Search results for ""Author Xu Bing""

"The written word is the most basic element of human culture. To touch the written word is to touch the essence of culture." - Xu Bing Book from the Sky certainly seemed to have fallen from the heavens: the text of this installation piece was written in a new language that resembled traditional Chinese. No matter who scours Xu Bing's book for 'meaning', they will only discover a semblance of it: mutated characters that resist interpretation. Carving out approximately four thousand wood blocks by hand, Xu Bing spent four years, from 1987 to 1991, making (in his own words) "something that said nothing". After creating a book no one could read, it only made sense for Xu Bing to develop his next project: a book that transcended barriers of language: Book from the Ground. Composed entirely of pictographs, Book from the Ground is a groundbreaking study into the concept of universal communication. Whether his goal is total comprehension or confusion, Xu Bing's masterful exploration of language challenges the way we think about the written word.

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The artist's book as activist tactic: a toolkit Freedom of the Presses is at once a textbook and a toolbox for using artists’ books and creative publications to further community engagement and social justice projects. Far from being a staid survey of an art historical practice, Freedom of the Presses intervenes in an ongoing discussion about art and activism in the present day by considering the place of the art book in the 21st century. The publisher, Booklyn, has been involved in this conversation since 1999, when a group of six artists decided to band together to promote contemporary artists’ books and publications. Booklyn’s focus has always been voracious, encompassing street art, punk and activist culture alongside more conventional artists’ books. This restless energy is present in Freedom of the Presses, which brings together a provocative mix of humorous, intimate and scholarly writing in order to expand how we think about the concept, content, design, production and distribution of artists’ and activists’ publications today. Aimed at a global community of librarians, publishers and readers, it offers models of how to reimagine contemporary artists’ bookmaking as a socially engaged, political practice. With essays by Kurt Allerslev, Tia Blassingame, Sarah Kirk Hanley, FLY-O, Karen Eliot, Richard J. Lee, Florencia San Martín, Ganzeer, Suzy Taraba, Stephen Dupont, Bridget Elmer, Janelle Rebel, Marshall Weber, Anton Wurth, Xu Bing, Deborah Ultan and Aaron Sinift, Freedom of the Presses enacts the dialogue it calls for, inviting artists and activists to weigh in on the place of artists’ books in the most pressing social, political and cultural issues of our time.

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