Hello and welcome to witness with me, Joe Maddocks and meet Alice Evans.
We are here at the Centre for the Study of the book in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,
and today we are very happy to be joined virtually by book artist and sign up and dancing fan.
Thank you for joining us for what everybody is calling the inaugural episode of book this amazing honoured honour to be here.
We are in a quiet, down and drizzly oxford today.
Where in the world are you? That's great, because I'm in a damp and drizzly Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States.
Thank you as well, Ben, for joining us. So each of these episodes, we're focusing on one object.
And with you, that's your book, 20 Slices, which we have a copy of,
which is currently on display in the Western Library in Oxford downstairs from what Joe and I are now.
We want to start with asking if you could physically describe it for us, please.
What is 20 slices? Yes. So the book is 20 slices and kind of the longer title is 20 slices of American Cheese.
And it's a book that's made of 20 individual slices of American cheese.
Kraft American Single is the brand, and they come individually wrapped in plastic.
So each slice, I forget the exact size, but it's something like 3.4 inches by 3.4 inches.
But the book itself is 3.5 inches by 3.6 inches by 2.5 inches if you want the actual dimensions.
And so it's 20 individually wrapped slices that have been bound together within a hardcover case.
And the case is covered in yellow book cloth and on the front, and there's 20 slices on the spine that says American Cheese.
And it also has an imprint mark for catalogue press, which is the the name of the kind of publisher in which I produce these books.
And so, cheese, you chose to make this out of cheese.
And in focus. We're focusing on artist books which possibly have unusual material choices.
I just wanted to ask you, what drew you to that material?
Yeah, it kind of came from a few places, you know, I like cheese.
That's one of them. But I was kind of I make books and publish them as cataloguing press.
And I like thinking about books as catalogues.
You know, sometimes that's catalogues of, you know, texts like, you know, a typical book might be sometimes it's catalogues of images.
There's also thinking about the book is kind of a catalogue of physical objects.
And then I was also just trying to push and prod, you know what, like a book could be.
And I was walking in a grocery store and saw this pack of American cheese slices and thought, you know, hey, this is already basically a book.
You know, these things look like pages. They're kind of packed together.
There's an order. So I really did was bind those together and give them the cover.
And I thought it was interesting how it, you know, just becomes a book through that process.
You know, it's also kind of I found found objects and you find them yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. For all these these books, I kind of in some cases design them, you know, plan them out and then make them myself by hand.
And I have to ask, what is cheese like to work with? Because that's very different from finding a book made of paper.
I can imagine. Totally. So the the you know, the pages, as it were, are, you know, American cheese that's wrapped in plastic and then kind of,
you know, sealed with a little bit of, you know, stickiness. So the plastic is closed.
And so when I first thought I would bind them together, I tried a few different things and I tried poking holes and sewing, you know, through them.
But then, you know, kind of realised that the cheese gets out, you know, more quickly than it would if you wait for the adhesive to, you know.
Last as long as I can. So I ended up using a glue that can glue to plastic.
So it's this glue like I think E 6000 is the name of this glue.
It's kind of a super glue that works with plastic.
It still has a little bit of flexibility. So the book is actually kind of a perfect bound book where it's just glued along the spine.
And then, you know, I kind of include a little sheet of paper on there, too.
So so 20 slices, as we've said, is currently on display in the Sensational Books exhibition downstairs,
which means that we is being seen daily by a lot of people coming into the library.
And we have a lot of school groups in particular that come around and the school kids are absolutely fascinated by 20, let's say they love it.
The high point of the exhibition for them. One of the questions that we get asked a lot is how is this a book deal?
Do you think of it as a book? Do you think of it as a work of art that looks a bit like a book?
And is that distinction important to you? I think of it as a as a book, but I also have a very broad definition of a book.
I think like I think I think of lots of things in this category of like artists book maybe that kind of blurs the lines.
Like for me, an artist's book is kind of the definition I've come up with for myself is a book where kind of the form or the idea or the like.
The concept behind it is almost as important than the contents that are that are within it.
Whereas normal books, it's like the contents or like the story or the the words that are the most important thing.
But I think of it as a book. You know, it's if you had a book that was the same size or was just pictures of American cheese slices gone together,
I don't think anyone would really question that, you know, in the same way.
And I don't think there's that much of a difference of just having the real slices versus having, you know, pictures that are printed on pages.
And so, yeah, I think it's a book. Thanks.
It's a great art. The other question that we get asked a lot by the kids is, does it smell like cheese?
Do you have a copy there? And do you can you tell us if it does smell like cheese?
Yeah, I made this book as in the addition of ten,
so I do have a copy here and it's one that I haven't taken as like that I've kind of showed in places.
Where is it in son for a while. And so it's not in the in the best shape of all these books, but it does smell like it does smell like cheese.
And as it gets older, it smells, you know, more and more like older cheese.
Thank you. In the exhibition, it's currently locked away at the moment behind glass, so we haven't been able to sniff it recently.
It's also it's rotating in a mini fridge again is kind of just reminding people that it is food.
Yeah, totally.
Um, one of the other works of yours that we have in the collection is 60,000 immortal individuals, which is a work probably about anonymity.
This is immortality and the way some information about people persists,
whereas other information is lost is immortality something that is interesting to you?
And in connection with that,
how do you feel about your work being in a collection like The Body and which has a 100% retention policy and will stay here kind of in perpetuity?
Yeah, totally.
I think those topics are really interesting to me and I think what I kind of like about the cheese book existing within this context of,
you know, you say immortality, but you know, the library's never going to get rid of it.
But you know, is the library immortal? You know, definitely not.
It's just a question of how, how long. And so what I like about the cheese book is like all books, you know, as conservator,
you know, you're probably working every day to keep all these books going.
And normal books lasts, you know, longer than people do.
But, you know, eventually everything kind of turns to dust.
And so what I like about the cheese book is it kind of flips that relationship between people and books.
And so, you know, in a lot of ways, it degrades faster than us people do and.
I think it's kind of also in some ways a little bit of a, you know, reminder that all books do that.
But I do like that it's there, you know, as long as the library is. And I think there's.
Something fun about having kind of a life object like this in that context?
Yeah, very much. It feels alive in our collection, I have to say.
And you said it's an edition of ten and you've got one and we've got one.
So the other eight. Have they all gone to big public institutions with a similar policy?
Do you know? So I made I think I made 12.
I have two artist proofs.
I think I have I forget if I think every one of the artist proofs and a few have gone to various kind of like university collections like like Oxford.
And I haven't talked to all of them. I know some do have, you know, this policy where everything stays in the library.
I think some might have a different policy.
And if the book kind of moulds too much, maybe they might then decide to dispose of it.
There is recently I had a conversation with the conservators at NYU, and they're trying to think about, you know, they want to keep it for forever.
And they're thinking about ways to maybe could they refresh the cheese, you know, if it's they want to.
For them and kind of for me, it's also important that people get to like see this book.
And so if it gets to a point where there's too much aliveness, you know, mould on it, that it's not safe to be showing people in a normal context.
You know, I think it's an interesting question there. And what do you do? Do you put it in a glass box?
I think like toughs might be putting their book into a plexiglass box and letting kind of nature take its course.
And I really like that, you know, solution. At least librarian glossary check.
Thanks, Richard. Just shipping in to grocery check. Tufts.
Tufts University in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States of America.
Back to Ben. And another solution, as you know, do try and replace the cheese with new cheese so that it has a new life span again.
You have seen some photos of I think it's the NYU one. It looks a bit different from us now because ours is still very fresh and learned.
Not to boast for hours is pristine. Pristine. So you've obviously engaged in a dialogue with conservatives there.
And you said the question has been posed about replacing the cheese, for example.
How do you feel about that? Yeah, I am. I kind of feel fine about it because, well, first of all,
I like that there's different solutions happening with different editions of the book kind of.
I think for me, I kind of make the thing and, you know, put it out in the world.
And it's interesting to see the different responses and the different ways people decide to take care of it or not.
But I think there's like for me, the important thing is that there's actual cheese in this book and that people can interact with it in that way.
And I think if, you know, conservators are able to, you know, replace the cheese slices in some way,
that it kind of becomes fresh again, I don't think there's anything really totally wrong with that.
As you said, different copies have aged differently.
Do you have any thoughts as to why that might be?
Could there possibly be in different batches of cheese?
Is that something that might have been different? Yeah, I think there's a few factors.
I think the cheese is like chemically engineered, so like almost not even B cheese.
So I feel like it's probably pretty consistent. Yeah, that's a wing.
Yeah. I think the the difference is kind of I made them and then I kept them in different libraries, purchased them at different times.
And I had some in my fridge originally and then I had some not in my fridge originally.
After talking to different conservators,
the best strategy seems to be like it's not the cold that is the most important thing, but it's kind of like the humidity.
So having a lower humidity in an environment, I think.
So some of it is like I wasn't taking as good of care as I could of of these objects, perhaps.
And then I think some of them, like the one at Tufts I know is like really modern.
But I think that's because they're librarians so active, bringing this to classes and students coming to the library and, you know, touching it.
And so I think the cheese itself, if it just sat in a room, you know, perfectly sanitary, nothing would happen to it.
But I think it can serve as a little bit of like a petri dish of people.
If somehow one of those little, you know, plastic containers has a little, you know, hole and people kind of touch it and move it all the time.
I think that's what can cause that. But I also like that that's the way the book changes.
And, you know, it's interesting how it changes differently in these different places because of the different conditions.
And, you know, probably all books in libraries do that in different libraries, but, you know, you don't see it as much.
And that's really interesting as well.
The it's the readers have a role in the destruction process, which is it's actually, like you say, the same thing as any book in the library.
If a book's never read and it fares much better many hundreds of years than the ones that are super popular,
and the kind of accessibility versus kind of preservation is, I guess, something that we think about with every object.
Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose it does those come up with teaching a fair amount.
Oh yeah. But at the moment it's quite nice that it's in that exhibition.
But behind glass it is super accessible in one sense because members of the public
from all walks of life are going through and it's sparking something for them.
It's making people ask those questions, but it's not being directly handled at that point.
So yes, how we use our books in a teaching collection like this is yeah, obviously does play a part in something alive like a book.
And you mentioned that the readers play a part in the book's destruction, but you can also think of it as, you know,
the readers play a part in the books, writing, you know, or the books life in some ways might be like more like co-authorship.
Because if someone, you know, brings a little spore of mould that somehow gets in and, you know,
starts the process of growing, I think that's kind of, you know, it's just the book changing and living over time.
And I think people probably disagree with that.
But I think, you know, I'm also fascinated by books that have holes from, you know, worms and other things.
And to me, that makes the book really interesting. Like that might be a manuscript that has interesting pictures,
but I wouldn't necessarily care about those pages or that book unless it had that intervention.
And so to me, I think it's more co-authorship, I guess.
Yeah, that's really interesting because in our work in conservation, we're always looking for.
Evidence and insect holes and signs of damage from the reader or use of the
book and what that can tell us about the object's life and where it's been.
And as Joe mentioned earlier, we do have some of your other books in our collection made of more traditional materials.
But of course, you do have lots of work from other more unusual things, other foods, for example.
Where have they ended up and do you see them in a similar sort of way that they are these things that are going to be changing and evolving?
Yeah. No, no idea. And some books evolve a little less fast.
Like there's a book of Splenda sweeteners that's like Splenda sweetener packets and those, you know, I don't think change quite as quite as rapidly.
But I have a book of kind of five ketchup packets that I actually kind of made and sold at the Whitney Museum Gift Shop,
kind of because I kind of related to an Andy Warhol exhibit.
They were having an indoor hole, filmed himself eating a cheeseburger with Heinz ketchup bottle next to him.
And so this is a book of five Heinz ketchup packets.
And that book kind of. Does it change?
It changes a little bit almost more violently than the cheese book does in the sense that I think
there's still some like active ingredient in ketchup that over time those packets slowly expand.
And again, it depends on the conditions that you're in.
But those I think people bought at the gift shop and I've also kind of sold some like some kind of libraries purchased them as well.
But so a friend of mine kind of had one and she sent me a photo of this book that had kind of one of the ketchup packets had popped,
you know, on her shelf. And there's like a little bit of ketchup running down her shelf out of one of the pages of this book.
But it totally depends.
But that book, like kind of the the book gets pressed opened by the pages, expanding over time and this really interesting way.
And then I made kind of a companion book to the two slices of American cheese,
which is 20 slices of meat and has 20 slices of kind of mortadella deli meat.
And I made this as a visiting artist at the University of Michigan's book Art Studio.
And I kind of they have a famous deli there called Zingerman's.
And I kind of went and they showed me all the meats and kind of got different slices of mortadella.
And I and I made this book. And that book obviously has a much, much shorter lifespan.
Did you how many copies of that did you make? I mean, I made a single copy and it was right at the end of COVID.
When it when I made it, we were finding someone at a neighbouring university who has worked in there,
kind of a biology lab where they preserved kind of biological specimens.
And so he was going to, in case it in a clear block of plastics, it could at least be kind of seen, you know, for for a long time.
But because of COVID and him getting kicked out of his lab, it became a thing where he tried to do it and is in this kind of backyard garage.
And so it's in a block of resin, but it's not not the best looking at the moment.
So hopefully I'll get back there and go to Zingerman's and make another kind of
edition of the book that we can try and preserve in a slightly different way.
Oh, it's amazing. So what's next? What are you working on right now?
Yeah. So right now I'm working on the the most recent catalogue press book is a book that's going to be called 2222 accidental vanity plates.
And so in the other, cars have license plates.
And in the United States, at least you can kind of it's a combination of letters and numbers,
and people can pay to have their license plate say something, you know, funny.
But there are a lot that are just kind of random combinations of letters and numbers,
because often the letters are in three letter chunks that accidentally say something.
So they'll be a license plate that's like to cap, you know, 46.
And, you know, it's something that this person didn't pay for. It's just the random luck of the draw.
And I've been collecting photos of these and I'm going to compile them in a book as a catalogue because I'm interested in this kind of,
you know, finding meaning out there in the world by looking at these things.
Amazing. We look forward to that. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Thanks so much for inviting me on. It's so exciting that, you know, this book is is there and, you know,
it's getting shown to people and it's, you know, starting conversations around what is a book.
So I just feel honoured to. Thanks again. We hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode of Blackness.
Follow the link in the podcast information to see photos of toe slices.
And if you're in Oxford before the 4th of December 2022,
you can see the book in real life as part of the Sensational Books exhibition at the Western Library.
Join us next time when we'll be talking to Yoder Dimitriou about her work to you.
Book that is printed with ink which responds to the touch of the reader.
See you then.