SYMPOSIUM INFORMATION
CODEX IX
FEBRUARY 5–6, 2024
February 5, 2024
Sarah Hulsey – Exhibiting Artist
Radha Pandey – Exhibiting Artist
Forrest Gander – Keynote Speaker: Writer and Translator
February 6, 2024
Robert Bolick – Collector/Curator
Abra Ancliffe – Exhibiting Artist
Kameelah Janan Rasheed – Keynote Speaker: Artist and Learner
Translation: Literal, Material, and Artistic License
Our speakers for the 2024 symposium discuss multiple perspectives surrounding both the idea and the use of translation in their work. According to Merriam-Webster translation is an act, process, or instance of translating, it is: a) to turn into one’s own or another language, b) to transfer or turn from one set of symbols to another (to transcribe), c) to express in different terms and especially different words (paraphrase), or d) to express in more comprehensible terms (explain/interpret). This is not just about how book artists and writers translate the world around them, but how they are engaged with texts, transcription, paraphrasing, or interpretation. Some would say that literary translation is not an art at all, but here we are taking some creative license with the subject and even considering creative duplication and replay along with revision and regeneration through active interpretation.
Symposium Speakers
Monday, February 5th, 2024
Sarah Hulsey – Exhibiting Artist
Allochronologies: Time, Fiction, and Alternate Universes explores alternate notions of time, all conceivable according to the laws of science, that do not adhere to our ordinary experience. Hulsey takes some of the more surprising ideas of modern physics (multiple universes, a universe that oscillates, reversal of time's arrow) and translates them into a multi-volume artist book. Each volume takes one kind of chronology and, using fragments of fiction by some of the great 20th century writers, creates a book that physically embodies that conception of time.
Radha Pandey – Exhibiting Artist
The Art of the Book in India
This talk summarises the process behind Flora of Mughal India, an artist book that was started in 2019. Flora of Mughal India or Gulistaan-e-Hind (گلستان ھند), explores the shift in perception of nature and its representation in illuminated manuscripts in India during a time of cultural and political change (1500–1700), and how that consequently changed the art of the book and the visual representation of nature on the Indian subcontinent. A collaboration between Pandey and master craftspeople in India, this book combines letterpress printing, miniature painting, paper cutting and hand-illustrated elements.
Forrest Gander – Keynote Speaker: Writer and Translator
The Truly Untranslatable (in Translation)
Referencing a wide variety of languages and time periods, writer and translator Forrest Gander (winner of the Best Translated Book Award), will consider the technical, ethical, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions of translating exceptional literary works that have long been called untranslatable.
Tuesday, February 6th, 2024
Robert Bolick – Collector/Curator
Alphabets Alive! -- "B is for Babel"
Alphabets Alive! was an exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford (19 July 2023 - 24 January 2024) of over 150 works -- from medieval manuscripts to the AI-generated -- all inspired by the alphabet and the book. An extended version of the exhibition remains online at www.books-on-books.com. Over 130 of the works were selected from the Books On Books Collection, being donated to the Bodleian to support its growing focus on book art. One of the display windows was entitled "B is for Babel". Despite today’s multilingual packaging, we tend to forget that ours is not the only alphabet. The abecedarians and book artists represented in this display case
remind us of that by playing with the many alphabets and writing systems there are, even making up new ones, posing codes, teasing us with the randomness of these marks, and inviting us to the borders between image and letters, letters and image. This talk will highlight some of these works as examples of translation and transformation of alphabets and the book into art.
Abra Ancliffe – Exhibiting Artist
Nested / Nesting Authors
When does the woodcutter of the diagrams of orbiting planets in Kepler’s Astronomia Nova (1609) become another author of Astronomia Nova? When does a printer or even a printing press become another author of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy? In this talk, Abra will discuss the notion of nested authors and how laborers, craft, materials, text and representation converge or diverge for unintended and unexpected readings on the printed page.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed – Keynote Speaker: Artist and Learner
In her keynote lecture, Kameelah Janan Rasheed will discuss the poetics of revision, collaboration, and translation in her language-based practice. Rasheed's practice includes books, large-scale installations, performances, code, and other forms yet to be determined. With an interest in Black experimental poetry, mysticism, and ecology, Rasheed will explore the book form as a generative space to consider our relationship to permanence and learning.