Hertha D. Sweet Wong
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469640709
- eISBN:
- 9781469640723
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469640709.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Artists’ books are visual and sculptural objects that reference the structure of the book –the binding, the page, the spine, the text, and the layout. Often, image and text in artists’ books function ...
More
Artists’ books are visual and sculptural objects that reference the structure of the book –the binding, the page, the spine, the text, and the layout. Often, image and text in artists’ books function co-equally. Artists’ books, then, refer to concepts of the book as a material form and a time-based medium. This chapter presents a brief history of artists’ books, then argues that Julie Chen’s artists’ books address time as it relates to subjectivity. She does this by rendering time spatially, slowing down time and forcing readers to focus attentively on a single moment and thus stretching a singular act of attention into a temporal meditation. Ultimately, Chen creates books that mirror structures of cognition, offering readers/viewers an experience of her interiority as an assemblage of interpenetrating moments and processes of consciousness.Less
Artists’ books are visual and sculptural objects that reference the structure of the book –the binding, the page, the spine, the text, and the layout. Often, image and text in artists’ books function co-equally. Artists’ books, then, refer to concepts of the book as a material form and a time-based medium. This chapter presents a brief history of artists’ books, then argues that Julie Chen’s artists’ books address time as it relates to subjectivity. She does this by rendering time spatially, slowing down time and forcing readers to focus attentively on a single moment and thus stretching a singular act of attention into a temporal meditation. Ultimately, Chen creates books that mirror structures of cognition, offering readers/viewers an experience of her interiority as an assemblage of interpenetrating moments and processes of consciousness.
