[Excerpt]
 
#1: Ulrike Stoltz: What’s it all about? An editorial
… Each number of this newspaper will present an essay, in English and German. The subject matter will be the book with special focus on the artists’ book. Both of us like to look at the book as such, as a medium. The borders between those categories are blurred, and partly moved somewhere else already. Both of us are looking back on 30 years of working with the book and for the book, as typographers, artists, designers, as teachers, lecturers, organizers, communicators, writers, and producers of pictures. We are bound to make books. We have something to contribute. …
 
#2: Ulrike Stoltz: The book! — Which book?
… The extraordinary book may differ in some, many, or even all aspects from the ordinary book. Often it is published by someone outside the large publishing houses, quite often it is what we call self-published. It does not have fixed contents, and anyway, one will almost never find school books, teaching books, how-to-books or classical scientific books among it. Fiction, and any other form of literature is relatively widespread, also critical questions examining problems with transdisciplinary methods, and essays that use text and image in an equivalent and complementary way. Often it is produced by handicraft in smaller or even minimal edition. Publisher, producer, author and artist are just one person. In this, interestingly enough, the extraordinary book of today is connected with the early days of the book. …
 
#3: Ulrike Stoltz: Categories & Ingredients
… When I work on a book I cannot be bothered to think about possible categories it might fall into later. And I think, none of the book artists I know do so. The categories presented are interesting for another reason, at least for me as a practicioner: They may be a source of inspiration. This is particularly true for the images found by Dominique Moldehn. Some of those categories may be read as a list of influencing factors or variables, and can thus be compared to typographic variables like the font and its weight, type size, leading, spacing, and line length. …
 
#4: Ulrike Stoltz: Some Remarks about Texts in the Artist’s Book
… I put a line on paper, I set a word. Both define priorities on the empty paper, asking for consequences, for something to follow. Usually, I send the first results — be it writing or drawing — through a kind of “transformation machine” (or sometimes through more than one). When writing a text, this may involve grammatical variations, and of course the methods developed by the group Oulipo are a source of inspiration. It is always about methods of translation, just as Etel Adnan writes. …
 
#5: Ulrike Stoltz: Individuality, or: How One-of-a-kind Artists' Books may come into being
… The printed page used to be regarded an "end-product" (final product), something that could be regarded as finished, at least for the moment. (There was, of course, always the possibility of a 2nd edition, a revised or expanded edition, and so on.) A printed page seemed to be a fact, a fixed point in the river of time. Now the print-out is just a snapshot of something that might be changed within the next second. So one could say: The one-of-a-kind book is a snapshot of an artist's idea. But then: How labour intensive is the one-off ? Or, on the other hand, how spontaneous? …
 
#6: Ulrike Stoltz: Visual Jazz: Some remarks on collaboration in making books
… So in the evening from a certain time on people would arrive, bringing something to eat and to drink, as well as something to work with: papers, pencils, stamps, glue, etc. And of course Caren provided lots of materials from her own studio. Actually, I can't remember where the Joss Paper came from. But does it really matter? Things don't fall from the sky but appear on the table, which is the working field. What is on the table is in the game, and sometimes and for some reasons things from outside make themselves visible and are put on the table and into the game as well. But I am already talking about the materials! Back to the players. During the evening this session had ten players. Not everyone stayed the whole evening, some came later, others went earlier. And "player" seems to be the right word: Like musicians we came together to play, to improvise, not to make a song, but to make books. The Australians were familiar with each other, but they did not know us, we did not know them — which did not matter at all. We were all ready to pay attention to one another, to appreciate each other's work whatever it would be, to respect the traces that were left on the paper, take them as suggestions, continue them, alternate them, set up a contradiction, make up a story. …
 
#7: Viola Hildebrand-Schat: Artist's Books Digital
… Other possibilities consist in the functions of the hypertext, which can be implemented as well as pictures. The viewer can dive deeper into the content of the scenery or even change to a completely different constellation. Since such links can occur anywhere, the space as well as the movement through the book's body seems unlimited. …
 
#8: Uta Schneider: Characters: Type, Image, and Writing
… What role does typography play in artists' books? Does it concern itself with recommendations on legibility? Mostly not. If the book is used as an artistic form of expression — even beyond common habits and ways of reading — text and type can be used experimentally. \ It doesn't matter whether the characters are written by hand, drawn, stamped or printed — their visual expression can outweigh the textual aspect. Handwriting, dynamic, carried out through the movement of the hand, is charged through the situation, the skills and the personality of the artist. Thus language leaves a trace and creates a unity of image and text, or better: of drawing and typography — originating from the same linear cosmos. Contrary to handwriting, typeset characters become more easily accessible and they accompany the image more objectively. Do artists apply typography as freely and unconventionally as they do with an image? Is it to set a counterpoint with text, with typography, to the image as an expression of the artistic intention? Or to achieve harmony? In many artists books, the image seems to outweigh the text. Books in which a typographic orchestration is used exclusively are even rarer. …
 
#9: Ulrike Stoltz: Bookworks — A women’s perspective
… At the end of the 19th century, things started to change, and when in 1914 the BUGRA (international exhibition of the book industry and graphic arts) opened its doors there was a special building to show the achievements that women had gained so far in the book trade. This Haus der Frau (women’s exhibition building) had a catalogue of its own. It lists every single piece shown in all the rooms of the building, including an ­index of all exhibitors and their addresses, and also mentions all women engaged in the committees of organisation, but unfortunately has no pictures apart from a floor plan and a photograph of the house. …
 
#10: Uta Schneider: free associations
… Reflexively we explore these unknown territories: they are triggered by resonance and come to resound only through collaborative working. It seems then as if collaboration opens new spaces as solo activity always sounds differently from collective working. Crucial to the direction that the work is taking are not only a person’s personality but also their form on the day. For example, how do we treat each other today? Is one person louder, more active, perhaps faster than the other? Is the other irritated by this, pushing back on the activity? Or are they able to pick up the impulse and add their own timbre? Yet, the more I’m confident with myself, then the more I can engage with the other and the whole. …
 
#11: Patrizia Meinert: t = turning the pages. the phenomenon of time in books.
… How relevant is this subject in terms of the book? Although we claim to know what it is we are incapable of really comprehending and defining time.“There is no sense of time like there is a sense of sight or of hearing.”9 And regarding the book it stays abstract as well. Still, the aspect of time can be found in the book in many respects. I’m convinced that it plays an exceptional role concerning the artist’s book. It can help grasping the book’s inner structure and evaluating artistic decisions. …
 
#12: Ulrike Stoltz: Artists’ Books? How? Why? Where? A Questionnaire.
… Keywords: minorities, finding one’s niche, “caressing pets in a zoo”: [I found the nice term “Streichel­zoo” in an essay by Peter Felixberger: “More Talent, Less Ego: Über die Kunst des Buch- und Zeitschriftenverlegens” (in: Kursbuch 184, december 2015; ­Murmann, Hamburg; p. 178—184); Felixberger talks about a “zoo where master writes may be seen and caressed” (p. 181).]
The bibliophiles (the traditional as well as the modern ones) have always been a minority, thus they are used to the special conditions of this situation. Precisely: Do we need a renovation of the idea of a “society of bibliophiles”? Are web pages and Facebook sufficient for a discussion? …
 
#13:
Sorry, but for this number there is no excerpt!