Page 24 - radio strainer

The possible proprioception of the book
“A book is a sequence of spaces.
Each of these spaces is perceived at a different moment - a book is also a sequence of moments.
A book is not a case of words, nor a bag of words, nor a bearer of words.
Among languages, literary language (prose and poetry) is not the best fitted to the nature of books.
A book may be the accidental container of a text, the structure of which is irrelevant to the book: these
are the books of bookshops and libraries.
A book can also exist as an autonomous and self-sufficient form,
including perhaps a text that emphasizes that form, a text that is an organic part of that form: here begins the new art of making books” (Carriòn, 1975).
Ulisses Carriòn’s essay The New Art of Making Books (1975) unsettles traditional understanding of books as containers for words. Carriòn emphasizes instead the compositional, interactive, formal character of books as sequences of time and space. For Carrión, the time of a book
is very different to the time of language, and it is a mistake to conflate the work of writing
and the work of books. Which takes us to the field of artist-books, which, to borrow a clear definition from the Tate Modern website, “explore ideas and concepts through form as much as content. They do this by, for example, disrupting the sequence and nature of the page, or using unconventional materials and printing techniques.” (Tate, 2015).
It is here that the Radio Strainer book has one of its most lived-in conceptual homes, where the materiality of pages might translate choreographic concerns – allowing every available element of the book to contribute to performances of reading. Paper, binding, colour, texture, image, legibility and illegibility are in play. Here we might, along with dance artist and scholar Jude Walton, explore “the possible proprioception of the book: its kinaesthetic qualities ... what potential there might be for performance, or an expanded notion of performing, to be found and/or created in book form” (2014).
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