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 umetnik i ja sečem knjige. Ovo je jedan od mojih prvih radova sa knjigama. Zove se "Alternativni put ka znanju". Želeo sam da stvorim gomilu knjiga tako da kada neko uđe u galeriju i misli da samo gleda u običnu gomilu knjiga kada priđe bliže, vidi ovu grubu rupu urezanu u nju i zapita se šta se događa i zbog čega i razmisli o materijalu knjige. Dakle, mene zanima tekstura, ali me više interesuju tekst i slike koje se nalaze 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 svojih radova, pričvrstim krajeve knjige debelim slojem laka tako da se stvori koža sa spoljne strane knjige i postane čvrst materijal, a stranice unutra su i dalje labave, i onda režem u unutrašnjost knjige i ne pomeram niti dodajem bilo šta. Samo režem oko bilo čega što mi se učini interesantnim. Dakle, sve što vidite u gotovom delu je tačno gde je bilo u knjizi na početku.
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.
O svom radu mislim kao o nekom remiksu, na neki način, jer radim sa tuđim materijalom na isti način na koji didžej radi sa tuđom muzikom. Ovo je bila knjiga posvećena slikama Rafaela, renesansnog umetnika, i uzimajući njegov rad, remiksujući ga, rezbareći ga, činim ga nečim novijim i savremenijim. Takođe razmišljam da proširim svoje delo iz tradicionalne knjige i da proguram linerani format, i strukturu same knjige tako da knjiga može u potpunosti da postane skulptura.
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 stege i kanape i sve vrste materijala, tegove kako bi stvari stajale na mestu pre nego što ih prelakiram, kako bih mogao da poguram formu pre nego što počnem, tako da nešto poput ovoga može postati delo poput ovoga koje je napravljeno od jednog rečnika. Ili nešto poput ovoga može postati delo poput ovoga. Ili nešto kao ovo, za koje niko ne zna šta će od njega ispasti, ili zašto je u mom studiju, može postati delo poput ovoga.
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.
Tako da mislim da je jedan od razloga zašto ljude uznemiruje uništavanje knjiga zašto ljudi ne žele da cepaju knjige i niko zapravo ne želi da baci knjigu taj da mi mislimo o knjigama kao o živim stvarima, mislimo o njima kao o telima, i one su stvorene da se povežu sa našim telima što se dimenzije tiče ali one takođe imaju potencijal da nastave da rastu i da postanu nove stvari. Dakle, knjige su zaista žive. Ja o knjigama razmišljam kao o telu, i knjigu vidim kao tehnologiju. Vidim knjigu kao alatku. A vidim je i kao mašinu. A takođe i kao pejzaž. Ovo je ceo set enciklopedija koje su spojene i išmirglane zajedno, i kako ih rezbarim odlučujem šta želim da izaberem. Sa enciklopedijama mogao sam da izaberem bilo šta ali sam posebno izabrao slike pejzaža. Sa samim materijalom, koristim šmirglu i šmirglam krajeve, tako da nisu samo slike te koje sugerišu na pejzaž nego i sam materijal sugeriše na 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.
Jedna stvar koju radim kad rezbarim knjigu je ta da razmišljam o slikama, ali i o tekstu i o njima razmišljam na veoma sličan način jer je interesantno to da dok čitamo tekst, dok čitamo knjigu, stvaramo slike u glavi tako da na neki način dopunjujemo to delo. Stvaramo slike dok čitamo tekst, i dok gledamo sliku, mi zapravo korisitimo jezik kako bismo razumeli u šta gledamo. Tako da se dešava neka vrsta jing-janga, neki flip-flop. Ja kreiram delo koje posmatrač sam dovršava.
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.
O svom radu mislim skoro kao o arheologiji. Iskopavam i pokušavam da povećam potencijal do maksimuma i otkrijem što je moguće više i izložim ga kroz svoj rad. Ali u isto vreme razmišljam o ideji brisanja i o tome što se sada događa da je većina naših informacija neopipljiva, i ta ideja o gubitku, i ideja da nije samo format ono što se konstantno menja sa kompjuterima, nego i sama informacija, i sada kad nemamo fizičku rezervu podataka, moramo je stalno ažurirati kako je ne bismo izgubili. I ja sam imam nekoliko rečnika u svom studiju, i kompjuter koristim svakodnevno, i ako treba da potražim reč, otići ću za kompjuter jer mogu u trenutku direknto da pogledam ono što tražim. I mislim da knjiga nikada zapravo nije bila pravi format za nelinearne informacije, i zbog toga referentne knjige prve postaju ugrožene i izumrle vrste.
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.
Ja ne mislim da će knjige ikada izumreti. Ljudi misle da će sada kada imamo digitalnu tehnologiju knjige izumreti, i vidimo kako se stvari menjaju i razvijaju. Mislim da će se knjiga razviti, i baš kao što su rekli da će slikarstvo izumreti kada su fotografija i štampa postali svakodnevni materijali, ali šta se zapravo dogodilo je da je dozvolilo slikarstvu da napusti svoj dnevni posao. Dozvololilo je slikarstvu da prestane da obavlja svakodnevni posao pričanja priče, i slikarstvo je postalo oslobođeno i konačno je moglo da ispriča svoju priču i tada je iskrsnuo modernizam, i videli smo kako se slikarstvo razvija na više grana. I mislim da je to ono što se sada događa sa knjigama, sada je kada većina naše tehnologije, većina naših informacija, većina naših privatnih i društvenih zapisa u digitalnom formatu, mislim da to zaista dozvoljava knjigama da postanu nešto novo. Mislim da je ovo izuzetno uzbudljivo vreme za umetnika poput mene, i jako je uzbudljivo videti šta će se u budućnosti desiti sa knjigama.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)