Video: An Introduction to Altered Books

Altered Books: When Your Finished Book Becomes Another Artist’s Raw Materials is the second of two session that I had the opportunity to present at this past weekend’s When Words Collide festival for readers and writers. Although it is a stand-alone presentation, it builds on some ideas from the first, which you may want to watch before this one, titled The Book as Object, Sculpture, & Performance. Or feel free to jump right in here!

Either way, I think it is important to point out that the description in the conference program for this session starts with a trigger warning that I highlight again here:

Trigger Warning: This presentation may contain content disturbing to some readers, authors, and booklovers!

The term “Altered Book” loosely describes a category of Artist’s Book where an existing book is altered — marked up, folded, cut apart — to create a new work of art. Explore your own ideas and biases around “bookness” and push yourself out of your comfort zone as we explore examples of altered books through photos and physical examples. This presentation may include an opportunity for hands-on participation.

As it turns out, we don’t actually capture the act of wrecking a book, but there are definitely a lot of examples of the aftermath shown.

Also please note that, as with the video for the first presentation, unfortunately this video does not include closed captioning so I apologise for that lack of accessibility.

And also as with the first video, I note that video, presenter, and presentation can all be described as uncut, unedited, and unpolished. This is not a slick production, but it is an enthusiastic one.

After you’ve watched the video, and if you’re interested in learning more, I invite you to explore this topic in more detail by looking up other entries here in the Butterflies & Aliens Library for altered books and the book as performance.

Happy Viewing!

– Winston