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"living books" Tag


The shortest search


Tuesday, May 14, 2013

This search for a book was the shortest search in my life. I’ve got six tags. One of them is ‘rules’. So, I’ve set up rules for myself. I am allowed to check books only from top shelves. The third tag is ‘coincidence’. I have had no idea what kind of book I was looking for, which means it was going to be a coincidence any way. One of the first book I picked from the first top shelf from the art section is a book with a naked lady on the cover. I went thought the book. The artist was mostly working around naked human body. My search was going really well!
Inside of the book I found oily finger stamps and prints of cup of tea. Apparently some one had breakfast in front of the book and left all this marks inside by coincidence.  First book I took from the book shelf exactly fitted all the tags I had! It confirmed the rules I made for myself. The power of coincidence convinced me how important to trust your own intuition and used a bit of imagination.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: BECK 3

Materialization of thoughts


Wednesday, April 24, 2013

According to one of the tags I decided that I am allowed to search for a book only on the top shelves which made it a little bit easier for me. I could give to my search a better structure and can check every book from that area.
I set up rules for myself that the second tag has to be a part of a title of the book and it has to be written on a cover or it has to have any semantic similarity. My second tag is ‘living book’. I was thinking about something contemporary or something new but happening at the current moment. Or it also could be something which has any quality of living or alive object. A part of the title of the book I picked is ‘themes and movement’. I thought about living moving books and also the subject of the book is quite new for me. I have never been into this topic before. It did not attract me before. Recently I come across this subject all the time. I’ve never divide art according to these categories before for myself. I found this topic quite interesting at the moment. This book caught my eye and it was a coincidence.
My third rule was ‘relay or trust coincidence’. I opened the book some where in a middle and I discovered a picture of a naked lady sitting in the dust surrounded by rubbish. I did not have any doubts about my choice.
My search took about 10 min. Was it accidental or do we always cross over things which we are really into or do those thing find us?

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 708.4 rec

Amulet


Thursday, April 11, 2013

When I saw this book first time some one was checking it and considering to take it, which immediately attracted my attention. It happens to me some times. I asked that person If I could see it as well. When I opened first page I saw a fungus. It’s a glue got rotten. The book is broken, so you can see the glue between first page and the cover. The cover of the book looks quite boring and dirty. I made my mind. I fall in love with rotten glue. It is a palette from dark brown to yellow and beige with little crumbles and cracks. The same on the back side. I don’t know what happened there but I don’t see that often a pure life inside of books.

Pictures in the book are quite kitsch. Many of them I would say are very bad and cheesy. You are not really able to see a tittle of the book when you hold it first time. The tittle is Amulet. It is about jewelries. Jewelries are presented on the different parts of a human body inside  of geometric shapes. All the picture are taken on a way to make you think about vaginas and penises. The book has been taken from the library 7 times from 1993 to 2002. I guess it has not been opened that often. Probably it is a reason why the new life got born. It made me think about books in the third row on the top shelf at my parents house. Some of them will be never opened again. I am wondering what could happen there.

Rietveld Library cat.nr:777.6 cat 179

 

Look for the unusual (1)


Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The SHV Thinkbook was the book that catched my eye, because of the passionate story Henk told us and also because of the vitrine that showed some try out versions of the book, experimented with paper, way of binding, the cover size. It made me look up to the wall and back to the vitrine all the time, to try to find out the story of the book and to try to see the problems she met and the way she solved them.
I think it was important to me get get to know the book in some way before liking it. I see books as object were you don’t only look at, you want to feel the weight, you want to feel the structure of the paper went you turn the page, you want to have a close up to see how the ink is printed on the paper, you want to smell the book you might even want to make a little loving fold in the corner of a page you want to remember.

The only think that i had in the back of my head all the time when i looked at the SHV Thinkbook, was this sentence that i read or heard which was the instruction Irma Boom got for making this book and that was; ‘Look for the unusual’
Maybe in settled book, and publishers land this is a very unusual book, but in my perspective books can be way more unusual.

Some thoughts about books being an object that store information, in a handy, clear, protected and unusual way…

unusual books

unusual books 2


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