Tag: inspiration

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events

The Portable Reading Room

Featured in the upcoming London Art Book Fair 2011, held at the Whitechapel Gallery, is The Portable Reading Room. Brainchild of Wild Pansy Press, this flat-pack pop-up booth acts as a gallery, bookshop, social space and studio, and will be debuted from the 23rd  to the 25th of September. It’s an intriguing idea – a really dynamic way to interact with people, showcase work and raise the profile of the press.

The Portable Reading Room, pre-assembly

We’ve had similar concepts for future City As Material events – how about constructing a portable library and making station, that can travel to places lacking access to experimental publications or a self-publishing initiative, and could benefit from a little D.I.Y impetus? The Proboscis circus comes to town!

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inspiration

Sorrows of the Moon: A Journey Through London

Hi everybody, my name is Elena and I have been working as an intern at Proboscis since mid June. On Proboscis’ website I posted some reflections of mine initially taking inspiration from a visual essay I am composing on the wall of the studio. The visual essay combines some impressions sprung from the observation of Proboscis’ work and some scattered ideas about geography and identity, the relationship between private and public spaces and the anatomy of the city. I’ll be posting some brief thoughts on inspiring books, remarkable exhibitions or curious places I think are worth sharing.

In response to Hazem’s post about Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night, I’d like to recommend another penetrating and poetic book which draws a personal trajectory on the map of London, that is Iqbal Ahmed’s Sorrows of the Moon: A Journey Through London, which explores petty story-lives of peripheral characters, often marked by resignation, loneliness, failure. This dominant tone of melancholy blurs and dampens the enthusiasm and the celebration of London diversity, underlining how the common destiny of the capital and of all the people inhabiting it for one reason or another is one of sorrow and isolation. Observed on a clear night from Parliament Hill, the moon, which acts as the unifying image across the book inspired by a poem of Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal , wraps and encloses the city in a fate of sterility and desolation.

Categories
events

Upcoming Zine Fairs

I’m giving a shout out to two upcoming zine fairs, both held on the 25th of September 2011 – an unfortunate clash, alas.

“THE BRISTOL COMIC AND ZINE FAIR

When: Sunday 25th September 2011, 12pm – 6pm
Where: Start the Bus, 7-9 Baldwin Street, Bristol, BS1 1RU (map)

FREE ENTRY

The Bristol Comic and Zine Fair brings UK self-publishers together for a one-day market, offering a wide array of comix, zines and other alternative publications. There will be stalls from individual creators, and a communal table full of work from across the small-press underground.”

It’s run by Bear Pit Zine, who describe issue 1, “Upheaval” as a “collection of comics, narrating various disruptive possibilities, imaginations, and alternative futures for the city of Bristol.” This strikes a chord with the sort of themes Proboscis have explored in the past, and aim to do in the future. I’ve just ordered a copy, as we visited Bristol as part of the City As Material series – it’ll be interesting to see an insider perspective.

There’s also…

THE SHEFFIELD ZINE FAIR, at Brezza, 10-14 Wellington Street, Sheffield, S1 4HD, from 11am to 6pm. Get in touch via sheffieldzinefair@hotmail.co.uk.

Categories
inspiration

Drawn In

I’ve been following Julia Rothman’s excellent blog, Book By Its Cover for a good while now, and first heard about the concept behind Drawn In months back, but for some reason its actual release evaded me. I’ve re-discovered it now, and immediately snapped it up from Amazon, as we’re planning a new series looking into the methods and practices artists use to do their work, and also because I featured Ying-Chieh Liu’s exquisite sketchbooks recently.

Drawn In shows the creative processes and personal musings of 44 artists from different disciplines, by opening up their private sketchbooks and asking how they use them. It looks fascinating – I’ve always pondered how artists with industrious work ethics manage to actually get everything done! Can’t wait to receive this.

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inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight – City As Material: An Overview

A document of the five City As Material events we ran in London last year, this eBook collects the blog posts penned after each event, a selection of photographs taken, as well as an introduction to the project and our motives for undertaking it. Created in place of an individual eBook for Sonic Geographies, due to the absence of a special guest, this account of the series provides a narrative that was lacking from the other books produced, detailing the experience from each event on the day, not just the resulting output, and hopefully intriguing potential future collaborators.

Simply using the existing text from the bookleteer blog and full-page photographs as covers for each section, in a book, turns transitory blog posts and assorted snapshots into a publication that can stand on its own right, demonstrating the transformational effect and credence associated with a printed document (although it’s also readable online), made possible with the eBook format.

Read City As Material: An Overview with the online bookreader below, or download, print and make via Diffusion.

Categories
inspiration

Sketchbook Zines – Ying-Chieh Liu

I’ve found Etsy to be a great source when looking for remarkable zines, often not featured anywhere else; either a sign that unfortunately, no-one has picked up on them yet, or the author is simply satisfied with creating and making their zines available to whoever stumbles upon them. Certainly the latter can make the reader feel as if they have discovered a hidden treasure of their own volition, rather than via the many zine groups floating about the internet, or word of mouth within the community.

This couldn’t be more true for anyone viewing Ying-Chieh Liu’s reprinted sketchbooks, containing stunning, ethereal illustrations from her numerous travels. It’s an interesting concept to reproduce a personal sketchbook (in I assume, its raw form), without interpretation or much of a narrative, but when they contain such intriguing artwork it’s hard not to be engrossed.

View her Etsy store.

Categories
inspiration

The Book Barge

I’ve just discovered The Book Barge, a canal boat that acts as a floating bookshop and workshop space, currently touring around the U.K. The interior looks amazing, and not least of all, inviting – perfect for a relaxed perusal of its shelves. Normally moored in Staffordshire, in May it set off on a six-month tour to highlight the struggle of independent bookshops to readers across the country, buying essential items using only its own stock as currency. Curious and commendable – best of luck!

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inspiration

Book Sculpture Portraits

Knowing my penchant for unusual pieces created from books and paper, Giles turned me on to the extraordinary work of artist Nicholas Galanin, who hand-carves 3D portraits from lengthy volumes, as if they were inverted sculpture blocks. The source models for these surreal, paper death masks were first captured with a 3D scanner to produce an exact digital rendition of the subject, then cut out and bound at the back – a sculpture you can actually leaf through.

Click on the picture below to view the Flickr gallery.

Categories
inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight: Pharmaceutical Cubes by Kenneth Goldsmith

Kenneth Goldsmith, poet and founder of UbuWeb, created this series of six StoryCubes, each inscribed with the side effects of a certain prescription drug. The text is rendered in illegible 1-point type, so that the words become texture – some resembling the grooves in a vinyl record, another a peculiar lilac coloured static noise. Kenneth also provides an interesting point in regards to their physicality:

“When folded into cubes, these warnings – secretly embedded into the pills we take – are reconstituted into three-dimensional forms, creating a new type of placebo.”

Download and make them for yourself on Diffusion.

(You can also read a more in-depth post about these cubes, penned by our former blogger, Karen Martin, here.)

"Prozac" and "Effexor"

 

Categories
inspiration

Stop Sharpening Your Knives

An anthology series of poetry and illustration, Stop Sharpening Your Knives has been around for a good few years, and is currently accepting submissions for its 5th edition. I had the good fortune to hear a performance by one of its editors, poet Jack Underwood, at the launch night of the London Word Festival a few months back, who was equally hilarious and heartfelt. No doubt he’s got good taste as well, eh?