A Human Approach

240 x 120 mm

Concertina book made up of 22 panels.

Red cover boards. Handmade paper. Colour tissue paper to bind each panel.

Typewritten text.

This bookwork began as loose pages of cut-up and collaged text from William Freeman’s novel, The Human Approach To Literature (a book I found last year). Each page was then written through to create the text that now exists in this concertina format. The coloured paper binding draws upon the theme of binding prevalent throughout Freeman's text.

The concertina has no front or back cover. Opening it at one end shows how each poem builds on the one before. Opening it at the other end presents three poems made up entirely of five key words and phrases that appear in each panel. At this point I was looking at Wolfgang Iser and dabbling in theories of reader-response. Particularly Iser's idea that the reader sees these words in a different perspective and is able to recognise the pattern that is being created but also, acknowledge the differences due to the varied contexts the words are used in (The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach).

In the first version of this bookwork I set out to use visual elements to completely change the form of Freeman’s novel and reconfigure the content. However, it lacked unity and compactness which I think version two shows a bit better in relation to both form and content.

Suspect, Location, Time

150 x 210 mm
12 pages of embossed card. Black felt binding.
Typewritten text with black pen and ink.

This bookwork was made in response to Foucault's "Panoptican" with the idea of surveillance as a ‘faceless gaze’, positioned and alert everywhere (Discipline and Punish). These ideas relate to city life in the twenty-first century with the growing number of CCTV cameras becoming an expected part of the city landscape. This piece uses the set-up of a detective following and noting the movements of five suspects. The detective is the camera. The five individuals are watched in unison and each offers their response to this alongside the detective's notes. References in the text and map are actual places in and around Baker Street; however, they have been reconfigured to create a new fictional text and site. The map of Baker Street has been drawn in relation to the movements of the suspects in the text and not in accordance with a map of the actual site.

cut and distribute

click to enlarge

This Porch

So here are the images of 'This Porch'. It's finally a book that brings together the three episodes: Sleeping On Front Porches, Standing On Front Porches and Swinging on Front Porches.

It measures 140 x 140 mm. Consists of 15 individual concertinas made up of 4 panels each bound together with Japanese stab binding. The paper is Newsprint 48 gsm which is great to work with when using the typewriter as each marking kisses the paper just enough to leave an indent on the page without stamping all the way through.

With regards to bookmaking, I'm not happy with the following -

The last two stitches of binding on the back cover are not in line.

I should have invested in an awl or maybe just a push pin to make neater holes to feed the thread through as the binding can sometimes be seen creeping out of the spine.

I think I should have prepared cover boards instead of using Newsprint paper for the front and back covers- the stitching and embroidery has resulted in some curling and messy holes.

Plus, there is a spelling mistake.

Episode One: Sleeping On Front Porches (Revised)

I pull in at 2.30
From Gate 6
Seat 37 D
Passenger baggage must not contain radioactive material.

Up Route 116. South Mandelle Hall.
Back to school. Ring the bell. Walking blues.
Past Lower Lake nothing stirs
Except lampost flicker outside Village Commons.

12.00 An art museum lunch
'Hetch Hetchy Canyon' stimulates inquisitive looking
Lie on Skinner Green with The Bostonians set to Playlist one.
Next week we’ll talk injustice in Taxi!

We will stand in the place of American revolutionaries
But do nothing. Instead "Where you guys heading?"
Repeated by sandy boys with the promise
That one day out in the rain we’ll see change.

Minuteman Express. Amherst Bookshop
To be [re] born in Dickinson's doorway.
Hold hands with an Amherstian girl talk of lacklustre education
And friends that we hardly know.

1.30 and Em is in Northampton
Ice-cream with a Rock n' Roll twist. Fools fall in love over american pie
Outside the winters are cold and the summers are over. Soon.
So today and always I carry my clear plastic umbrella.

To the greenhouse for a slice of your soil,
To the Bookmill for a taste of your choco-beer,
To Skinner Mountain for a picnic on a cliff face,
To Hangers for a short skirt, sticky chicken and chardonnay.

Yours is the first face that I saw.
Back to hers – dozy lighting misty drinks
My mac slowly endures intoxication.
Walk with me Suzy Lee.

11.20 Lit up snowmen mark your door.
We're here to live and swing on front porches
I don't know you
But people we like

Show and tell your liquid beats froth out
The basement notes casual contradiction:
Seeing everything
But noticing nothing.

I change in the back of your truck
And end up asleep on your porch.

Episode Two: Standing On Front Porches (Revised)

A Monday of apologises for a lost suitcase
But it’s o.k. I have a 5 ml lip balm.
10.30 unwrite these pages, jot new words
To stuff into back pockets.

Stand -
Script text
Set score
Stamp view down.

Breakfast in Amherst. In Newport by 4.45
We dine at Christie's
Converse with an economic waiter.
He offers two tickets

Dilemma -
What do we do?
Resolved -
What can we do?

9.45 Two New Yorkers take us down Ocean Drive
Mom says "No talkin' to strangers"
We talk, share thoughts on city-life, its 'no stare policy'
Yet gesticulation in abundance.

Piling loo in the back bin fag seat,
Generating fag steam loo bin heat,
Bin pulsating to the fag back loo beat.
Two cities converse side by side.

11.00 at Marble House
Gawping and gorging
Of too much of too much.
Take the Coastal Walk

It gives me time to think, to think of Suzy Lee.
I'm told missing her is unhealthy
More unhealthy than cheese on pasta, cheese on toast, cheese on cheese?
Tonight we eat out on the porch of a stranger.

Tomorrow to The Armory -
To antiques and fine art
To stare into the eyes of someone I could love for a while (at least).
We catch the 2.30 out

You call me anti-social. I'm listening to what Joey says Danny says -
It's crucial to understanding an emotional life on the road.
The 5.00 to Copley
Where our map stops unfolding.

I change behind the gas station
And end up asleep on your lap.

Episode 3: Swinging On Front Porches

O the bells of Quincy 1825
The artisans, the peddlers and their carts
That keep the red brick alive.

It's Friday the 21st and I get George Moore
So every day I head to the library to check in and say
Isabella, I think you're architecturally astounding -
I could watch you go up, extend, lie still forever.
We'd rest on the common and stain my white shoes red.

Today you take advantage -

Instil in me mass consumption.
You tell me that this is the modern world!
Your pants swing from the garage door
Decorated in red ribbon and green clover.

10.18 Breakfast at Bartley's
Take off your shoes. Sit on our rugs!
Tell us in advance what is yet to come.

There will be sound checks at 5.02
But we're still in the yard eating leftover fruit.
I picture her chunky bracelets
And trace her movements in and out
Of all houses wherein men have lived.

8.30 The lizard lounge. I'm glad we came
It's Sunday and it's the 1990s
The district is busy. We roll up our jeans.

Tonight they take over the cemetery
Recreate the battle of O' Normal
Bellmen shiver at the sight of bright orbs of light,
Guests quiver at the sound of rocking chairs,
Yet there are no rocking chairs in this hotel

On Copp's Hill -
Would you do things differently?
Course not, but think most probably.

3.15 And we swing in time
Books stuffed into side-streets
Books stacked into neat peaks

Scratch in this moment –
Say something cliché: the willow strokes the surface and parts the lake
And Duck, Duck, Goose - Duck glides right on through
Or just scar the skin with needles and pins.

Books spill into your suitcase.

I change direction out of a taxi
And end up asleep in Seat 19 C.