Collaboration as a term has always seemed to me to be troubled by compromise, and I prefer to describe my practice position as one of ‘mutual constituency’. This describes a relationship with others with whom I work, and equally a dialogue between the ideas being conveyed, a technicity or human relationship between ideas and technological processes, and the bricolage of their construction.| Where I take on the nominal role of ‘graphic designer’ this title description is often the key to enabling a space in which to operate. I enjoy the many terms I have gathered in my research to describe the perceived presence (or absence) of the graphic designer, and to add to this I borrow the idea of ‘quasi-invisibility’ from a turn of phrase from de Certeau in referring to the production of the ‘consumer’, who, rather than reacting as mere receiver makes use of what is imposed upon her/him in a response to given conditions.59 59. (de Certeau, 1988: 31) The ‘spectral qualities’ (Goggin) and the ‘fugitive’ (Blauvelt) nature of graphic design allow me to ‘operate as a paradoxically ubiquitous yet overlooked system’ (Goggin, 2012: 55) making available a mutually constitutive enquiry with others through, for example the exhibitionary space of the book, in situations where the commissioner (unknowingly or willingly) often leaves this space open and available for appropriation. While I also appropriate by taking/ montaging existing and ‘found’ texts, I refer to ‘appropriation’ here in the sense that the book (the exhibition publication) has its own established language or conventions which can be ruptured through the methods of my bricolage. In this space the Transposition (Genette) of work can be performed, and through this space the translation by the viewer-reader of ‘work’ to text (Barthes).
‘What [the reader] perceives is multiple, irreducible, coming from a disconnected, heterogenous variety of substances and perspectives.’
(Barthes, 1978: 159)
A Late Evening in March
A late evening in March, I join Sven and Gerard in a studio in Temple Bar to review the design of the book. It’s at a relatively advanced stage in its development, and final texts and selection of images are in place (I am on my 14th iteration but our last book took 22!). Gerard has printed out the spreads at actual size and we arrange them in sequence on the floor. Since the pages are large (600 x 290 mm when open) it takes up the width of the studio and more than half its depth. We move amongst the lanes of spreads, shuffling them around, trying things out, and we eventually settle on a new sequence. The book is technically complex and this rejig brings with it lots of headaches I’ll have to sort out tomorrow. Normally I’d hate this kind of ‘interference’ at such a late stage in the process, but with Gerard this has always been our mode of operating – everything remains a conversation: until the last minute everything gets interrogated.
Fig. 28 A Late Evening in March. Sven and I consider page permutations while Gerard looks on through the lens of his camera. (Photograph: Byrne, G.)
Gerard and I were initially brought together through circumstance – Gerard was the exhibiting artist and I was the preferred designer for the gallery (Lismore Castle Arts). In fact Gerard was reticened at the time to have me work on the The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) book too (Images or Shadows) for fear that there would be a doubling up in approach, but the potential of our mutually constituency was quickly apparent, extending the scope of both our practice enquiries through the exhibitionary space of the book.
Of the publications I make with Gerard A Late Evening in the Future has the least institutional (paratextual) siting. Aside from the publishers name on the half-title page and a logo on the spine, the reader waits until page 78 of 80 to read a brief ‘Afterword’ representing the three institutions who have commissioned and funded the book. Gerard’s name is on the front cover, with the three editors (Anderson, Byrne, Maybury) credited on the spine and half-title page. When I reflect on this now, encountering the book at a remove from its making, these choices, made lightly at the time, seem more significant. Books are published without the framing and mediation of text panels, introduction, gallery talks, guided tours, supporting video material etc. that a gallery or museum setting would provide. While you may pick up a copy in the gallery bookstore it is often encountered without this context and the reader is faced with an hermetic entity into which they must read themselves. With A Late Evening in the Future the framing conventions of book and institution are being undone. From my unacknowledged editorial input in Tuxedo Junction, 1960,[projector descriptor] Tuxedo Junction, 1960 was published retrospectively in relation to the solo show ‘Gerard Byrne’ (2010) at Lismore Castle. Comprising new and existing video and photographic works, including the first exhibition of A Thing is a Hole in a Thing it is Not, a work with the Minimalists and their critics as its central focus, and in which several key events or accounts of Minimalist art history are reenacted. The book comprises installation views; reference material and documentation including archival exhibition views of Minimalist works; photographs of practitioners; typographic treatments of seminal Minimalist artwork titles; restaged photographs of photographs from in the exhibition; and a facsimile reproduction of Alexander Potts essay ‘The Minimalist Object and the Photographic Image’. A newly commissioned essay and an interview between the artist and the exhibition curator are presented as photographic depictions of typewritten documents. The dustjacket presents in miniature a facsimile of the Michael Fried essay ‘Art and Objecthood’, first published in Artforum. (‘Assembled and edited by Gerard Byrne upon the achievements of the Minimalists and their critics’), and the undifferentiated ‘Design’ credit for my role in Images or Shadows, the books begin incorporating credits as part of the fictionalised narrative constructed through the series. Where roles or titles are routinely assigned to contributors this becomes part of the book’s premise: indicated on the title page of Gestalt Forms of Loch Ness, are Gerard Byrne who produces a ‘Field Survey’; writer Brian Dillon contributes an ‘Analysis’ and I am credited with ‘Information Design’. Rather than being paratextual, these credits, moving from the ‘more distant relationship that binds the text properly speaking’ (Genette, 1997: 3) become textual as fictionalised accounts of our roles. One-line biographies of the contributors are provided on the inside of the dust jacket: ‘Gerard Byrne is an artist, and teacher’; ‘Peter Maybury designs books’. (Fig. 29) In their terse humour, the use of this space normally reserved for ‘authors’ effectively acknowledges and challenges the ‘Author Function’, making explicit the book as an amalgamation of contributing roles.
As evident throughout the ‘Loch Ness’ book, humour plays an important role in the absurdity of the serious pursuit of a fictitious creature, here used as backdrop to an interrogation of the integrity and evidential nature of the photographic image. This framing explicitly designates the book as a productive site in which research material – ‘information’ – is gathered for consideration. This is quite distinct from a typical gallery publication or artist’s monograph – which might typically frame the book as a collection of critical texts and reproductions of work by an artist. Drawing on material gathered and exhibited from a 15 year enquiry, the book was published to coincide with exhibitions in the UK and Italy, but its contents draws heavily on a body of material much of which is not included in the exhibitions. This material can be thought about within Genette’s Transtextual framing as ‘Foretext’; work that came into being as part of the process, which may have been known to others – friends, other artists, gallerists, etc. but prior to this was not considered or intended for publication. The book space brings this material into circulation expanding the discourse of the work in unique ways.
A Late Evening in the Future concludes the conceit of identifying roles, with Gerard, Sven Anderson, and I given billing as editors (I am additionally credited as graphic designer). This is generous on Gerard’s part, but also a concretisation of the endeavours of the books made with him to derive something foremostly from a practice perspective, rather than anchored in or solely substantiated by (external) critical perspectives on his practice as would be typical of art publications. The book is text heavy, with five contributing writers in English/French and English/German bilingual editions.