Why I love making books
The interdependence of form and structure.
One of the avenues of exploration that I pursue in my work is how in a book structure, form and content can each illuminate the other. Books are resonant objects, carrying a range of connotations - they suggest a narrative, imply authority. In taking the physical form of the book, and changing its shape or playing with the components that make up a book - paper, greyboard, bookcloth … I am asking how that might affect the content.
Here’s an example - this book was one of the first I made, where I began to bring in papercutting. It’s a piece made about a character in the film ‘I Know Where I’m Going’ - Catriona. It contains the words she speaks in the film, but I knew that her scenes had been cut back in the final edit of the film. There’s more to her story and history than appears in the film, so it felt to me that her book should have a lot of it cut away… and her words are tucked right in the heart of the book. So her story is much more than at first appears, and the structure of the book tells the viewer something about that.
Catriona’s Book
(photography by Gill Moore)
Just as a film can give visual expression to a script, in the same way in some of my work I am exploring ways of endowing words with visual, physical form. I am also interested in how we overlook the technical aspects of a film when watching it; the editing and cutting, the fading in and out of scenes - we are so familiar with the language of film that we accept it automatically and and unconscious of the techniques, yet are drawn in and emotionally manipulated and affected by them. I am fascinated by the ways in which this can be mirrored and captured in book form.
Carsaig 704203
This piece (above) was inspired by the scenes from ‘I Know Where I’m Going’ which take place in the phone box on the road to Carsaig (which still exists). All the words spoken in that location are in the book, but the pages are all shredded, making it impossible to read. The point of the phone box location is that it is beside a waterfall, and this makes it almost impossible to have a conversation as no one can hear what anyone is saying. It’s another lovely example too of the constant presence of the weather and landscape in this film, and how it entirely upsets human plans.
Robert’s Book
‘Robert’s Book’ is about a character who is never seen, only heard, and fades out conveniently when no longer needed for the story. His words appear in a concertina book, where the words and the stitched binding fade gradually away and disappear.