1st Edition
The Experimental Book Object Materiality, Media, Design
The Experimental Book Object shows why and how books matter in the 21st century. Digital and audio platforms are commonplace, and other fields of art beyond literature have increasingly embraced books and publication as their medium of choice. Nevertheless, the manifold book object persists and continues to inspire various types of experimentation. This volume sets forth an unprecedented approach where literary and media theory are entangled with design practitioners’ artistic research and process descriptions. By probing the paradigm of the codex, this collection of essays focuses on historical and contemporary experimentation that has challenged what books are and could be from the perspectives of materiality, mediation, and visual and typographic design. Investigations into less-studied areas and cases of performativity demonstrate what experimental books do by interacting with their systemic and cultural environments. The volume offers a multifaceted and multidisciplinary view of the book object, the book design and publishing processes, and their significance in the digital age.
Introduction
Sami Sjöberg, Mikko Keskinen and Arja Karhumaa
Opening Experimental Book Objects: The Heterogeneity of the Codex in the Twenty-First Century
I Book Matters
Jan Baetens
Olivier Deprez, Books and Company
Emily Brennan-Moran and Torsa Ghosal
Excessive Tactility of 9/11 Book Memorials
Danuta Fjellestad & Sami Sjöberg
Performative Materiality of Book Inserts: The Case of S. and Personal Effects
Mikko Keskinen
The Two-Layered Book and Storyworld, with Transgressions: Graham Rawle’s Overland
Juri Joensuu
Literary Mutilation: Typographical and Material Abuse in Finnish Experimental Poetry and Book Art
Juha-Pekka Kilpiö
Punched Pages: Holes in Experimental Print Literature
Oskari Rantala
The Disintegrating (Comic) Book Object and the End of the Narrative Universe in Promethea
II Book Mediations
Stella Bolaki
Bound to Matter: Artists’ Books and Illness Experience
Laura Piippo
Looking Back to Now: Book as Technology of Remembering the Present in Jatkosota-extra by Jaakko Yli-Juonikas
Wojciech Drąg
The Dispersed Self, the Database and Digital Biography: David Clark’s 88 Constellations for Wittgenstein
Sara Tanderup Linkis
Performing E-bookness: Remediation and Meta-Mediality in the E-book Edition of Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Fifty Year Sword
III Book Designs
Leslie Atzmon
Gender, Transgression, and Ritual Torah Preparation
Zach Dodson
Bookish Biomes: The Writing and Design of KUU, a Paper Ecosystem
Pauliina Nykänen & Arja Karhumaa
Body Text: Exploring Somatic Devices in the Design of Hybrid Books Fun Primavera and Yours
Zoë Sadokierski & Cecilia Heffer
Encountering Lace Narratives: Designing a Multimodal Book to Capture the Complexity of Practitioner-Research
Nick Thoburn and Nick Thurston
Papercuts: The Horizons of Minor Publishing
Afterword
Johanna Drucker
Direct Objects: Critical Ways to "Think a Book"
Biography
Sami Sjöberg is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research focuses on avant-garde and experimental literature, especially in relation to science and epistemology. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Avant-Garde Studies and the author of The Vanguard Messiah: Lettrism between Jewish Mysticism and the Avant-Garde (2015).
Mikko Keskinen is Professor of Comparative Literature (University of Jyväskylä, Finland). His main research interests include narrative theory, sound studies, experimental literature, and intermediality. Keskinen is the author of Response, Resistance, Deconstruction (1998) and Audio Book: Essays on Sound Technologies in Narrative Fiction (2008). He has co-edited a book on the collage novel (2018) and two journal issues on “the ubique and unique book” (Image & Narrative, 2019).
Arja Karhumaa is a graphic designer, text artist, and Associate Professor in Visual Communication Design at Aalto University, Finland. Their work spans across experimental writing, visual poetry, typography, and publishing. Karhumaa is the author and designer of the artistic research Epä/igenesis (2021) featuring the artist book Epägenesis: Katalogi X, a catalogue of their experimental writing.
