Exploring ‘bookness’ at the Bodleian Libraries through artist interviews
BOOKNESS is a podcast from the Bodleian Libraries ‘for book lovers, book nerds, and book makers’. A collaboration between colleagues in the conservation and curatorial teams of one of the oldest libraries in Europe that holds the collection of the University of Oxford, the podcast series shares objects from their artists’ books collection and delves into some of the questions the teams ponder on a daily basis; ‘what makes a book a book’, ‘is this a book’, and ‘how should we look after it’?
Book conservator Alice Evans shares the story of BOOKNESS so far, from participating in a VoCA Artist Interview workshop to entering the podcast world, aiming to create engaging and unexpected content for the library’s audiences near and far, whilst also formally documenting the voices of artists alongside their work in the Bodleian’s collection.1
Discussing the unexpected
For BOOKNESS, my colleague Jo Maddocks from the Bodleian’s Rare Books team and I interviewed a range of creative makers; from artists, book artists, and paper engineers, to poets and graphic designers, who all have at least one thing in common; an interest in exploring the book form through their work, and often a desire to push the boundaries. Sitting alongside our more traditional and expected collections of library objects we now have quite a range of intriguing and ambivalent objects in the Bodleian’s collections, that all question what a book can be. 20 slices of processed American cheese, a paperback impregnated with growing mushrooms before being dried into a solid block, pages that appear black until the heat of human touch reveals any words… These works are being actively sought out by our curators to ‘spice up’ our collections and to sit alongside our Medieval manuscripts, papyri fragments and Japanese handscrolls and present visitors with objects they might not expect us to have, and therefore think about the book form and the purpose of libraries like ours in new ways.2
The star of the second podcast episode, Ben Denzer’s ‘20 Slices of American Cheese’ a.k.a ‘the cheese book’ (Cons.Res. 41)3 .
Photo credit: Ben Denzer.
What is ‘bookness’?
When we first decided to create and launch our podcast in 2022, we chose the name BOOKNESS to capture what we were hoping to explore in this project; how we think about books in the Bodleian’s collection and their state of being. And it was the artists’ books in our collection that we knew would allow us to do this and naturally became the focus of the interviews we conducted and which we formed our podcast series around.
It is in the very nature of many artists’ books to question and challenge the typical ideas about what a book should and can be, often playing with the possibilities of ‘bookness’ through unusual material choices, complex formats and moveable elements. As a double act, Jo and I were able to bring both conservation and curatorial points of view to our interviews with artists and makers and discuss the ‘bookness’ of the objects they have created from both conceptual and practical perspectives.
It’s in a library, but is it a book…?
Applying the artist Marcel Duchamp’s theory that “anything is art if the artist says it is” to the world of artists’ books is certainly an interesting one, as many of the objects put into this category do deliberately walk the line between art and books, constantly inviting debate on their status and is something many library and museum collections playfully investigate in their collecting policies and displays.
The short hand, almost oxymoronic and certainly affectionate, names that many of these objects have quickly gained at the Bodleian show how many staff and visitors alike are drawn to them because of their unusual materiality; ‘the cheese book’ and ‘the mushroom book’ amongst the most popular. Through our interviews we increasingly understood that it was contradictions and potential for debate and controversary that the artists were deliberately pursuing through some of their more unusual material choices, and is certainly what has made these objects so interesting to increasingly use in teaching activities and exhibitions in the library, as they allow our curators to challenge readers, visitors and students to actively engage in the debate about what makes a book a book. Ben Denzer’s 20 Slices of American Cheese is now one of the most hotly discussed objects in our collection, and it’s display in the 2022 exhibition Sensational Books, where it sat elegantly rotating in a mini fridge, drew as much praise and laughter as it did confusion and even anger, with some visitors questioning its relevance and suitability to be in our collection altogether.
Ben Denzer’s ‘20 Slices of American Cheese’ (Cons.Res. 41) on display in the Bodleian’s 2022 exhibition Sensational Books, rotating in a mini-fridge. Photo credit: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
I was just trying to push and prod what a book could be… For me, an artist’s book is the definition I’ve come up with for myself – a book where the form or the idea or the concept behind it is almost as important than the contents that are within it. Whereas normal books, it’s the contents or the story or the words that are the most important thing.4
While talking to Denzer I was particularly struck by the similarities between his approach to thinking about these objects to mine as a conservator. For a conservator it is not unusual to approach an object by first thinking about its structure and materiality before its content as this is what we need to understand to be able to care for them and we frequently work on objects in languages and scripts we cannot read. So hearing Denzer explicitly talk about how for him the primary importance is the ‘concept’ for the work, which is often embodied in its physical form and material choices, was particularly interesting as in this case it was so similar to the natural way I would approach thinking about an object – cheese first!
Before BOOKNESS – artist interviews as a conservation tool
With or without a conclusion on an object’s status and classification, once it is part of the library’s collection it is the job of the conservation team to care for them. Which can be quite the task when it feels like their very materiality or physical form is deliberately set against this aim, such as books that are in their very being ‘self-destructive’ like the book Agrippa (Rec. a.25).5 In the introductory podcast episode, we interview the Bodleian’s Head of Special Collections Chris Fletcher, who highlights how this work in particular was ‘never meant to last’ but now sits in our collections with other objects like it, all of which must be cared for in a way that both preserves it but also allows its study in some way, which is a complex set of requirements for our conservation team to navigate.6 So being able to talk to the makers of these objects gives us an invaluable chance to find out more about their creative process and gather a lot of useful information we can use in our ongoing care for their works, even when that feels like it might be against the odds.
After attending the VoCA Artist Interview Workshop in 2022, I worked with colleagues at the Bodleian to create a written form that could be shared with artists when their work entered the library collection, to capture information about them in a more formal way. The aim for this form was to create a record about the object and its creation starting with a basic understanding of the physicality of a piece and its material makeup that could aid future conservation work. As we have seen, many book artists experiment with unconventional, modern materials in their works, so the interview form allows us to collect information about the specific products and materials used which could then aid our care for them, given the probability they will change and deteriorate over time.
Understanding the method Ben Denzer used to attach the plastic wrapped cheese slices to the covering case binding and which glue he used is invaluable knowledge to have if we ever need to practically treat it (other copies of this book have had their cheese replaced due to mold!)7 . Similarly, understanding from Stephen Emmerson the process by which his book developed the mushroom growths and was then dried is incredibly useful to help us think about the what might be the best conditions to now store it in to ensure no new growth happens, one of the key priorities of a conservation department, and is something that Stephen is not alone in finding amusing!
“It could be rehydrated again, in theory, but hopefully it’s no longer spore producing for the sake of all the other books in the library…”
“A nice array of fruiting” – a record photo showing a detail of the mushroom growth on Stephen Emmerson’s ‘Translation of Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge’ when it arrived into the Bodleian collection (Cons.Res. 43).
Photo credit: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
Beyond the written page
While the information we are able to capture in the written interview forms are able to become an invaluable part of the formal conservation documentation about an object, it was just a first step and our idea to produce a podcast soon followed, as we realised that the conversations we were able to capture in our interviews also had some much potential as interesting content that could be shared with audiences beyond our internal library team.
In our conversations we were able to move easily from practical questions like ‘what does it look like’ and ‘how was it made?’, to ‘why did you make it this way?’ and ‘how do you feel about it changing in the future?’. These questions allowing us closer to understanding the artist’s intentions behind their material choices, and adding another crucial layer of knowledge for us during future conservation decision making.
As already discussed, our conversation with Denzer revealed that for him the concept behind his work 20 Slices of American Cheese was more crucial than it having to always be made of the original 20 slices of cheese between the covers. Allowing the work to be seen, questioned, and appreciated now and in the future was his main goal, and so he was open to the idea that if the cheese did indeed go moldy he would not object to its replacement with fresh cheese.
For me it’s important that people get to see this book, and so if it gets to a point where there’s too much ‘aliveness’… there’s too much mold on it, that it’s not safe to be shown to people in a normal context, I think it’s an interesting question there on what do you do? Do you put it in a glass box… Do you try to replace the cheese with new cheese so it has a new lifespan again…9
Whilst Denzer is actively interested, and amused, in thinking about the challenges that the unusual materiality of his works could present conservators like myself, we found other artists had considered the potential for future changes to their works much less. Both Steven Emmerson and Paul Johnson suggested that once out their works leave their studios they consider them to be beyond their control, and it is then the responsibility of their new owners to make ongoing decisions regarding their care, whatever the future may hold. Johnson’s final word on the subject of the future repair to one of his intricately detailed creations illustrates this exactly, as well as an amusement similar to Denzer’s at the position his wildly intricate creations put us in; ‘stick it back on anywhere you like… because no one would know!’10
Alice working with book artist Paul Johnson in the Bodleian Conservation studio, assessing works made by him in our collection (Rec. a.80)11 .
Photo credit: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
Changes caused by physical handling are always a major concern for a conservation team, and providing safe access to objects in our collections for researchers is a key part of our work. So it was interesting to hear across our interviews how many of the artists were happy to embrace the idea of a reader creating a change in their work as a result of their interaction with it. Denzer describes the relationship between his creations and their readers as a ‘co-authorship’, raising the status of the reader as an active and valid participant in the work’s development, and something that should not be ‘fixed’ in the future to try to return the object to its original unchanged state, but itself should be preserved.12
While talking to multi-media artist Yiota Demetriou, we learnt that the physical touch of the reader was itself a crucial part of the concept behind her work and the reading experience of her work To You (Rec. d.625)13. She explained how warmth is required to activate the thermochromic ink on the pages in order to reveal their poems to the reader, which are about the very personal subjects of love, loss, and grief. This need for a physical interaction to fully experience the work inevitably means that marks or changes will occur, and which Demetriou sees as a crucial part of the work’s life. Understanding this means we can therefore act accordingly to understand these changes are inevitable and also something that should be actively preserved through our ongoing encounters and treatment of it.
Becoming a podcast ‘for book lovers, book nerds and book makers’
With the interviews completed, choosing to pursue an audio format as our method of sharing conversations about such physical objects was an exciting challenge, and one which we hope has been a success. In order to set the scene for each episode, we begin with asking the maker to physically describe their work so an audience will hopefully be able to visualise the object in question. We also created a companion blog post for each episode, published on the Bodleian’s Centre for the Study of the Book’s blog the Conveyor,14 which includes photographs of the works for listeners to reference alongside our discussion. The style of the podcasts has naturally been quite ‘DIY’ as neither Jo or myself are professional podcasters, but we now have our seven podcasts available which can be listened to on Spotify[^15] , Apple Podcasts[^16] and the Oxford University Podcasts website[^17] .
BOOKNESS is a podcast “for book lovers, book nerds and book makers”.
Photo credit: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
Throughout the process of making these podcasts, we have had fascinating and fun conversations with artists, which are not only already of use in our active conservation work on these objects, but also fulfilling other broader aims of the library: to share our collections with a global audience and hopefully attract new audiences through focussing on such an unusual and thought provoking and debate fueling collection. VoCA’s Artist Interview Workshop provided a starting point, and gave me the inspiration and tools to begin my journey into ‘bookness’. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to attend and learn from the expertise of the group, as well as to all my colleagues at the library with whom I have continued to explore this topic.
1. VoCA mission, https://voca.network/mission/
2. Chris Fletcher, Head of Special Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, in the first episode of BOOKNESS series 1.
3. https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primaws/shortPermalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph021808367
4. Ben Denzer, in the second episode of BOOKNESS series 1.
5. https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primaws/shortPermalink/f/n28kah/oxfaleph019300382
6. Chris Fletcher, Head of Special Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, in the first episode of BOOKNESS series 1.
7. See New York University Library’s conservation work on their copy of 20 Slices of American Cheese.
8. https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primaws/shortPermalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph022568546
9. Ben Denzer, in the second episode of BOOKNESS series 1.
10. Paul Johnson, in the first episode of BOOKNESS series 2.
11 https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/discovery/fulldisplay?context=L&vid=44OXF_INST:SOLO&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&tab=Everything&docid=alma990213377780107026
12. Ben Denzer, second episode of BOOKNESS series 1.
13. https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primaws/shortPermalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph021728618
14. https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/theconveyor/category/podcasts/bookness/
15. https://open.spotify.com/show/0aRKVige3Zfh7KwfQ6u95d
16. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bookness-at-the-bodleian-library/id1653763665
17. https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/bookness
Main image
The star of the second podcast episode, Ben Denzer’s ‘20 Slices of American Cheese’ a.k.a ‘the cheese book’.
Photo credit: Ben Denzer.
Image descriptionA photo of a closed book with a bright yellow cover with the title “20 SLICES” is displayed on the front cover in bold blue all-caps lettering. The spine, noticeably thick for the size of the book, features the text “AMERICAN CHEESE” along with a Catalog Press logo, both in matching blue all-caps letters. The book pages, only visible from the top, are actually slices of American cheese.