Lately I’ve been thinking of my archives-based publishing practice as a form of study.
study(n.) c. 1300, studie, “pursuit of learning, application of the mind to the acquisition of knowledge, intensive reading and protracted contemplation of a book, writings, etc.,” from Old French estudie “care, attention, skill, thought; study, school” (Modern French étude), from Latin studium“ study, application.” https://www.etymonline.com/word/study
This way of working emerged for me in 2017 through the making of Our daily lives have to be a satisfaction in themselves, a book documenting Bloodroot, a feminist vegetarian work collective, restaurant, and bookstore in Bridgeport, CT. The research involved hours in Bloodroot’s archives at Yale as well as in the restaurant’s back storage room. One box at a time, one folder at a time, I sifted through each paper and asked myself: does the book need this? Or this? Or this? While I don’t think I was conscious of my criteria at the time, to name them now they included: did this answer a question? Seem significant? Exciting? Unexpected? Delightful? Illustrate a point? Connect the disconnected? Mostly I listened to my intuition, remembering what Ann Hamilton said: “Pay attention to what you pay attention to” (2011 CBAA conference keynote, Indiana University). In the moment, I photographed with my phone each document that passed this first round.
Later, back in the studio, [notably the root word of studio is study, studio(n.) 1819, ‘work-room of a sculptor or painter,’ usually one with windows to admit light from the sky, from Italian studio‘room for study,’ from Latin stadium” https://www.etymonline.com/word/studio)] I reexamined each document. Did I want to keep it? If yes, I used OCR software to convert the image to editable text (astonishingly quick compared to my old method of manual transcription). I reread for errors, compared it to the original. Then, the text was ready to be sculpted: I copied and pasted it into InDesign and applied saved design styles (themselves painstakingly developed over weeks, continuously revised). I reread it again. This time while rereading, I maddeningly operated the software as if hand-setting metal type. I inserted em space indents one at a time in front of each new paragraph, replaced double dashes with em dashes, changed roman text to italics, hung punctuation: a lavishing of attention and care. I came to graphic design via zines and printmaking, and knew letterpress printing before I knew software, and so I am largely self-taught in InDesign. This is how I know how to work. It is arguably ridiculous, but also non-automation offers many returns: namely, a dwelling in the text; a deep slowing down.
To design a text this way — meticulously, slowly, (re)reading for (re)publication — is to know intimately its rhythms and meanings, to visually interpret them.
Reading becomes shaping, of both the book and the self.
While I took several courses in Women’s Studies as an undergrad, I recognize that making this book was my true feminist education.
Perhaps bookmaking and typography could be more often incorporated into extradisciplinary academic coursework as an artistic method of studying the material.
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The second entry in the etymology of the noun study offers this: study(n), also from c. 1300 as a state of deep thought or contemplation; a state of mental perplexity, doubt, anxiety; state of amazement or wonder.” It is attested from mid-14c. as “careful examination, scrutiny.” [Ibid.]
Years after completing the Bloodroot book, I am at work in my studio making another book from feminist archives, the same one I blogged about in 2023 here ( https://www.collegebookart.org/bookarttheory/13221744) and here https://www.collegebookart.org/bookarttheory/13227501 Comparatively, the Bloodroot book was easier to make. This time the book is not a collected anthology of discrete materials but rather a collaged medley of disparate and unwieldy parts: interview excerpts, clippings, screenshots from digitized VHS tapes, televised news coverage, and documents from various archives, which I am attempting to sculpt into a compelling and coherent narrative arc. “Mental perplexity, doubt, and anxiety” was certainly my dominant mood for the first five years of making this book.
But recently I’m entering a new phase. I think my “state of deep thought or contemplation” has been transformed by the sheer number of hours I have invested in the material through studying it, through devoting myself to understanding it. These days, making the book is sitting with it patiently, staying curious and open with the material, allowing the book to emerge and reveal itself. I have a strong sense that everything the finished book needs is there, just obscured. Recently to study is to closely observe a living thing grow, to supply what it needs, to cultivate: perhaps a bit more 16th century in meaning [“ ‘seek to learn particulars of observation’ is from c. 1600; that of ‘regard attentively’ is from 1660s,” ibid. study(v)]. Now studying is something closer to a “state of amazement or wonder." I’m immensely grateful for the transformation.
In my next post, July 15: what if publishing from archives is closer to shopping than to studying?
Emily Larned has been publishing as an artistic practice since 1993. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut. For the past five years she has been working on a book with feminist activist and radical police educator K.D. Codish.
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