More Than a Fetish Object: The Open Book Project

A good piece is up at The Atlantic on diminishing the binary between print and digital--it raises important poets for us book-lusters:

What about the possible impulse to romanticize physical books just for sentimental, nostalgic reasons? “According to Marx,” Atzmon says, “fetishized objects seduce people into vesting them with a spirit and a will, what Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer sarcastically call ‘scandalous materiality.’” In her opinion, these negative attitudes towards "fetishization" can be counterproductive. “What's wrong with loving and valuing a book thing in an intense way?”

But, Molloy says, “it is unhealthy when we begin to look at books solely as objects of display, which is what comes to mind when I think of how people fetishize books. There is something magical about books that warrants some degree of fetishizing, but by and large I think ‘book lust’ is really nostalgia.”

Moreoever, Steven Heller is writing here about The Open Book Project, for which Eastern Michigan University art professors Leslie Atzmon and Ryan Molloy, who specialize in graphic design, sought work that questions what a book is/can be. A venture that included a published book, as well as a workshop, an exhibition, and a journal issue, The Open Book book itself features "book-like work" that "transcends paper media." Check it all out at The Atlantic.