DIALOGUE ONNLLIINNEE M MAAGGAAZZ II N NEE O
ISSUE NR. 1
INTERVIEW: JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER 路 BEN GREENMAN 路 THE DIGITAL AGE: A CELEBRATION
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DIALOGUE ON NLL II N NEE M MAAGGAAZZ II N N EE O
ISSUE NR. 1
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his is the first issue of a new magazine considering the bridge between the digital and analog ages, which is in the process of its building. It’s a very actual subject, but we tend to forget or oversee its impact on our lives. Nevertheless, this is not a manifest for traditional ways of publicity or conversation. We just want to keep the conversation between traditional and digital media alive because we believe there are a lot of possibilities combining the two. Every two weeks this magazine will publish a new issue. Happy browsing!
IN THIS ISSUE
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Interview: Jonathan Safran Foer talks about his new book ‘Tree of Codes’
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Featured: Correspondences by Ben Greenman
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The age of digital art: a celebration
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INTERVIEW
“Why wouldn’t — how couldn’t — an author care about how his or her books look?” JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
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he jackets of Jonathan Safran Foer’s books (“Everything Is Illuminated,” “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” “Eating Animals”), designed by John Gray, helped set off a revival in hand-lettering. Graphic-design quirks have also figured in each of Foer’s narratives. But his latest book, “Tree of Codes,” takes the integration of writing and design to a new level. As Visual Editions, the London-based publisher, describes it, the book is as much a “sculptural object” as it is a work of fiction: “Jonathan Safran Foer has taken his favorite book, ‘The Street of Crocodiles’ by Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, and used it as a canvas, cutting into and out of the pages, to arrive at an original new story.”
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“Tree of Codes”, the result is a text of cutout pages, with text peeking through windows as the tale unfolds. Foer discussed the making of this book in a recent interview.
Where did this strong affinity for graphic design come from?
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here would the lack of interest in design come from? Why wouldn’t — how couldn’t — an author care about how his or her books look? I’ve never met an artist who wasn’t interested in the visual arts, yet we’ve drawn a deep line in the sand around what we consider the novel to be, and what we’re supposed to care about. So we’re in the strange position of having much to say about what hangs on gallery walls and little about what hangs on the pages of our books. Literature doesn’t need a visual component — my favorite books are all black words on white pages — but it would be well served to lower the drawbridge. On like it’s let
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the surface, “Tree of Codes” looks a Foer volume. But inside — well, revolutionary. But maybe I should you explain what I’m talking about. took my favorite book, Bruno Schulz’s “Street of Crocodiles,” and by removing words carved out a new story. It was hardly an original idea:
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it’s a technique that has, in different ways, been practiced for as long as there has been writing — perhaps most brilliantly by Tom Phillips in his magnum opus, “A Humument.” But I was more interested in subtracting than adding, and also in creating a book with a three-dimensional life. On the brink of the end of paper, I was attracted to the idea of a book that can’t forget it has a body. Working on this book was extraordinarily difficult. Unlike novel writing, which is the quintessence of freedom, here I had my hands tightly bound. Of course 100 people would have come up with 100 different books using this same process of carving, but every choice I made was dependent on a choice Schulz had made. On top of which, so many of Schulz’s sentences feel elemental, unbreakdownable. And his writing is so unbelievably good, so much better than anything that could conceivably be done with it, that my first instinct was always to leave it alone. For about a year I also had a printed manuscript of “The Street of Crocodiles” with me, along with a highlighter and a red pen. The story of “Tree of Codes” is continuous across pages, but I approached the project one page at a time: looking for promising words or phrases (they’re all promising), trying to involve and connect what had become my characters. My first several drafts read more like concrete poetry, and I hated them. At times I felt that I was making a gravestone rubbing of “The Street of Crocodiles,” and at times that I was transcribing a dream that the book might have had. I’ve never read another book so intensely or so many times. I’ve never memorized so many phrases or, as the act of carving progressed, forgotten so many phrases. “Tree of Codes” is in no way a book like “The Street of Crocodiles.” It is a small response to that great book. This book is, as you note, an “exhumation” of Schulz’s work. I believe Schulz was brought back to life, so to speak, by Philip Roth (in the “Zuckerman Bound” series). And in addition to creating surreal texts, Schulz was an amazing illustrator. Was this double artistic life what attracted you to him?
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t was only his writing that attracted me. His biography — his double life, and the tragic end of his life — certainly resonate with “Tree of Codes,” but they had nothing to do with why I wanted to make it. A painter has a palette, and for this process, my palette was determined by the book I chose to carve from. I know of no other book that is, in this way, as rich as “The Street of Crocodiles.” I suppose what you’ve done is a lot like sampling in music — though not exactly. What motivated you to exhume this book? And what would you say you’ve added or taken away?
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t’s not really sampling, because that implies taking something out of its context and inserting it into a new context. A better analogy might be carving a stone. Of course one can carve any number of things from a block of marble, but one is still dependent on the marble. And marble is not like granite, which is not like chalk. Has a sculpture taken away from the block of marble? Not really. Has it added? Not really. “Tree of Codes” took “The Street of Crocodiles” as its starting point and made something new. You’ve written about Joseph Cornell (in “A Convergence of Birds”). There seems to be a Cornell-like quality to this. Am I wrong? There’s no being wrong in seeing something in art, only being disagreed with. And I don’t disagree with you. There’s something precious about both this book and Cornell’s boxes — precious not in the sense of twee or sentimental, but rare. Cornell’s art creates museum spaces, where ordinary objects are given great value. I think there’s something about the format of “Tree of Codes” that does that for words. SOURCE: NEW YORK ARTS BEAT
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‘Correspondences’ by Ben Greenman
Correspondences provides a bittersweet glimpse at the lost art of letter-writing, and the manner and means by which emotions are conveyed in that form. The collection contains seven stories, all of which, in one way or another, speak to the disintegrating relationship between people--men and women, parents and children, authors and readers.
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orrespondences, isn’t just a book. It’s a box more than a book, a complex foldout structure that houses three small accordion books. The whole thing is handcrafted and letterpressed and was created with incredible patience and attention to detail by Aaron Petrovich and Alex Rose, of Hotel St. George Press. It would be an understatement to say that they did a good job.
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hen it was clear to us that we were making a beautiful thing, an object, we set about to create a countermovement within the work. It was so exclusive that we wanted to invent a part that would be inclusive. That’s how we came up with the idea for the Postcard Project. In the collection, there are six stories. I wrote a seventh that is printed on the actual casing of the book/box. That seventh story is about a man who reconsiders his marriage. His reconsideration takes place at a hotel, mostly. He writes postcards to his wie and son, as well as to a young woman he meets at the hotel. In the story, I left those postcards unwritten. Readers of the book are invited to complete the story by submitting postcards. The story is also reprinted online at the publisher’s website.
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he book that grew out of this process, out of these problems, Correspondences, isn’t just a book. It’s a box more than a book, a complex fold-out structure that houses three small accordion books. The whole thing is handcrafted and letterpressed and was created with incredible patience and attention to detail by Aaron Petrovich and Alex Rose, of Hotel St. George Press. It would be an understatement to say that they did a good job.
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hen it was clear to us that we were making a beautiful thing, an object, we set about to create a countermovement within the work. It was so exclusive that we wanted to invent a part that would be inclusive. That’s how we came up with the idea for the Postcard Project.
In the collection, there are six stories. I wrote a seventh that is printed on the actual casing of the book/box. That seventh story is about a man who reconsiders his marriage. His reconsideration takes place at a hotel, mostly. He writes postcards to his wie and son, as well as to a young woman he meets at the hotel. In the story, I left those postcards unwritten. Readers of the book are invited to complete the story by submitting postcards. The story is also reprinted online at the publisher’s website.
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hile I was working on that story, I had the iPod on shuffle, and it turned up “Writing a Postcard,” by Shoes, which seemed like a happy coincidence. I wanted the song to serve as a kind of anthem, but after the beginning, which I like because it reminds me of Marshall Crenshaw’s “Mary Anne,” it kind of fuzzes out for me. The vocals recede and I can’t really get hold of the lyrics. It’s like a postcard that arrives with the ink smudged. I give it credit for what it could have been.
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uckily, there are lots of songs about postcards. Maybe it’s because postcards, like pop songs, are brief and direct and informal and can seem like part of an ongoing conversation. There’s “Postcard,” by the Who, from Odds and Sods. There’s “Postcard from Waterloo,” by Tom Verlaine, and “Postcard from Tiny Islands,” by the Walkmen. Tom Waits has written about postcards twice, both times with parentheses: “Postcards (From Easy Street)” and “Old Shoes (and Picture Postcards).” The postcard song that broke from the pack was “Postcard to Sparrow,” by the legendary calypsonian The Mighty Sparrow. It’s deceptively simple—at Christmastime, Sparrow receives a postcard with holiday wishes from his lover in Trinidad—but it’s also goes right back to Sam Cooke, in that it imagines the message from the point of view of the receipient. SOURCE: LARGEHEARTEDBOY.COM
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The age of digital art: a celebration Since a few years, arts has also found its way to the internet. Not only are there a lot of libraries and sources about the traditional masters, but also a lot of new, digital painters. The invention of the tablet (an industry mainly led by Wacom), everyone can start a painting career with nothing more than a computer, graphic generating software and a tablet of course. Still, you need as much as talent and patience as you need with real life painting.
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nyone who hasn’t got the space to paint (or a mind that wouldn’t care about spilling it for that matter) could be satisfied with the digital alternative which has been coming up for years now. Not only fine arts are being practiced on a screen these days, also illustrators use the advantages of a scanner and Photoshop. You can even make or paint art with your iPad and a stylus. There are plenty of websites celebrating art online. Nevertheless, painting in the traditional way has become popular again with the help of countless art websites and portfolios. This is why the digital revolution can be seen as a celebration, since painting has never been more possibile for anyone, keeping in mind that anyone can upload whatever they want and spread it all around the world in minutes. The internet has truly been a good feeder
for artists. Being an artist, who wouldn’t like their works to be spread as fast and wide as possible? There are risks too though, the internet is as much a celebration of arts as it is a dangerous idea. Copyright infringment has never been a bigger issue. Young people and designers who don’t have the media to start a business yet, who set up an online portfolio, often don’t realise they put up their artwork ready for stealing. Any company with big money can take an image and claim it to use it for promotion, or a cover for a porn dvd. This actually happened to Lara Jade Coton, who was 14 when a company stole her picture. Some people would think it’s nice to see that people appreciate your artwork that much, but not when it’s a porn company. She sued them and won the case, gaining a lot of money. Copyright infringment is an actual discussion
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and a very difficult issue, though we won’t focuse on that for now just once. Another issue is the fact that there are websites for artists themselves, to put up their own work, and websites like FFFFOUND giving users the chance to put up the works of others, often not paying attention to the sources or makers. On the other sides, there’s also concepts such as Illustration Friday, where the contributors have to make an illustration in the time span of 1 hour. Going back to the digital-traditional thing, artists who still only like to do everything offline can also get advantage of the internet on one of the many collectives. In general, artists and professionals get a lot of free publicity for just about anything they put up there. These days, the boundaries are getting mixed up between media. You could be watching an oil painting made on canvas when it would be drawn digitally or vice versa. So, while celebrating and watching all those blogs and collectives, be sure to check if you’re right from time to time. Next to the online art celebration, there have been publishers such as Ballistic, publishing magazines and books about digital artists.
Painting by Mathieu Reynès http://mathieureynes.blogspot.com
JUST A FEW ONLINE ART CELEBRATIONS BOOOOOOOM.COM DRAWN.CA WOOSTERCOLLECTIVE.COM CGHUB.COM DRIBBBLE.COM FFFFOUND.COM ILLUSTRATIONFRIDAY.COM BALLISTICPUBLISHING.COM