Anchoring the Practice — Contemporary Artists’ Books as Translational Objects

This research project aims to reconsider the relevance of art’s objecthood and the sense of practice by exploring the case of contemporary artists’ books. What does it mean in today’s art world and economy for practice given art’s practice turn within the post-medium condition to be presented in tangible forms, such as artists’ books? What does it mean for practice to be condensed into objects—to be represented, materialized and translated into tangible things?

To address these questions, I integrate critical literature exploring what values practicebased art proposes (Grant, Bourriaud, Lippard), how those values are valorized, evaluated and transmitted as value (Bourdieu, Vatin, Hutter), what art objects are capable of within this context of valuation (Krauss, Graw, Latour, Harman) and how contemporary artists’ books function as such art objects (Drucker, Ludovico, Carrión). The theoretical inquiry is echoed and amplified by an empirical inquiry of biographing contemporary artists’ books in actual situations of production, distribution, commodification and collection. Interviewing various stakeholders of artistic publishing to understand the objecthood of contemporary artists’ books, interpreting the collected accounts through situational and thematic analyses and weaving them with my first-hand observations of artists’ books, I construct a written object biography and diagrams schematizing the findings.

Through this practice-based theoretical research, I conceptualize the expanded agency of contemporary artists’ books as translational objects and draw general principles of their operation. I explore the ways artists’ books, as synecdochic and metonymic rematerializations of practice, translate the immaterial elements of artmaking into objectified forms and anchor the impalpable value of art practice. Indicating such an agency, this project highlights the renewed potential of art objects in facilitating distribution-focused art consumption, prioritizing art’s accessibility and, furthermore, problematizing the reductive notions of value prevalent in current society.