED . Y M.NOWTY 0SOUP5
national City, California AS A MSULT Of SOCIAL O» K O N O M I C M t T « i a l O N S .
Jersey City, New Jersey
Title: Ghetto Boundary Project
Date: First Version April 6, 1969
Description: Two thousand ghetto boundary
Volumes.. CoUeftions
documenta s in 1971. Both strategies attempt- lecture hall where the keynote talks were held). the bookwork as seen in the late eos and early
ed to open up the exhibition to diverse inter- Such programming allowed the publication 70s, the book-as-exhibition has provided a na-
pretations or "readings." In addition, publishing project to shift from objecthood into the realm turally collaborative environment for writers,
a thinker s notebook produces a tension between of the temporal, emphasizing its own dimension artists, designers, editors, curators and publish-
the private and the public—a tension that was of performativity and display while elegantly ers. Not only does it grant the space to house
doubled through the pubhc programming of twisting the editorial, curatorial and artistic information in the manner of Ulises Carrions
the nightly Readers' Circle. Completing the into one. conventional "old book," the book has gener-
circle of research, writing, reading, the intimate ously asserted itself as a machine for the most
act of reading, in this context, becomes exter- radical experiments in the production, pres-
nalized as every book in the series was the oc- As the environment for publishing expands entation and distribution of meaning while
casion for a one-ofF performative recitation or to new mediums like the Internet and digital allowing a shifting and blending in roles play-
conceptual response. In the end, the notebooks publishing, the art world maintains a comfor- ing with "authorship" and the "curatorial." In
generated articulations, remixes and subversions table relation with the "dematerialisation of their diversity, the discussed volumes have re-
within the traditional exhibition space of the art"—the book as self-conscious form has come vealed but a chapter of the unbounded poten- -•
Kunsthalle Fridericianum (as opposed to the into its own. Especially since the explosion of tial of the volume between the covers, x
ENDNOTES
1 Autlaor's translation of Peter Gente, Heidi Paris, "Editorische 12 Ibid., 218. The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Anna-Sophie Springer is an editor, curator, and translator based in
Notiz," in Museum der Obsessionen von/über/zu/mit Harald at the Brooklyn Musetun, NYC, has just opened a kind of
Berlin with an MA in Contemporary Art Theory fiom Goldsmiths
Szeemann, ed. ibid (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1980), zzs. curatorial Inversion of this book-as-exhibirion. Researching its
College London. She workedfior several years at the pioneering
2 Lionel Bovier, "Why Publish; jRP/Ringier," in Put About: generative impact to the new art practices of the period, the
German theory publisher Merve Verlag, where she is currently
A Critical Anthology on Independent Publishing, ed. Maria exhibition Materializing "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the
editing a collection ofiessays on art by Hélène Cixous. She also co-
Fusco, Ian Hunt, (London: Book Works, 2.004), 184. Emergence ofi Conceptual Art organized by Catherine Morris
directs K. Verlag, an independent press dedicated to exploring the
3 Ulises Carrion, "The New Art of Making Books" (1975). in and Vincent Bonin, aims to realize in three-dimensional form
book as a sitefor exhibition and curatorial practices.
Artists' Books: A Critical Sourcebook and Anthology, ed. Joan in the gallery space what is "idealised" in Lucy Lippard's book.
Lyons (Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1991), ?i. The catalogue published by MIT Press in September 2012 claims
4 The idea of catalogue as "primary" exhibition was coined by to "bringLippard's curatorial experiment full circle."
Seth Siegelaub, as quoted in Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The 13 "On the Exhibition and the World at Large: Seth Siegelaub
Dematerialization of the Art Object fiom iç66 to IÇ72 (Berkeley: in Conversation with Charles Harrison," Studio International
University of California Press, 1997), 115. (London) 178, no. 917 (December 1969), 202. A digitised
5 Emily King, "Look, No Words!", in Fusco and Htint, collection of Siegelaub's publications is made available through
Put About, 40. Primary Information, NYC: http://primaryinformation.org/
6 "The Book: A Spiritual Instrument," (1895) in Stéphane index.phpi/projects/seth-siegelaub-archive/
Mallarmé, Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Mary Ann Caws 14 Cf footnote 4.
(New York: New Directions, 1981). For a contemporary 15 In a September 25,1012 email to the writer, artist Charles
analysis see also Anna S. Arnar, The Book as Instrument: Stankievech made a noteworthy comparison: "The book as
Stéphane Mallarmé, the Artist's Book, and the Transformation exhibition space in the '60s has an interesting synchtonicity
of Print Culture (Chicago: Chicago University Press, zoii). with the paper architecture of the thinktanks \\V.z Archigram
Noteworthy moreover: Montreal-based Klaus Scherübel's and their 'plug-in' theory. Both artists' books and paper archi-
book object Mallarmé, The Book, produced by Buchhandlung tecture were immersed in the Zeitgeist of the post-war flooding
Walther König and Printed Matter, 1999-1009, of the building market with prefab architecture."
7 Carrion, "The New Art of Making Books," in Lyons, Artists' 16 Ed Ruscha in "Ruscha as Publisher," interview by David
Books, 31-4}; with the lecture "Bookworks Revisited" in Bourdon, in Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings,
1979, Carrion expanded his ideas on artists' "bookworks" Interview, Bits, Pages: Ed Ruscha, ed. Alexandra Schwartz
further. Both texts are published in his book Second Thoughts (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002), 43.
(Amsterdam: Void Distribution, 1980). 17 Marshall McLtihan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the
8 Prelingual children's books that can include holes, textiles, Massage: An Inventory of Effects (Berkeley: Gingko Press, zooi),
fold-outs or other sensory elements also absolutely fit into this H-37-
category as they are essentially made to communicate an idea 18 McLuhan quoted in Michael Hinton, "McLtihan in a box?":
via a physical effect rather than a concept alone. http://marshallandme.com/mcluhan-in-a-box/
9 Aspen founding editor Phyllis Johnson quoted in Gwen Allen, 19 Aspen no. 4 on Ubu.com: http://www.ubu.e0m/aspen/aspen4/
Artist's Magazines: An Altemative Space for Art (Cambridge, index.html
Mass.: MIT Press, 2011}, 48. 20 Lippard, "Double Spread," in Fusco and Hunt, Put About, 83.
10 Aspen magazine has been digitized on Ubu.com. The content 21 Mark von Schlegel!, New Dystopia (Berlin: Sternberg Press,
of no. 5+6 can be viewed and played back at: http://www.uhu. 2011).
com/aspen/aspensandó/index.html 22 Ibid., 13.
11 Lippard, "Double Spread," in Fusco and W\xnt, Put About, 13 Ibid., II.
83. In 1969, Siegelaub, for instance, said: "It's my concern 24 Charles Stankievech in an interview with the author,
to make [what arrists are doing] known co multitudes. "Traversais: Charles Stankievech," in LOVELAND, ed.
[The most suitable means are] books and catalogues." Anna-Sophie Springer (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2011), 211.
(Lippard, Six Years, xvii.) 25 Carolyn Christov Bakargiev, Letter to a Friend, 100 Notes—joo
Thoughts /100 Notizen—100 Gedanken, No. 003 (Ostfildern:
Hatje-Cantz, 2011), 12.