Poets, artists & technology: Paul Chan's Badlands Unlimited
In thinking about the upcoming NY Art Book Fair, we've noted that artist Paul Chan's new press, Badlands Unlimited, has recently posted on their site special audio recordings with Yvonne Rainer. As we mentioned back in the day, Rainer's first book of poems, aptly titled Poems, has just been released from Badlands as an Apple enhanced e-book (the limited paperback will be released at the Art Book Fair), and includes recordings of Rainer reading five of the poems as well as an interview with Chan. And now, much of that is available to listen to here.
As well, Rhizome's Sarah Rhomack talked with Chan in August about the press, which can count among its publications his own Phaedrus Pron, a limited paperback and unlimited e-book that "recasts Plato’s legendary dialogue on art, erotic love, and madness as unyielding sexual prose that stretches the limits of intelligibility and sense"; an enhanced e-book version of his famous Waiting for Godot: A Field Guide; and various graphic e-books by Jean Paaulhan, Ian Cheng, and the Badlands Unlimited staff.
Rhomack writes: "His foray into book publishing felt at once completely futile and deliciously subversive—anachronistic in form, and yet prescient in its embrace of technology as a means of interrogating (and thereby furthering) that form. Given the perilous economic prospects for artists and publishers alike, why not simply take matters into one’s own hands?"
And Chan has indeed got compelling arguments for the e-book, which you don't hear much around these parts:
SH: I’m interested in the way your e-books function visually on and across various platforms. The iPad version of Waiting for Godot in New Orleans: A Field Guide is one of the more stunning electronic publications I’ve seen—the embedded video documentation of the 2009 production of Beckett’s seminal play you staged in New Orleans really complicates the reading experience in a good way. The Essential and Incomplete Sade for Sade’s Sake, however, makes a visual argument for the Kindle; largely comprised of black-and-white drawings, those images render much more elegantly on that particular screen surface, in my opinion. Can you speak about the challenges and opportunities various platforms present for digital bookmaking?
PC: It’s not simply a matter of making books on each of the different platforms, it’s also dealing with how a physical book becomes an e-book in the first place. Most of our books are e-books, but some exists as physical books too. So in general there is a lot of work figuring out how the experience of reading translates from one form to another. The Godot book was very difficult to translate from the hard cover book to an e-book, primarily because that book is so physical. The Sade book too was made first as a limited soft-cover book with a specific dimension, weight, and kind of paper in mind. We read with more than our eyes. . . .
They also talk about the publication of Rainer's Poems:
SH: Let’s talk about the future: Tell me about the project you’re working on with Yvonne Ranier. Are there any other upcoming projects we should know about?
PC: Badland’s next book is Poems by Yvonne Rainer. It’s a collection of never before published poetry by Rainer, who started writing them in the late 70s. I’m thrilled that we are publishing them, because I consider Yvonne one of the America’s greatest living artists. One can read in the poems echoes of her dances and films, in how they use rhythm and motion to conjure moments of daily life into something else, something more. . . .
And what the future holds for this press:
PC...In the winter we’ll publish a collection of essays by Saddam Hussein. He wrote them in the 70s, before he became the president of Iraq. They are perverse and fascinating to say the least, because they are about democracy. We’ll also put out more experimental erotica by Jean Paaulhan, a great young writer. Other books are in the pipeline for the Spring and beyond.
Read the full interview here.