KØTØBÅ NØ PÅRTY

– Out of Print –

For the 65th Anniversary of the founding of the Scripps College Press, a day-long symposium investigating the origins of the book arts movement in the 20th century was presented in January of 2007. The theory that the poem Un Coup de dès, published in 1896 by French symbolist poet Mallarmè, instigated much of the activity was imaginatively discussed by Betty Bright, Johanna Drucker, Judd Hubert, Clifton Meador and Marjorie Perloff. In order to investigate these theories further, students were asked to consider zaum poetry as developed by Russian avant-garde artists such as Iliazd from 1913 onward. Zaum poetry has been described variously as performative music-language, untranslatable sound beyond signification, enhanced meaning or meaning turned inside out, Cubo-Futurist indeterminacy with symmetry and pattern, rhythm and harmony, color and sound. Students looked particularly at Poèsie des Mots Inconnus published by Iliazd in 1948 for inspiration in language use, text/image balance, typographical and book structure. Original texts were written by the students in eight languages, while images were carved into linoleum or stencilled by pochoir. The book was printed onto Somerset Book paper and each sheet was French folded and organized into paper folders which slip into a case with an unusual accordion fold at the opening spine. The case utilizes Tyvek mounted to Somerset Book and is blind embossed. The title, KØTØBÅ NØ PÅRTY, means word party in Japanese. The size is 5 x 6.5 inches and there are 101 copies in the edition.

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