Photo credits: Annette le Fort; Bernhard Cella
The Small Walker Press (SWP) was hosted by Art Metropole in Toronto for the launch of the 2023 volumes Touch, and Tender Readings. Books As Archives, and Handmade. The editors of the SWP, Catherine Parayre and Nicholas Hauck, of the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, and David Vivian of the Department of Dramatic Arts, the Director of STAC, were joined by the creators of Handmade, Seth Weiner and Bernhard Cella, via zoom from Vienna, Austria. In the audience were members of the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective Collective, among others.
The SWP thanks Sara Maston, Communications & Data Coordinator for Art Metropole, Blair Swann, Associate Director, and Arshdeep Kang, Programs, Publications & Shop Assistant, for their generous hospitality.
For the 2023 series Books and Archives, four book designers published their reflections on archives.
Two artists – Brandon LaBelle and Annette le Fort – visit their local public library, check out a few books, keep these for a few days then return them. The text and black-and-white photographs included in Touch, and Tender Readings. Books As Archives document this trip to the library. They evoke a sensory experience – tactile, visual, and olfactive – and a meditative performance – walking through the stacks, touching book covers, turning the pages of a book. LaBelle and le Fort present the library as an organic space and the destination of an intellectual and sensuous journey during which thoughts expand quickly beyond the books displayed on the shelves.
Handmade is the product of a reflection between two artists whose practice includes book design and curatorial projects.
For Handmade, Bernhard Cella and Seth Weiner wrote together short creative-writing pieces. Each is the facetious description of contents in an imaginary book. They then used these descriptions to generate images of book covers through AI. The images look like photographs of books, although none of these books (none of these covers) actually exists. The book descriptions refer to content that was never written. The result is a catalogue of books that do not exist. Handmade points to the importance of book design and marketing (book descriptions, catalogues).
Parayre and Hauck also presented the online volume (Im)mobilités, and the many other notable volumes of the Small Walker Press, including Possible Grounds. Redrawing Relations in Toronto, Beneath a Velvet Moon. Early Love Poems and Tewaaraton. La crosse / Lacrosse, seen here on a shelf celebrating indigenous art and artists at Art Metropole.
Join us for the next SWP event on Thursday Oct. 19 from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Commons of the Brock Library, for another Small Walker Press book launch for Books and Archives, presented by the Centre for Studies in Arts & Culture and the Walker Cultural Leader Series.
Small Walker Press book launch: Books and Archives
Presented by the Centre for Studies in Arts & Culture and Walker Cultural Leader Series
Saturday, Oct. 7 from 2 to 3 p.m.
Art Metropole, Toronto, https://artmetropole.com/
896 College Street, Toronto, ON M6H 1A4 +1 416-703-4400
OUR NEXT EVENT:
Small Walker Press book launch:
Books and Archives
Presented by the Centre for Studies in Arts & Culture and Walker Cultural Leader Series
Thursday, Oct. 19 from 2 to 4 p.m.
Brock Library, Learning Commons
Free event, open to the public