Within the Margins

With this project I wanted to emphasize and better understand how the object of a book often functions as a touchstone between the lives and consciousnesses of those who engage with it. However, visual evidence of this reality is generally not seen unless a used book that contains notes in the margins is purchased. Even within these situations, the evidence of someone else’s presence of engagement with that book (via marks or usage/wear) is often considered undesirable. While I recognize the arguments for preferring a new book, particularly when it comes to academic use, my primary purpose for doing this project is to raise the awareness of how interconnected we as individuals are to one another particularly when it comes to our engagement with a book. Since our reading experience is very often an isolating one (and beautiful) it can be a newer experience seeing the visual remains of someone else’s thoughts and experience with the same text that you are also engaging with. This object might be able to perform as an example of how interconnected we are within our everyday existences.

I think that it is incredibly important that we are aware of our interconnectedness with each other, and I want to encourage this awareness by using the power of a book, not purely as a vehicle of content, but the actual physical form of the book to display the bond between us. The book becomes an artifact of visual thought and a conversation between not only the reader and the author but also between each other.

The project began with a selection of five books which would then be circulated within the public sphere. This occurred with a “call for participants” being announced through social media (specifically through Instagram Stories), to which individuals responded with a desire to be apart of the project as well as which book they would like to engage with.

At this point the participant is given the book personally if they are within a regional location of accessibility to myself, or they are mailed the book if they don’t reside locally.

Upon the book’s arrival to the reader it is read “actively”, meaning that they are writing their own notes, thoughts, contemplations within the margins, and they engage with the text via cross-outs, highlights, etc. Each reader has possession of the book for a maximum of one month to engage with it. After one person has finished reading the book it gets passed on to the next reader who performs similarly, engaging with it however they respond intuitively to the text. This will continue until the book becomes so marked that it is illegible, in which instance a new book will be put into circulation. Thus the artifact becomes active and “living”, which then returns to being a re-invented artifact and is documented before the object’s retirement.

The audience of this project is open for engagement to those who wish to participate with text as well as other participants.

On the inside cover of each book is pasted an instruction sheet for the participants to follow for a refresher on how the project works as well as information on how to document some of the pages within the book. These image of documentation are crucial to the development of this project so that the engagement of visual markings interacting with each other can be seen building on one another. Particularly if the participants hand off the book to another participant, then documentation of the artifact by the readers becomes even more pertinent. Otherwise, if the book is returned by mail or to myself by hand then documentation of the artifact will occur before being sent out to the next reader on the list for that book.

1) Stories and Legends — Tolstoy

2) In Praise of Shadows — Jun’ichirō Tanizaki [not pictured here]

3) Four Quartets — T.S. Eliot

4) At the Back of the North Wind — George McDonald

5) Murder in the Cathedral — T.S. Eliot

The type of books selected for the first round of circulation where chosen for their ability to “humanize” a reader. By that I mean that they remind the reader of their humanness by activating emotions of either nostalgia, curiosity, wonder, suspense, beauty, mystery, rhythm, and empathy. These books include poetry, prose, essay on awareness and sensitivity to life’s aesthetics, folktales, and children’s fantasy.

Currently all books are being engaged with by their first readers since the initial call for participants, with the exception of one.

MATERIALS:

To participate in the Within the Margins project please contact Ashley Andersen via email at: artzashley@gmail.com or Direct Message her through instagram at @ashley.andersen.studio .

Communicate your wish to participate in the project and which book you would like to engage with!

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