WRITING IN PRACTICE VOL 9

ABSTRACT

This image/text essay Storytelling with Books documents part of a hybrid art/ creative writing project. The project explored the possibilities of storytelling using dying books which were being thrown away from thrift shops. A collection of books were folded into sculptural forms. A short story called The Bookbird was written using the text redacted from one of these folded books. It told the story of a book transforming into a bird. The Bookbird short story was then taken through further iterations—it was cut up and pasted into another dying book where it interacted with the text in that book and a cut-up musical score. It was then revised and typed up again. As it went through further iterations the story gained agency—it was a story about transformation and the narrating character, the bookbird, gained agency and wanted to fly. This new iteration of the short story was cut up into 4000 individual words which were glued onto 4000 small feathers. When each feather was dropped it would land word-up. In a silent durational performance the featherwords were moved by air-moving objects (fans, feathered gloves and shoes). Constantly rearranged, the featherwords could fly, move, be read in random sequences. Air played the role of a ghost-writer. The Bookbird short story, raised from within a dying book, became a text which fully transforms.

KEYWORDS

artists books, altered books, cut-ups, creative writing, practice-based research, storytelling, iterative process, performance writing, visual performance, experimental writing

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

Richards, Jess. (2023) Storytelling with Books. Writing in Practice. 9. 101-110 DOI: 10.62959-WIP-09-2023-08