Found & Bound Assessment

I really enjoyed working on this project throughout, and was actually really excited as soon as I found out we were going to be cutting up old books (call me a bad English major!) and re-thinking them as manipulatable objects. I derived my idea from the types of books that appealed to me while looking through the library stash. I picked primarily books about atomic warfare, with titles such as “Understanding Doomsday,” “The War Myth,” and “The Balance of Terror,” along with a couple of larger books – an “Encyclopedia of Virology” and a “Handbook of Toxic and Hazardous Chemicals.” Originally, I planned to use one of these larger books because of the possibility for doing some larger cut-outs and inserting larger objects into them, and this is still something that I would like to do because it could yield some very dynamic possibilities.

Before choosing a book to work with, I went through several of the “Art Forum” and “Art in America” magazines to cut out pictures, as well as finding some inspirational surrealist art in another magazine. I quickly found that I was approaching a sort of post-atomic theme regarding hostility, fear, incalculable sorrow and pain. I wanted to, if ever possible, capture the intensity of the chaotic experience of those afflicted with atomic and other warfare, namely that which is directed towards innocents. I also wanted to do something similar to Joe Mills in combining images through collage in a way that seemed structurally inevitable and comprised what he called “violent, exotic, surreal.” I don’t think that I achieved anything close to his work, but having him in mind helped me to overlay images in provocative ways.

I feel that my book is more focused on collage elements than on otherwise objectifying the book, but I did try throughout to use an exacto knife to cut up the page and arrange it around the content of the collages. In some cases, near the end of the experience, I inserted images into exacto-slits in the page so that they didn’t require glue to hold them in. I think this was my most creative use of the book as object, for the page itself was given weight by having the strength to support a picture through its own structure.

In the front of my mind as I worked was a focus on the violence inflicted by the United States upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as can be seen in the centerfold piece of my book. I also have a page using what I think is a Rodchenko image, which has more of a constructivist feel, paralleled by some of the other images in the book to create an organized, militant feel amidst the chaos of the actual effects of atomic warfare. I really wanted to take advantage of this paradox in creating a feel of symmetry and balance, as the title, “The Balance of Terror,” describes, despite the frenzied content of the images. The effect is rather disturbing, as the concept of atomic warfare – and mass murder by advancing technology – should be. I tried to keep inside the book many of the charts comparing actual atomic missiles and international statistics, also inserting some from one of the other books I had.

The beginning and ending quotes in my book are very relevant to thinking about the book as an object capable of social change. The first is, “Bodies are fragile, easily broken. A scrap of paper, an explanation, sustains impact better.” The last is, “Ah gentlemen, if I had been able to read and write, I’d have destroyed the human race.” These quotes indicate the strength of words and explanation to either save or destroy humans. They can stand in place of death and pain with a positive alternative, but they can also destroy us with their power to change, kind of like (though I am by no means religious) a god. There – I have redeemed myself as an English major.

It was an amazing experience to see everyone else’s books on Thursday and discuss how they considered the project incredibly differently from everyone else. The fact that we managed to span from painting inside to scribbling out, to graffiti, to fabric and books-within-books, to a play on titles using a cardboard book, all the way to a book-sandwich sculpture, really demonstrates to me the awesome creativity of this group. I can’t wait to revisit everyone’s work when it is in the library. I think that this project was a really great exercise to get us thinking about the book-perusing and evaluating experience. This is only the third time that I have done intensive collage for artistic purposes, and the first time I have re-crafted a book, and it left me wanting to do much more.