The Book Trust Prospectus
The Book Trust Prospectus
Edited by Benjamin Critton, Harry Gassel, Brendan Griffiths, Zak Klauck and Mylinh Nguyen
Softcover, 160 pp., offset 1/1, 4.25 x 7 inches
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-1-928570-15-8
Published by IFS, Ltd.
$19.10 ·
The Trust and the accompanying Book Trust Prospectus address matters of micro-economy and distribution, as well as prescribed versus perceived value. The project suggests a new currency specific to the setting of the Book Fair, a context in which a distinct set of commodities is exchanged by like-minded vendors in a finite space and time. It is only in this setting that a book could be posited as capital — a literal stand-in for the money that commonly exchanges hands at the Fair. Perceived worth is thus no longer dictated by edition or price, but instead by a trader’s subjective notion of the values they assign each book.
Over the three days of the Fair, the book, produced in a fixed quantity of 500, varied in value as each negotiation determined and redetermined its worth in the marketplace. With each transaction, the Prospectus assumed the value of the book for which it was exchanged. The traded commodities now comprise The Book Trust — a value-appreciating book bank. By trading with IFS, Ltd., participants acquired a single theoretical share of the bank, the Prospectus acting as a document of that transaction. In framing the project in a format similar to that of a stock exchange, IFS, Ltd. hopes that the Trust emphasizes the tenuous, abstract value of the book: as a designed object, as a medium for content, as a traded commodity, and as a symbol of participation in the project itself.
Prospectus
The Book Trust Prospectus is, in non-equal parts: a local currency, a stock prospectus for The Book Trust, an exploration into the nature of small-scale publishing and its presence at the NY Art Book Fair (R. Giampietro), a survey of precedented alternative currencies (B. Critton), a platform for hyperbolic re-representations of anonymous fiat money (R. Rozendaal), a foray into corporate branding and rebranding (Metahaven et al.), a proposal for a time-based repurposing of existing banknotes (N. Hirsch & Z. Kyes), an analysis of the current state of [art] book-publishing and -design (L. v. Deursen et al.), a venue for research into non-essential commodity futures like tulips and Beanie Babies™ (H. Gassel), a profile of independent art book vendors (Golden Age), and a podium for experimentation with anti-counterfeiting guilloché renderings (B. Griffiths & Z. Klauck). It is the story of its own making and financing as well as an evaluation of the context in which it was made and financed. The Prospectus is a 160-page, perfect-bound, one-colour book, offset-printed in an edition of five hundred by GHP printing in West Haven, Connecticut, USA.
The Serving Library
The first libraries were built on an Archiving model. In the Archiving Library, information and artifacts were collected, concentrated and protected in one central place. On July 1, 1731, Benjamin Franklin established the first Circulating Library in Philadelphia. Books were quite expensive, so by pooling resources many volumes could be shared among contributing members, and, the books moved around. Now, we propose a new model that joins the Archiving Library to the Circulating Library — The Serving Library.
The Serving Library is an archive assembled by publishing. Publishing and archiving have always been either end of a continuous loop, but now on an electronic network like the Internet, the two activities are both simultaneous and indistinguishable. This makes particularly small public libraries increasingly redundant. It’s time to reconsider what kind of library makes sense right now, and suggest one possible way forward.
The Serving Library follows directly from ten years of independently publishing Dot Dot Dot (www.dot-dot-dot.us), a biannual arts journal printed in a run of 3000 copies, with broad international distribution co-founded by Stuart Bailey in 2000. Dot Dot Dot then led to establishing Dexter Sinister (www.dextersinister.org) in 2006, a self-described “Just-in-Time Workshop and Occasional Bookstore” run from a modest basement on the Lower East Side of New York City. Evolving from a publication to a bookstore, we now want to expand from these relatively private activities to a more properly public sphere by developing a new library where materials are collectively produced, assembled and pooled to maintain a body of shared information that serves the committed community who helped make it.
We will build our library by publishing. Bulletins of the Serving Library will be a hybrid electronic / printed publication offered first as PDF files freely available, released in serial form on www.servinglibrary.org. Twice a year, these concise booklets will be collected, printed, bound and distributed. We’re ready to publish the first collection of Bulletins now. This first set directly addresses libraries, archives and collections and includes “An Octopus in Plan View” by Angie Keefer, an 8-part text on communication organized around the anatomy of an octopus; “From O-1: Information on Libraries & From 1-0: Information on Recording” by Rob Giampietro & David Reinfurt, on the paradox of contemporary archiving in the face of the Internet; and “The Life and Death of Media” by Bruce Sterling, an out-of-time plea for compiling an exhaustive list of outdated media formats.
We are asking for your support to help us develop the website, publish the PDFs, print, bind and distribute the first hard-copy issue of the Bulletins and to begin assembling The Serving Library.
Portable Document Format
Dexter Sinister, Portable Document Format
Hardcover, 200 pp., offset 4/1, 4.25 x 6.75 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-933128-85-6
Published by Sternberg Press
$20.00 · out of stock
The second part consists of reproductions of a series of lithographic proof prints. Accompanying these prints are extended captions individually produced for different exhibitions in 2008. Each caption was composed in line with the manner of its accompanying image. Although never intended as a set, a number of generic themes emerged, such as abstraction, mathematics, logic, and cooperation. The book intends to demonstrate how ideas from the first part have been rechannelled in the second.