Black Heart Press

GHOST PARK KILLING

I’m about a year behind in updates, when it comes to my own projects. Time to use this sunday to spotlight a collaboration that was very dear to me, the “Ghost Park Killing” project. Together with Swedish artist Magnus Dahl yours truly tackled the writings of Jeff Noon. I’ll try to keep this short and concise, but will have to embark on a few tangents.

The idea to work with Noon’s writings has been present since I first read Vurt, Pollen and Nymphomation in 1998/9. I originally registered the nymphomation.de domain for some web art attempts, sometime in 2003 or so, back when I was still studying English. It hosts my portfolio now, btw.

Somehow in 2011 the time was right, Magnus and I were looking into doing a collaborative project, and Jeff Noon had started exploring alternative ways of reaching out to his readership, via twitter. I felt that it would be nice to create an analog counterpart to his new output, emailed around a bit and got in touch with Jeff, who directed me to his agent Michelle for details. Once it was established that we were harmless we got green lights, and started working through the Sparkletown output Jeff had uploaded as @temp_user9. 

I feel that we somehow failed to get Jeff excited about what we were going to do, so while we got the go ahead we somehow couldn’t establish a dialogue where Jeff could have given his input too. I blame this mostly on my inexperience and working on a non-existant budget.

In the end Magnus came over to Helsinki for 9 days, we talked for a day, outlining the project and doing some rough doodles, deciding on a 310cm long and 48cm high sheet of kozo paper, folded as a ten-page-leporello with the ability to unhinge the covers to display the book as a single sheet.
The quotes we’ve chosen to work from were handwritten on copper plates, printed on Magnani paper and tucked into some kind of ‘photo corners’ I bound on the inside of front and back cover. 
Oh yes, and the whole thing was printed in a edition of 10, plus 3 artist prints and one “remix” on 9g/m² gampi paper. 

(Click here for a scan of the entire sheet in higher resolution 5476x1000px, jpg) 

Since Jeff’s Sparkletown (and previous works) deal, among others, with concepts like remixing / salvaging, we established a couple of parameters to work along - for the woodcuts, the ink was altered a little for each print, sometimes even dramaticly so. The four lithographs and two woodcuts on the long sheet were registered with 5cm leeway each, which together with the leporello folding produced quite a bit of variation. Like jazz variations, or like a dj playing through a set, where one tune follows another, the needle isn’t always placed at the very same second. This probably only matters to the artists, who get to see all versions of the edition, but still - it seemed like the right thing to do.

We tried to avoid doing a direct illustration of the tweets, and thus seperated the text our works originated from (etching, on the back of the covers) and our ‘remix’ of Jeff’s output (woodcuts and lithographs on the kozo sheet).
At first I wanted to print on the cloth of the covers as well, but ultimately was persuaded to not do so. I might still give it a try if I ever get round to binding the version we pulled on gampi.

So much for short and concise.
Anyway, we exhibited the book and some spin-off prints at Rönnells Antikvariat in Stockholm earlier this year (See here for exhibition documentation and better pics of the book), and I have just today found time and energy to get Jeff’s copy of the book on its way to the UK. Definitely room for improvement when it comes to further projects, but I’m still very proud of the result.

Further reading:

Rejoice, poor you that has read all of today’s entry. This is BHP’s 200th post on tumblr! Which means that I don’t only get to say thank you very much to 323 followers (which in Pokémon is Camerupt, a pretty awesome vulcanic camel creature. Need I say more?) and I also get to link this amazing video, for no apparent reason. Speakers up + fullscreen!

Jeff Noon’s Metamorphiction:
http://www.metamorphiction.com/

The six tweets we used (inside the front cover):
1. https://twitter.com/temp_user9/status/126760517644722176
2. https://twitter.com/temp_user9/status/126761316919676930
3. https://twitter.com/temp_user9/status/126761589360705536
4. https://twitter.com/temp_user9/status/126761840842784768
5. https://twitter.com/temp_user9/status/126762198293950464
6. https://twitter.com/temp_user9/status/126762611789402112

And the remix Jeff wrote thereof:
http://www.metamorphiction.com/index.php/sparkletown-015-remix/

The Rainbow
Magnus Dahl
Etching, aquatint
Artist’s Proof on Hahnemühle paper
Bergen / Stockholm 2010

This print by swedish artist Magnus Dahl hangs in my studio. Whenever I get disillusioned with contemporary printmaking and feel like building a time machine to join my renaissance heroes, I look up at this small, silent print and feel new hope - maybe not all is lost.

In other news, I’m relocating to Helsinki this August.