A New Cultural Sector: Writers as Exhibiting Artists

A New Cultural Sector?

WRITERS AS EXHIBITING ARTISTS

For the past 500 years, give or take two and a half weeks and several hangovers, secular writers of the European & American time zones (bar Nantucket) have been in thrall to a mere TWO production forms – the BOOK, with design spin-offs MAGAZINE, NEWSPAPER, COMIC and THEATRE, with, latterly, the spin-offs of FILM, RADIO, T.V.. Two ROOTS and six branches. The recent invention of the computer and internet makes the total NINE. In relation to the hundreds of thousands of writers this is no big number. It seems inevitable that there would be log-jams as Mss pile up on publishers’ and production companies’ desks. Most doomed (doomed, I say, doomed) to be bounced back to the writers. The quality of much of this work could well be sufficient to publish and perform, there just aren’t enough outlets to do this. Certainly, the nine production forms have diversified into – many publishing houses, many film, T.V., radio and theatre companies, but they are all inundated with material. Log jams proliferate. So, perhaps it is time the NINE were expanded to THIRTEEN BASIC FORMS (on which variations can be spun) and this unlucky number became lucky for the scribbelatii of the Western World – or wherever - and them as wot appreciate ‘The NEW in the Arts’ (if you’ll pardon my Cockney).

Historically, the two root forms creak horribly. Theatre, or scripts in performance, came into being some 2,600 years ago in Greece. So-called ‘modern’ theatre has been a mere rework of the ancient form – actors on stage speaking a writer’s lines. The BOOK came into being some 1,300 years ago in the Cistercian monasteries as THE ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT. Its form was copied by Caxton and then by all subsequent publisher-printers. The magazine, comic and newspaper are enlarged versions of the book, with soft covers. Radio, film T.V. drama technological adaptations of the script in performance. In effect, the 8 areas have seemed to stand still in time, working variations on archaicisms. Nothing really modern about any of it, bar technologically. The great ISM of all these areas of cultural activity - TRADITIONALISM. Innovation and originality of thought have been low priorities in the 8 original sectors. So, it’s not just the log-jams that obstruct writers, it’s also the mental dead wood in place among the dreaded 8 to what we is in thrall, (darn it Miss Scarlett). Their basic brief is to perpetuate their traditions, (yis mum, dat is fac’).

In 1986 some of this dead wood in theatre had the temerity to bounce a script of mine back on me. It was a JAZZ COMEDY ADAPTATION of Macbeth, titled MACBETH – THE FLIP SIDE. Jazz? The original script = score. Like jazz musicians improvise around extant scores, so I improvised a comedy around the ‘score’ of Macbeth. This, I believe was a NEW CONCEPT for script writing. One that could be applied to ANY out of copyright script or indeed Mss. I was most miffed the dead-wood-heads in trad. theatre didn’t want to know. Being both a painter and writer (I’m now a painter/writer/sculptor/potter/illustrator) and strongly influence by Picasso’s Cubism I ‘FUSED’ three arts – literature with fine art and illustration and introduced two new ways of getting that script into the public domain.

The first development was a radical redesign of THE BOOK (little leafed, left bound, print two sides of page, shelflocatable, hard or soft back, rectangle). The result? BOOK-DECOS books as wall hangable decorative craft objects when not being read. Each unit in a Limited Edition with VISUALLY INDIVIDUALISED SOFT FRONT COVERS, variations on a design and illustration motif. In the first design, the Mss sat in a slot attached to the wall hangable construct. Could be removed, read, then put back. Later designs stuck the Mss to the hard back as a single unit. The image on view here is of the first design. A hanging device at the top, of the top bound, print on one side of pages, work. 25 such ‘units’, each clearly differentiated but with the same title and basic illustration, constituted exhibitable material. But I first ‘fielded’ them in a Limited Edition of five in a small Exhibition in an art house café down here in Devon. The internal layout also differed from the standard ‘vertically stacked’ layout of theatre scripts. It was PARAGRAPHED, speeches, preceded by character names in upper case, running across the pages and paragraphed at various points. A larger Limited Edition was exhibited in an art house café in Paris

The second, obviously associated development, was realised a bit later. It was – THE SCRIPT IN EXHIBITION -SEQUENTIAL DISPLAY OF A SCRIPT, EACH PAGE A SEPARATE ART OBJECT, READ/VIEWED BY THE PUBLIC IN AN EXHIBITION SPACE. In the first ‘production’ (Macbeth – The Flip Side) the page redesign I used in Book-Decos was refined to become TEXT IMAGES (akin to Poetry Concrete). The text laid out inside pre-designed images, each different, backed with line illustrations. An A4 ‘master’ copy enlarged onto coloured A3 paper on photocopy machines so as to be readable from about 6 foot, then exhibited. Such a ‘production’ cut – actors, director, sets, costumes, props, stages, theatres, agents, rehearsals (oops, pen must have slipped, sorry Sir Peter) and reduced it to THE SCRIPT IN ELISION WITH FINE ART AND ILLUSTRATION. Theatre, per se, being Literature in elision with performance, music and design. I changed the elision.

At the time I realised that poetry and short stories could also be PUBLISHED in this form – sequentially displayed in an exhibition space. Novels were exempt, being too long for any interior space, though they could be exhibited, laminated, in, say, a woodland walk A3 pages adhered to trees or stands along which the reader wanders lonely as a clod or in groups. Each page becoming, again, an aesthetically pleasing art object. Art objects which could be used, by collectors, as aesthetic material in their homes on the walls.

Sometime later I developed the 4th new form – BOOK-SCULPTURE. Using stiff card as a material I sculpted 2-D front covers of related designs for a novel titled WHITEHEAT (novel about novelists writing novels and the whole an examination of the novel form). Behind the front cover created card boxes in which the Mss sat when not being read. This was also laid out in a ‘revolutionary’ manner, each page with different width columns of print, but it was bound on the left. Taken out of the box to read. 25 of these, again, constituted exhibitable material. But, I didn’t exhibit. I went down with T.B. and the project was shelved indefinitely.

In four subsequent articles I will be enlarging on these four new forms which open up, to my mind, the possibility of a NEW CULTURAL SECTOR – writers as exhibiting artists (as opposed to published or performed authors). All switch the emphasis from focus on THE TEXT to focus on the text AND the CONTAINER or PRESENTATION. The works are BOTH art objects AND literary works, designed to be appreciated on BOTH levels. This is a reaction against the overall focus for the past 500 years, give or take two and three quarter weeks and many hangovers, on the TEXT (except in some children’s books and text books where the illustrations, associated with the text, dominate). The CONTAINER of prose and poetry has been secondary, a mere standardised, functionalistic package, ‘After monk anon 8th century’. And not a particularly interesting ‘after’ either. If the front covers of most print runs pay lip service to aesthetics, many illustrations being visually pleasing. The whole object, (99.99% of books since Caxton) though, is a formatised, copyist, mass produced rework of an archaicism, if very serviceable and convenient to print, package, transport, display, read and store. BOOK-DECOS and BOOK-SCULPTURE aim to lift literature out of mere convenience-packaging into the realms of high art. Give prose/poetry writers new, original and inexpensive ways of self-publishing The SCRIPT IN EXHIBITION and MANUSCRIPT IN EXHIBITION aim to give writers a new ways to expressing themselves and the arts oriented public new kinds of aesthetic experience. This being dumbed-down Brittania where crass ‘populism’ rules, it might take some time to happen. Strain too many people’s brains probably. Can’t have that. A flowering of the arts unapproved by the intellectual nobs in London? Dear me no! But. Keep watching this space all ye with an interest in THE NEW IN THE ARTS OF PEACE.

Tony welcomes your feedback and he can be contacted here.