I'm an artist and I cut books. This is one of my first book works. It's called "Alternate Route to Knowledge." I wanted to create a stack of books so that somebody could come into the gallery and think they're just looking at a regular stack of books, but then as they got closer they would see this rough hole carved into it, and wonder what was happening, wonder why, and think about the material of the book. So I'm interested in the texture, but I'm more interested in the text and the images that we find within books.
Ja sam umjetnik i ja rezbarim knjige. Ovo je jedan od mojih prvih radova. Zove se "Alternativan put ka znanju". Želio sam naslagati knjige tako da netko tko posjeti galeriju i pomisli kako gleda običnu hrpu knjiga, ali kada se približi vidi ovu grubo izrezanu rupu, i dok razmišlja o čemu se tu radi, razmišlja i od čega je knjiga sazdana. Dakle, mene zanimaju teksture, ali više od toga me zanima tekst i slike koje nalazimo u knjigama.
In most of my work, what I do is I seal the edges of a book with a thick varnish so it's creating sort of a skin on the outside of the book so it becomes a solid material, but then the pages inside are still loose, and then I carve into the surface of the book, and I'm not moving or adding anything. I'm just carving around whatever I find interesting. So everything you see within the finished piece is exactly where it was in the book before I began.
U većini mojih radova, lijepim rub knjige debelim slojem laka, koji ima ulogu pokrova vanjskog dijela knjige, i tako okvir postaje čvrst, a stranice iznutra ostaju mekane, nakon toga rezbarim površinu knjige, bez da mičem ili dodajem išta. Režem oko svega što mi je zanimljivo. Sve što vidite u završenim djelima je na istome mjestu u knjizi gdje je i bilo kada sam počeo rezbariti.
I think of my work as sort of a remix, in a way, because I'm working with somebody else's material in the same way that a D.J. might be working with somebody else's music. This was a book of Raphael paintings, the Renaissance artist, and by taking his work and remixing it, carving into it, I'm sort of making it into something that's more new and more contemporary. I'm thinking also about breaking out of the box of the traditional book and pushing that linear format, and try to push the structure of the book itself so that the book can become fully sculptural.
Mislim da su moja djela neka vrsta remiksa jer ja radim s radovima drugih na isti način na koji DJ radi s glazbom drugih glazbenika. Ovo je Rafaelova monografija, renesansnog umjetnika, čiji rad sam rezbareći remiksirao i tako učinio nešto što je novije i suvremenije. Razmišljam o tome da izađem iz tradicionalnog okvira knjige pomičući taj linearni format, pokušam pomaknuti strukturu same knjige, tako da sama knjiga postane posve skulpturalna.
I'm using clamps and ropes and all sorts of materials, weights, in order to hold things in place before I varnish so that I can push the form before I begin, so that something like this can become a piece like this, which is just made from a single dictionary. Or something like this can become a piece like this. Or something like this, which who knows what that's going to be or why that's in my studio, will become a piece like this.
Koristim stezaljke i užad i druge materijale, utege, kako bi ostali na mjestu prije lakiranja tako da mogu pomaknuti formu prije početka, tako da na taj način ovako nešto postane ovakvo nešto, a nastalo je od običnog rječnika. Ili nešto ovakvo može postati nešto ovakvo. Ili nešto ovakvo, tko zna što će postati i zašto se nalazi u mojem studiju, postaje ovako nešto.
So I think one of the reasons people are disturbed by destroying books, people don't want to rip books and nobody really wants to throw away a book, is that we think about books as living things, we think about them as a body, and they're created to relate to our body, as far as scale, but they also have the potential to continue to grow and to continue to become new things. So books really are alive. So I think of the book as a body, and I think of the book as a technology. I think of the book as a tool. And I also think of the book as a machine. I also think of the book as a landscape. This is a full set of encyclopedias that's been connected and sanded together, and as I carve through it, I'm deciding what I want to choose. So with encyclopedias, I could have chosen anything, but I specifically chose images of landscapes. And with the material itself, I'm using sandpaper and sanding the edges so not only the images suggest landscape, but the material itself suggests a landscape as well.
Mislim da je jedan od razloga zašto ljude uzrujava uništavanje knjiga, a nitko ne želi kidati knjige i nitko ne želi bacati knjige, je što knjige vidimo kao živa bića, razmišljamo o njima kao o tijelu, one su stvorene kako bi se na neki način mi povezali s njima, ali knjige, također, imaju potencijal za rast i mogućnost postati nove stvari. Dakle, knjige su zaista žive. Ja knjigu percipiram kao tijelo i kao tehnologiju. Razmišljam o knjizi kao alatu. I razmišljam o knjizi kao uređaju. Također, razmišljam o knjizi kao pejzažu. Ovo je cijeli set enciklopedija povezan i ošmirglan, i dok rezbarim kroz njih, odlučujem što ću ostaviti. S enciklopedijama, mogu odabrati bilo što, ali sam se odlučio za slike pejzaža. Što se tiče samog materijala, a koristio sam šmirgl papir kako bi izgladio rubove, tako da pejzaž ne čine samo slike, nego da sam materijal bude pejzaž.
So one of the things I do is when I'm carving through the book, I'm thinking about images, but I'm also thinking about text, and I think about them in a very similar way, because what's interesting is that when we're reading text, when we're reading a book, it puts images in our head, so we're sort of filling that piece. We're sort of creating images when we're reading text, and when we're looking at an image, we actually use language in order to understand what we're looking at. So there's sort of a yin-yang that happens, sort of a flip flop. So I'm creating a piece that the viewer is completing themselves.
Tako, kada rezbarim knjigu razmišljam o slikama, ali razmišljam i o tekstu, i vidim ih na sličan način, jer zanimljivo je ds kada čitamo tekst, kada čitamo knjigu, stvara se slika u našoj glavi, tako da na neki način popunjavamo taj dio. Na neki način stvaramo slike kada čitamo tekst a kada gledamo slike, koristimo jezik kako bismo razumjeli što gledamo. Tu se događa nekakav yin-yang, neka vrsta preklapanja. Ja stvaram djela koja gledatelji popunjavaju sami.
And I think of my work as almost an archaeology. I'm excavating and I'm trying to maximize the potential and discover as much as I possibly can and exposing it within my own work. But at the same time, I'm thinking about this idea of erasure, and what's happening now that most of our information is intangible, and this idea of loss, and this idea that not only is the format constantly shifting within computers, but the information itself, now that we don't have a physical backup, has to be constantly updated in order to not lose it. And I have several dictionaries in my own studio, and I do use a computer every day, and if I need to look up a word, I'll go on the computer, because I can go directly and instantly to what I'm looking up. I think that the book was never really the right format for nonlinear information, which is why we're seeing reference books becoming the first to be endangered or extinct.
Svoj rad vidim gotovo kao arheologiju. Iskopavam i pokušavam maksimizirati potencijal i otkriti što više mogu i izložiti to u mojim radovima. Ali u isto vrijeme, razmišljam o ideji brisanja, i što se događa sada kada je većina naših informacija neopipljiva, a ideja gubitka, ideja da se konstantno ne mijenja samo format, nego i sama informacija, sada kada ne moramo imati fizički sve pohranjeno, i moramo stalno ažurirati kako ne bismo sve to izgubili. Imam nekoliko rječnika u studiju, a koristim se računalom svakodnevno, ako moram potražiti značenje riječi, tražiti ću na računalu, jer mogu direktno i istoga trena dobiti informaciju koju trebam. Mislim da knjiga nikada nije bila pravi format za ne-linearne informacije, upravo su zato kazala prve knjige čije postojanje je ugroženo ili su izumrle.
So I don't think that the book will ever really die. People think that now that we have digital technology, the book is going to die, and we are seeing things shifting and things evolving. I think that the book will evolve, and just like people said painting would die when photography and printmaking became everyday materials, but what it really allowed painting to do was it allowed painting to quit its day job. It allowed painting to not have to have that everyday chore of telling the story, and painting became free and was allowed to tell its own story, and that's when we saw Modernism emerge, and we saw painting go into different branches. And I think that's what's happening with books now, now that most of our technology, most of our information, most of our personal and cultural records are in digital form, I think it's really allowing the book to become something new. So I think it's a very exciting time for an artist like me, and it's very exciting to see what will happen with the book in the future.
Ne mislim da će knjige umrijeti. Misli se da će sada kada imamo digitalnu tehnologiju, knjige umrijeti, vidimo kako se sve mijenja i evoluira. Mislim da će i knjiga evoluirati, i isto kako su rekli da će slikarstvo nestati kada fotografija i grafika postanu svakodnevni, ali zapravo je omogućilo slikarstvu da da otkaz dnevnom poslu. Omogućilo je slikarstvu luksuz da ne mora svakodnevno pričati priču, tako je slikarstvo postalo slobodno i moglo je samo pričati svoju priču, i tada je nastao modernizam, i slikarstvo je krenulo u puno različitih smjerova. Mislim da se to događa s knjigama sada, kada je većina naše tehnologije, većina naših informacija, većina naših osobnih i kulturnih zapisa u digitalnom obliku, mislim da je knjizi sada moguće postati nešto novo. Mislim da je ovo jako uzbudljivo doba za umjetnika kao što sam ja i vrlo je uzbudljivo vidjeti što će se dogoditi s knjigom u budućnosti.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)