The Book Lovers, photo: Mark Geffriaud / www.thebooklovers.info
For six days, the Amsterdam-based institution joins the international research project that has set its focus on novels written not by writers per se, but by visual artists, in setting up a one-of-a-kind bookshop. The books presented as part of The Book Lovers project are now for sale, from science fiction, detective novels, autobiography, even pornography and more, written by the likes of Rodney Graham, Liam Gillick, Mai-Thu Perret, Carl Andre, De Chicico, Salvador Dalí, Tim Etchells, Rodney Graham, Joseph Kosuth, Yayoi Kusama, Roee Rosen, Kurt Schwitters and Andy Warhol, as well as books written by Polish authors Wojciech Bruszewski, Władysław Strzemiński and Maria Stangret-Kantor. The full database of writers included in the project - compiled by project partner Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp - is available at the bookshop via ipad app, and online at ensembles.mhka.be.
Find out more about Polish authors in the series: Book Lovers: The Novel as a Form of Art
The project's residency at De Appel is accompanied by a programme of presentations and performances. The opening day (28.01) features a recital by avant-garde composer and performer Jaap Blonk of a fragment of Guy de Cointet's Espahor Ledet Ko Uluner! Mark Geffriaud, author of The Curve of Forgotten Things, will present his performance A New Refutation of Time. On the final day of the event (1.02), artist, curator and co-author of the novel Philip, Heman Chong presents his performance Simultaneous from opening to closing.
Photographs from the exhibition "The Book Lovers" / photo: David Maroto
The Book Lovers project comprises a collection of novels purchased by the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M HKA), the Antwerp-based Museum of Contemporary Art. With 140 novels written by artists and an installation of artworks in varied media that link an artist's work to his or her novel, the curators of the project invite the public to consider literature as a tool for creating expanded narratives in the visual arts. It is a multifaceted series of events, comprising an exhibition, an array of events such as video screenings, readings and a public talk, and an on-site library of the collection that is also documented in an online database. Selected artworks of various media such as video installation, drawing, sculpture, photography, and painting, are set alongside novels by the same artists.
The project was initiated by Spanish artist David Maroto and Joanna Zielińska, curator of the Cricoteka – Centre for the Documentation of Works by Tadeusz Kantor. They presented the first instalment in Antwerp, explaining their quite specific criteria for selecting books for the project,
We don’t focus on books that were written by artists or more generally on writing artists. The objects of our research are novels written by artists. What we consider to be a novel is the literary narrative of a certain volume, as part of which the story unfolds using strictly literary means. This doesn't have to be a book bound in the typical fashion, although that is the sort that we most often come across.
The project was presented in three cities last year - in Antwerp at the M HKA in Antwerp, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space in New York, where the collection of books was presented alongside selected artworks by Tim Etchells, Roee Rosen and others. In Warsaw, a conference was held with the participation of a multidisciplinary panel of experts and artists. The programme included performances, readings and lectures, such as a lecture by literary critic Jan Gondowicz on "narratology" in the works of Witkacy, Simon Morris (author of Getting Inside Jack Kerouac’s Head) and strategies of referencing, as well as the conceptual approach to literature. Tom McCarthy and Ingo Niemann lectured on mainstream literature and the sort of literature that doesn't get published, while Barbara Browning discussed the role of the active reader as a performative activity. The event wrapped with a panel discussion featuring Bart de Baere, Anna Demeester, Chus Martínez and Sebastian Cichocki on the novel as a distinct form of art and on the ways such a novel may be presented. As Joanna Zielińska said in a statement to the Polish Press Agency, "Our goal is to show that the novel is a form of art and should take up the same position in galleries as other works of art".
Photograph from "The Book Lovers" exhibition at the M HKA in Antwerp. Photo: David Maroto
Krzysztof Niemczyk "Kurtyzana i pisklęta, czyli krzywe zwierciadło namiętnego działania albo inaczej studium chaosu" (Courtesan and chicks, or, the broken mirror of passionate activity, or, otherwise a study of chaos), 1968
The project strives to conduct systematic research on the phenomenon of the novel. Books written by visual artists and craftsmen have began to emerge in the 19th century, with a distinct example being the fantastic stories by William Morris. The past two decades have seen artists treat the literary form as an integral part of their creative work. Yet it has been over the past two decades that artists have become noticeably earnest in treating this form of expression as part of their artistic activities. Visual artists, who don't succumb to rules of the market or literary trends, have the liberty to experiment and take risks. They use a variety of tactics: writing solo or in teams (as with Philip), hiring ghostwriters or taking on imaginative pseudonyms. For many of the artists surveyed within the project, the novel is a method of creating new works of art. Some of them are the source of fascinating art projects, yet whose literary value is nonetheless under scrutiny.
The next instalments of The Book Lovers are planned in Barcelona and the Cricoteka in Kraków
The project has received funding from: Poland's Ministry of Culture and National Heritage , Embassy of the Netherlands, Flemish Representation at the Embassy of Belgium
Project partners: M HKA w Antwerpii
The Book Lovers
Curators: David Maroto, Joanna Zielińska
Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen
exhibition: 6 December 2012 – 21 April 2013
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York
exhibition: 25 January – 9 March 2013
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
sympozjum: 26-27 October 2013
De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam
exhibition: 28 January - 4 February 2014
CRICOTECA, Kraków
exhibiton: grudzień 2014
Source: cricoteca.pl, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, PAP, own sources. Compiled by: Agnieszka Sural, 29.01.2013, updated 21.10.2013, 20.01.2014. Translated by Agnes Monod-Gayraud
23.01.2014