ESSAY. Yakimono. David Maisel.

Library of Dust is a haunting series of images by David Maisel, who photographed a collection of corroding copper canisters containing the cremated remains ("cremains") of patients at the Oregon State Insane Asylum from 1883 to 1971. The canisters are beautiful. The topic is disturbing. The abandoned remains have reacted with the copper to create colourful deformations on the canisters that often appear to be bubbling over. Bubbling over with death, neglect, the effects of mental illness, yes, but at the same with the spirit of individuals who have finally come to embody beauty. The asylum itself is decaying when Maisel first visits, and the photographs depict large slices of peeling pain and tiles curving free of the floor, a reflection of the previous disorder. These photographs will lead to pensiveness and quiet wonder. The visual poetry is beautiful, bewildering and bewitching.

Yakimono - a Japanese word for ceramics - literally means "firied" (yaki) "things" (mono). That explains everything!

Burning books - no5

I will be taking a break now until 11.30, to give myself some time to finish my essay.

I cannot wait to get back!

I am taking books, that no longer have the society that supports them (uh! I have got a barn full of them!) and I reduce them to an immensely fragile state - so fragile, that they may disintegrate in hands - just like the memory of the times, that they represent.

London (or the lack of it) from Vauxhall Bridge.

16.11.2010. Misty morning. I was cycling to RA. While the rest of London was almost mist-free by 8.30, Thames was still impenetrable.

ESSAY. Biblioclasm. Araki Takako.

Look what I have found! Araki Takako!

Araki Takako is an internationally acclaimed ceramic artist, particularly well-known for the "Bible" series on which she has been working for more than twenty years. Araki is an atheist, but her father was a Zen priest. The prolonged and painful death of her brother, a faithful Christian, from tuberculosis, focused her doubts on the value of religion. She sees the bible as both a symbol of Western culture and a symbol of the vanity of Christian belief. Her obsessive metaphorical work sparked by her brother's death serves as an eulogy on the powerlessness of faith. The brittle decaying Bibles are composed of layers of thin fragile clay sheets which she has silk-screened with text. Their decaying fragility contains its own message that ultimately the Word is ephemeral. Araki devoted herself to the family profession of flower arranging until 1952 when she began to study painting. From 1960 to 1961 she studied sculpting in New York before returning to Japan where she studied in different pottery centres. Her reputation for sculptural ceramics was established in 1979 when she received the grand prize at the Japan Ceramics Exhibition.

I find her work very powerful. That same feeling I get when looking at Oscar Munioz videos. She produces a statement without being aggressive.
There is stillness and a meditative quality in Araki's ceramics.

Burning books - no4

I have managed to preserve some text. I will try repeat this is a more controlled way. I have left some more samples with Tim to be fired.
Who is Tim?
Tim is the most patient and helpful technician I have met. He runs Chelsea College of Art ceramics workshops. It is such a friendly and creative place to be.

To be continued.

Books in stop-motion

by Ian Hammond

ESSAY. Biblioclasm. Dieter Roth.

Dieter Roth (Swiss, born Germany, 1930-98). Literaturwurst (Martin Walser: Halbzeit) (Literature Sausage), 1968. Book of cut-up novel, water, gelatin and spices in sausage casing, overall: 20 11/16 x 16 3/4 x 4 ¾ in (52.5 x 42.5 x 12 cm). Publisher and fabricator: the artist, Reykjavik. Edition: 50 with different formats and texts. Dieter Roth Foundation, Hamburg. © 2006 Dieter Roth Foundation, Hamburg.


Johanna Drucker would not call this a book. My mum would not call this a book. Most people would not call this a book. Daily Mirror had been reduced to pulp, a semi-raw material, recycled mush as a sausage stuffing.

Sure - it is not a book in the codex sense of it. Book-object? How do I classify it?

Can chicken sausages be called chicken? What would J.Sainsbury do?

ESSAY. Helen Lessick. Metaphor.

Linguistic signifier of the metaphor stands as a metaphor for the sign itself.
That is one very confusing thought, I've just had.

Anyway - very clever, Helen Lessick. Very clever.




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ESSAY. Biblioclasm. Barbara Hashimoto.

Barbara Hashimoto is very good at destruction. She has a history a firing books and displaying piles of shredded junk mail.

I have been trying to find somewhere to see her ceramic books myself. Having seen Yohei Nishimura's book at the National Arts Library at V&A, I was touched and inspired by the ephemeral lightness of it. Hashimotos books seem to lack that quality. It would be really good to see them first hand.