I would like to share with you an entry I wrote a few
years ago about a conceptual artist that fascinated me as soon as I discovered his work: John Latham. (1921-2006)
Books are much more than words on printed paper in John
Latham's work. Submitted to various demolishing processes, books come to
signify the compounding of scientific, philosophical, political and religious
ideas that articulate the world we live in, and by extension, our selves.
Five Sisters Bing (1976)
God is Great (1989)
Latham Cluster 11 (1992)
Film Star (1960)
The Burial of Count Orgaz (1958)
Though dismissed by some critics as anarchic, Latham's
use of books helps us reflect on the way culture has shaped and framed
existence and how this frame can be changed by submitting meaning to what he
calls an "event", an elusive present: life at its purest, which can
neither be framed or shaped by culture, but which nevertheless guarantees
questioning and change.
Art and Culture (1966-1969)
Art and Culture was Latham's most radical subversion
of the idea of books and artworks as dead objects. This piece is a materialisation
of art as action: In 1966, Latham borrowed a copy of Clement Greenberg's Art
and Culture — a work that held something of a cult status at that time — from
the library of Saint Martin's School of Art, where Latham was employed as a
part-time lecturer. At a party Latham invited students to chew pages from the
book, and then distilled the resulting pulp into a clear liquid. This process
took several months, and Latham began to receive letters from the library
demanding its return. Latham presented a vial of the fermented book-pulp to the
library, but this was rejected and his teaching contract was not renewed. The
vial and correspondence became an artwork of its own, displayed in a leather
case; the piece is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New
York.
Here
in Sar we have opened the school library to EOI students, who have
taken part in an inspiring discussion on the importance of libraries
and have also read a short story in English, Roald Dahl's "Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat" (1959).
Dahl's
story was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock for a memorable episode of his
TV series Alfred
Hitchcock Presents,
which we had the chance to watch at the library as well. You can
watch it on this link.
The term “bibliophile” means a lover (phile) of books
(biblio). The word is often used to refer to people who simply like to read
fiction, but “bibliophile” means something more specific: someone who loves
books especially for quality or format, how books look, how they smell, what
they feel like. Bibliophiles also value books as fascinating objects in
themselves, objects with their own stories to tell.
To find out if you belong
to this type read this interviewwith renowned writer Julian Barnes(1946), author of A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1997) and The
Sense of an Ending (2011) among many other amazing novels.
Julian Barnes
A declared bibliophile, Barnes reflects on the importance of books in
his life and explains why he prefers secondhand books to new ones:
By now,
I probably preferred secondhand books to new ones. In America such items were
disparagingly referred to as "previously owned"; but this very
continuity of ownership was part of their charm. A book dispensed its
explanation of the world to one person, then another, and so on down the
generations; different hands held the same book and drew sometimes the same,
sometimes a different wisdom from it. Old books showed their age: they had fox
marks the way old people had liver spots. They also smelt good – even when they
reeked of cigarettes and (occasionally) cigars. And many might disgorge pungent
ephemera: ancient publishers' announcements and old bookmarks - often for
insurance companies or Sunlight soap.
Barnes further explains why, despite the
popularisation of e-books and e-readers, printed books and bookshops will not
disappear:
I
am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be
non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always were. Reading is a
majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact,
complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present
reader. Nor do I think the e-reader will ever completely supplant the physical
book – even if it does so numerically. Every book feels and looks different in
your hands; every Kindle download feels and looks exactly the same (though
perhaps the e-reader will one day contain a "smell" function, which
you will click to make your electronic Dickens novel suddenly reek of damp
paper, fox marks and nicotine).
Books
will have to earn their keep – and so will bookshops. Books will have to become
more desirable: not luxury goods, but well-designed, attractive, making us want
to pick them up, buy them, give them as presents, keep them, think about
rereading them, and remember in later years that this was the edition in which
we first encountered what lay inside. I have no luddite prejudice against new
technology; it's just that books look as if they contain knowledge, while
e-readers look as if they contain information. My father's school prizes are
nowadays on my shelves, 90 years after he first won them. I'd rather read
Goldsmith's poems in this form than online.
As you may know, Austrian author Peter Handke and
Poland's Olga Tokarczuk have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Two
winners were named, one for 2019 and one for 2018, because the prize was not
awarded last year.
I must admit I know nothing about Olga Tokarczuk's
life and work (gotta do some research!) but I did know a poem by Peter Handke
that it's well worth reading: "Song of Childhood", recited at the
beginning of Wim WendersWings of Desire (1987).
Read the poem and feel inspired by an exquisitely beautiful expression of the
time we were children.
Song of Childhood
By Peter Handke
When the child
was a child
It walked with
its arms swinging,
wanted the brook
to be a river,
the river to be
a torrent,
and this puddle
to be the sea.
When the child
was a child,
it didn’t know
that it was a child,
everything was
soulful,
and all souls
were one.
When the child
was a child,
it had no
opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat
cross-legged,
took off
running,
had a cowlick in
its hair,
and made no
faces when photographed.
When the child
was a child,
It was the time
for these questions:
Why am I me, and
why not you?
Why am I here,
and why not there?
When did time
begin, and where does space end?
Is life under
the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see
and hear and smell
not just an
illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts
of evil and people.
does evil really
exist?
How can it be
that I, who I am,
didn’t exist
before I came to be,
and that,
someday, I, who I am,
will no longer
be who I am?
When the child
was a child,
It choked on
spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed
cauliflower,
and eats all of
those now, and not just because it has to.
When the child
was a child,
it awoke once in
a strange bed,
and now does so
again and again.
Many people,
then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a
few do, by sheer luck.
It had
visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at
most guess,
could not
conceive of nothingness,
and shudders
today at the thought.
When the child
was a child,
It played with
enthusiasm,
and, now, has
just as much excitement as then,
but only when it
concerns its work.
When the child
was a child,
It was enough
for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even
now.
When the child
was a child,
Berries filled
its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts
made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every
mountaintop,
the longing for
a higher mountain yet,
and in every
city,
the longing for
an even greater city,
and that is
still so,
It reached for
cherries in topmost branches of trees
We all know that reading fiction matters, right? But just how
much it matters and how it can impact our life may be surprising. Watch this
inspiring video to find out!
It's National Poetry Day today in the UK and what
better way to celebrate it than by reading (and listening to) a poem in
English. Here's a suggestion from my colleague Patricia Ares and myself, who
were so privileged to attend Imtiaz Dharker's reading in Glasgow back in April
2017 thanks to our school's Erasmus + project.
Welcome to the blog of the EOI Sar English Library!
Our library is a reader-friendly space located on the
second floor of our school.
Loan services are now available! Please read the library's rules and regulations here.
Visit our blog regularly to find out about new
resources, reading tips and upcoming library events, including workshops,
contests and book club meetings. Stay tuned!
