The story so far
A little summary of the walks done in the field of books, during past 2 month
Book is in mutation. What it shows is a different apprehension and use of language and codes. Books are no more the only one media support, but has its own specificity. Dematerialisation, new ‘seeing’ practice, technical progress, new beauty coming from Modern Art changed its definition. “Books” is not taken as the “whole” in itself.
This symbolic “whole” has been moved in the intangibility of the internet maze. The conception of knowledge is no more “adding” but “evoluting”. Knowledge, thanks concept of progress, set us in a permanent past situation. (Idea so strong that we buy technical devices knowing it’s already outdated (Macintosh marketing). 1 year ago, Alzeimer was due to alloy, today no more, but smoking a cigarette a day helps avoiding the desease.)
Progress depending on science, and roots of science depending on logic, what can the book has to say about that? If it has been a support for this logic (Descarte) via rethoric, it has been as well the succesfull reverse: poetry, and a materialisation of feelings…
Book can be seen as an obsolete support, but it is, as many human creation (architecture) a mirror reflecting and polarising the image of the society. It is today among others between full quadri christmas present, thrown away usersmanual or science theory, cheap temporary aesthetic support…
Its strengh comes from its specific narrativity, even restrained by shapes printed on a succession of flat support, it has endless possibilities to tell a story, true or false. Book is a lense on the world. It’s sure the written, the shaped, the ordonated, but it’s above all the READING. It’s a pro-active support. It’s an active link between individuals.
If poetry is simply understood as the very manifestation of human imagination, the substance which all creative acts derive from, can the specificity of the book a demonstration of the independance of the individual in front of the moving knowledge, defined as relative and precise… The distance between unresponsible forces (that used to be nature once) and the living will of the self?
Can the book playing the devil of the so-called progress? Is there other ways of reading codes and protocoles? Is it in the hardcore of software codes, in the deshumanised juridiction law and order, in the totalitarian business and advertising sloganism language that (a) poetry hides? Codes and procedures, that are today’s most used tools in everyday life (computer, laws), and are shaping books (software, typography), are producing it’s meaning? What role can the book play in the process of general NORMALISATION of our world?