Essay Response - What Time Looks Like at the Moment: Artists Sequencing Books

Mark's essay, "What Time Looks Like at the Moment: Artists Sequencing Books," gives a broad overview of what an artist's book is, or can be. The essay presents the many different forms an artist's book can take, from the materials used, to the content of its "pages", to the way the book is bound (or not), to the way in which the reader interacts with its content. Mark partners each book type with an example of an actual artist's book. I particularly enjoyed the ideas of Michael Snow, Edward Ruscha, John Baldessari, Sigmar Polke, and Dieter Roth. I liked the way in which they investigate what sequence means. Snow plays with space and presents the reader with the option of reading the book from the front cover or from the back cover, rendering the use of "front" and "back" meaningless. Ruscha's, "Every Building on the Sunset Strip," also comments on space (location) and gives an actual account of every building on the Sunset Strip. His images locate buildings sequentially along the road so that as the reader travels through the book, he/she travels down the road through L.A. Baldessari's, "Brutus Killed Caesar," uses syntax in a very direct, often humorous way. His images read from left to right like a sentence. Sigmar Polke's, "Daphne," uses photocopying to comment on the ideas of mechanization and standardized processes. By pulling the photocopies as they print he creates smears which denote the artist's hand, manipulation, chance, and a sense of play. It is about the battle between accident and system. Dieter Roth's, "Daily Mirror," is less about the sequence of information than an amount of information. "Sequencing becomes an act of amplification." There is no real beginning, middle, and end. Roth leaves ordering in the readers' hands. This allows for meandering and random encounters. This is what stuck with me the most from the reading, in terms of my own work. A specific sequence is not always the most important thing, sometimes it is about a cumulative effect of so much material. Time can be expressed in the repetition of controlled ingredients, in the build up of stuff. In book form, that build up of "stuff" can be physical pages. The idea develops and is transmitted as the reader physically stacks pages.