An artist’s book is a form of expression, a moveable art object, and unique – filled with analog print design, collages and personal words. Each book expresses the topic the author wants to share with the reader: moving and touching stories that make you think. From May 1, everybody can be inspired by the presented artist’s books and page through them virtually at www.kws.com/alles-bleibt-anders.
Every student wrote down a few words on their work and their sometimes very personal messages. The nine artist’s books from the edition “alles bleibt anders” have titles like “Alone-liness”, “Chumminess”, “My Heart” or “We are going on a bear hunt” and were created by students of the university during a field excursion to the Hallig Langeneß in the North Sea.
“The book enters into a dialogue with the viewer”, explains Professor Dorethee Weinlich in her introduction video for the exhibition. She also presents a book she has created during one of the field trips. Its title: Do I change course. An artist’s book is a great medium between art and visual communication, says Weinlich, and a playground for experiments, for example layout, illustration or printmaking. The artists fill many roles: author, designer, editor and book binder. A double page is like a stage on which the actor shows up quietly or loudly and disappears again. Sometimes the picture dominates, sometimes the text. All this needs to be composed to obtain a rhythm.
The focus on creating an artist’s book is on working manually: Something analog in a digital age, so to speak. Thus, the challenge of the exhibition is to show exactly this in a digital way.
There are also three video workshops so everybody can be creative and design their own artist’s book. The videos (in German with English subtitles) are uploaded to the website on May 1, May 14 and June 11 and are open to the public. They are led by Professor Dorothee Weinlich, tutor Elena Schönsee und master book binder Vera Burmester, and their topics are “Book Binding”, “Creative Writing” and “Gelatine Print”.
“Let yourself be inspired by the books on display. Fill your own book with photographs, drawings, keepsakes and snippets. Be as creative as you like”, say the three workshop tutors.
In the first workshop available from May 1, master book binder Vera Burmester shows in several short step-by-step videos how you can create a thin booklet or thicker book with simple means. She also gives useful hints how to build the necessary tools from everyday objects.
Even more impulses you’ll get with the workshop “Creative Writing” (from May 14) and “Gelatine Print” (from June 11). In the second workshop about creative writing, Elena Schönsee shows a method how to find content for your artist’s book quickly and how to phrase texts. Professor Dorothee Weinlich teaches the technique of gelatine printing in the third workshop, which makes an artist’s book truly unique.
