Last semester, Professor Jessica FitzPatrick’s class, Narrative & Technology, visited Archives & Special Collections to work with an array of materials including science fiction pulp magazines, science fiction fanzines, comic books, and artists’ books (just to name a few). For extra credit, students had the opportunity to submit a blog post for to be featured on our Tumblr. Special thanks to @frickfineartslibrary for sharing their amazing artists’ books!
The Archives & Special Collections at University of Pittsburgh tests boundaries. Its visitors find themselves questioning, “Who is an author?” “Can I be an author?” “Are we all authors?” This list of questions expands as newcomers flip through mediums they may have never heard of including zines, artists’ books, and codices. In fact, the material within special collections challenges a particular assertion that “readers are merely ‘passive recipient(s) of authorial meaning” (Jenkins 26). Sometimes, the readers are the authors. As both active and passive audience members of narratives, readers channel their agency through multiple paths, including interpretation and production. Often times, this agency is underground, accessed especially by excluded groups finding inclusivity between the lines of “books.” The artists’ book Binding Analysis: Double Bind by Heather Weston and Womanspirit, a feminist zine from the 70’s, highlight agency by means of creation through interaction, reinterpretation, production, and deconstruction.
If you’re sitting there wondering to yourself, “What in the world is an “artists’ book?” then you’re just like me. When the idea of an artists’ book was first presented to me, I thought to myself “Aren’t all books artists’ books since all authors could be considered artists?” However, artists’ books sit within their own category because of a few key features. On the Smithsonian Libraries’ Blog, Unbound, they argue that “What truly makes an artist’s book is the artist’s intent, and artists have used the book as inspiration…from the traditional to experimental.” Their argument sits on the grounds that an artist is not typically an author; an artist stands outside of the boundaries of classical authorship. However, artists’ books do something else as well: they intend to encourage their readers to physically interact with art which is classically an “untouchable” medium.
Figure 1. The sequential unbinding of Binding Analysis: Double Bind (from Pitt’s Frick Fine Arts Library)
In Weston’s Binding Analysis: Double Bind, interaction is key. The book is foam covered, spiral bound, and wrapped tightly in a beige straight jacket. The straight jacket is sturdy and authentic to the touch. In order to access the narrative, readers are forced to unravel the straight jacket to free Weston and her story of schizophrenia from the binds. As readers flip through pages split in the middle, they simultaneously unbind four distinct narratives through text, picture, and structure. The topmost textual pages blur the photographic narrative underneath, so with each flip of a page, the images become clearer. Yet, images of car keys, headphones, and wine seem disconnected. The book is in fact a riddle that readers must piece together by actively involving themselves in the puzzle. Readers are not spoon-fed a “moral of the story,” they must deconstruct the authored meaning by deconstructing the book itself. By flipping pages inside out and unraveling a narrative, the readers access tangible meaning that could not be conveyed with text alone. In this sense, both the reader and the artist have agency as authors of meaning.
Figure 2. Cover art of the Spring Equinox issue of Womanspirit
In a similar sense but on the opposite side of the spectrum is Womanspirit. Womanspirit is a feminist zine which circulated throughout Oregon and California in the 1970’s, and its characterization as a zine suggests that it was a fairly locally circulated and self-published work. As a result, the readers took a more active role in creating its meaning; they created the zine. Using a mixture of printing methods, including handwritten notes, typeset stories, photocopied illustrations and pasted images, the creators of the zine accessed whatever means they could to create a space for women to get in touch with themselves and others in their community. They advertise festivals and give instructions for spiritual gatherings; however, the main space of inclusivity is the stable bound zine itself. The editors mention in their vision of the zine, “Even if it is on white pages with black lines, instead of the familiar intimacy of our circle, we hope it will raise our consciousness” (“Spring Equinox” 2). In each issue, the editors ask their readers for submissions resulting in a published work comprising entirely of reader-submitted creations. On this side of the spectrum, the readers channel their power as creators by producing material.
Figure 3 & 4. A sample of mediums included in Womanspirit—illustration, handwriting, typeset, photography
While both Binding Analysis: Double Bind and Womanspirit encourage readers to author meaning themselves, the forms naturally evoke agency in multiple senses. Weston’s Binding Analysis: Double Bind channels authorship primarily through interaction and deconstruction. Weston challenges her readers to take an active role in the narrative as they unbind her story and piece together her riddle. In one sense, this is a highly individualized experience as each reader will pull their own meaning from interacting Weston’s chosen form. However, all readers are unified in the sense they are solving Weston’s somewhat guided riddle of psychoanalysis. Her statement is intentional; it is the readers’ physical manipulation of the form that gives them the power of creation. On the other hand, Womanspirit channels authorship more directly, relying on the readers to create material. While the editors attempt to put women in communion with one another, readers may be overwhelmed by the disconnect between individual experiences included in each issue. One reader, Sylvia Holland, recognized this in a letter she wrote to the editors, claiming, “In some ways, it seems that Womanspirit is attempting to use the consciousness raising technique without the last step of ‘pulling the threads’ together.” (“Fall Equinox” 64). However, is it the editors’ job to unite material by drawing conclusions or is it the readers? Do readers need guidance in drawing their own conclusions and creating their own meaning?
In the end, the Special Collections’ Archive in Hillman Library left me with more questions than answers—in the best way possible. The narrative technologies included in the archive challenge their visitors to test boundaries of classical readership and authorship. As a visitor, your head may spin, but the experience of narrative art is worth the dizziness.
-Nadine French, undergraduate, University of Pittsburgh
“Fall Equinox.” Womanspirit, vol. 1, no. 5, 1975.
Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Routledge, 2013.
“Spring Equinox.” Womanspirit, vol. 1, no. 3, 1975.
Weston, Heather. Binding Analysis: Double Bind. London: Heather Weston, 2000.
