This file is an xml file. In technical language, it "conforms" to the DTD for ABsOnline files, which means that the information entered into the file follows the order and requirements set by the DTD. If you were to follow the Document Template, you would see many of the same items that you see here, though they would look slightly different for two reasons. Some items will be absent, because they weren't relevant to Damaged Spring, and they were "optional" fields in the DTD. Some items will be filled in and/or repeated if they contained "required" information or were "optional" and relevant. By reading through this sample mark-up, you'll see what it looks like to go from the empty document template to a workable xml file. You could also compare this to the DTD and you would see all the structure and options in the elements and their attributes.
‹?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?›
‹!DOCTYPE work SYSTEM "ab_current.dtd"›
‹work id="dspr"›
‹title›
‹titleProper›Damaged Spring: Pink Noire‹/titleProper›
‹/title›
‹agents›
‹agent type="initiating"›
‹name type="last"›Drucker‹/name›
‹name type="first"›Johanna‹/name›
‹role type="artist"/›
‹role type="author"/›
‹role type="publisher"/›
‹role type="printer"/›
‹nationality type="born"›United States‹/nationality›
‹nationality type="active"›United States‹/nationality›
‹nationality type="citizenship"›United States‹/nationality›
‹dates›
‹date norm="1952-05-30" type="birthdate" range="single"/›
‹/dates›
‹/agent›
‹/agents›
‹thumbnail›
‹image›dsprEd1Ob1_tb_0002_00.jpg‹/image›
‹caption›Damaged Spring, with linoleum cut, torn paper collage, bound by the artist/author.‹/caption›
‹critGloss enAuthor="J. Drucker"›The cover of Damaged Spring is deliberately crude, with roughly torn paper and a very dark, harsh linoleum cut, as well as hand-cut letters. The effect was meant to be neo-expressionist in a contemporary idiom.‹/critGloss›
‹/thumbnail›
‹pubHist›
‹note enAuthor="A. Schutte"›Produced at the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, The McGuffey Art Center, and Johanna Drucker's home all in Charlottesville, Virginia. Text, images, design, and production were all done by the author.‹/note›
‹/pubHist›
‹projectStatement enAuthor="J. Drucker"›The exhibition "Love and Terror," announced for Fall 2003 in Arizona, helped provoke the production of this work. But the texts were already being written, and the sensibility with respect to the look of the book, my longstanding desire to make a distinctly neo-expressionist response to current events, had long been developing the vision that manifest fully in this work. Only the raw, edgy, harsh high-contrast of cuts, in this case, linoleum, long a favorite medium of mine, seemed sufficient to express the cruelty of fate and injustice being wrought by the current administration. Trying to figure out what was going on in the world was so difficult. All the lies and rhetorical obfuscation of media reports coupled with the anecdotal evidence of daily lives of real people, friends, family. And then the weather, with its own cruelties, seemed to damage every new bit of spring growth in one round after another of bitter winter. No way to know what happens, except by transforming all of that into form, into expression. And the shrill, almost hysterial pink-ness of the cover papers, torn and pasted, were the other gesture meant to register anger in the aesthetic of production. People have read this as a story of personal anger, sadness, and difficulty, but it was not explicitly so. Rather, a composite of all I saw around me, felt, and processed. The events in my private life seemed like another symptom, not the cause, of the mood of this book.‹/projectStatement›
‹aestheticProfile›
‹movement type="unknown"/›
‹subject type="LCSH"›Artists Book‹/subject›
‹theme enAuthor="A. Schutte"›Iraq War‹/theme›
‹theme enAuthor="A. Schutte"›Terrorism‹/theme›
‹theme enAuthor="A. Schutte"›fear‹/theme›
‹theme enAuthor="A. Schutte"›Spring 2003‹/theme›
‹theme enAuthor="J. Drucker"›Damage‹/theme›
‹contentForm enAuthor="A. Schutte" type="experimentalText"/›
‹publicationTrad enAuthor="A. Schutte" type="artistBk"/›
‹inspiration enAuthor="J. Drucker"›Knut Hamsen, "Hunger," and Viktor Shklovsky, "War Journal." For the images, Kathe Kollwitz, Kirchner, Munch, other German expressionists.‹/inspiration›
‹relWorks enAuthor="J. Drucker"›Among other Drucker works, Kidz is probably the closest in sensibility. Very few other books are as dark. From Now has some of the same compositional moves in its line by line strokes of imagistic language. Deterring Discourse, because it was written at the beginning of the first Gulf War, also relates.‹/relWorks›
‹otherInflus enAuthor="J. Drucker"›The news. Always the news. And communications from friends.‹/otherInflus›
‹community enAuthor="J. Drucker" type="press"›VABC (Virginia Arts of the Book Center).‹/community›
‹note enAuthor="J. Drucker"›This expressionistic sensibility is latent in other Drucker projects, and in the unique books Yellow Dog and Mind Massage (especially the small pamphlet in Mind Massage), the drawing style and emotional intensity are similar.‹/note›
‹/aestheticProfile›
‹relDocs›
‹manuscripts type="correspondence"›
‹locationInfo type="artistsArchive"/›
‹note enAuthor="J. Drucker"›Because this was in the "Love and Terror" exhibition in Tucson, correspondence about that exhibit (which served as deadline and thus prompted the production of the work) is relevant.‹/note›
‹/manuscripts›
‹manuscripts type="other"›
‹locationInfo type="artistsArchive"/›
‹note enAuthor="J. Drucker"›The keynote talk for "Love and Terror" has direct relations to this book project.‹/note›
‹/manuscripts›
‹manuscripts type="texts"›
‹locationInfo type="artistsArchive"/›
‹note enAuthor="J. Drucker"›Many texts, manuscripts, and other materials for this, as well as outtakes, exist.‹/note›
‹/manuscripts›
‹manuscripts type="mockups"›
‹locationInfo type="artistsArchive"/›
‹note enAuthor="J. Drucker"›Mockups, trials, other designs, images, etc. all exist.‹/note›
‹/manuscripts›
‹/relDocs›
‹receptHist›Love and Terror had some notice.‹/receptHist›
‹genComment enAuthor="J. Drucker"›A work of anger, despair, sadness.‹/genComment›
‹editions›
‹edition id="dspr01" type="first"›
‹volume type="single"›
‹edPubHist›
‹edInfo edtype="editioned" numtype="unnumbered" ordertype="first" sigtype="unsigned"›
‹dates›
‹date norm="2003-01-00" type="conception" range="span"›Conceived and written in winter and spring 2003.‹/date›
‹date norm="2003-00-00" type="production" range="single"/›
‹date norm="2003-00-00" type="publication" range="single"/›
‹/dates›
‹publisher›Druckwerk‹/publisher›
‹place›Charlottesville, VA‹/place›
‹edSize›25 and 75 or so. About 100 in all.‹/edSize›
‹/edInfo›
‹/edPubHist›
‹colophon› In response to the events of Spring 2003. Linoleum blocks, Quark, Agenda Bold Condensed, HP LaserJet. At VABC, McGuffy, and Warren Lane in Charlottesville. Limited edition includes 25 copies on Rives, with original collages on the cover and then another 75 or so copies on Mohawk Superfine, with folded wrappers to cover. Text, images, design, production all by the author. Much love to those around me who watched this book come into being and shared the changes of this wretched season. ‹/colophon›
‹physDesc›
‹genDesc›‹/genDesc›
‹measurements›
‹measurement state="closed" type="horizontal" unit="inches"›7.5‹/measurement›
‹measurement state="closed" type="vertical" unit="inches"›8.75‹/measurement›
‹measurement state="closed" type="depth" unit="inches"›.375‹/measurement›
‹/measurements›
‹format type="codex"/›
‹pagination type="unpaginated"›28 pages‹/pagination›
‹cover›The front cover, 7 1/2" x 8 3/4", features an original collage on white paper with neon pink streaks of paper underneath four different black and white linoleum prints: a figure kneeling and shaking its fist, the word "DAMAGED," the word "SPRING," and the agent's name written "JOHANNA DRUCKER."‹/cover›
‹binding type="hand"/›
‹substrate support="paper" type="bookBlock"›Rives‹/substrate›
‹substrate support="paper" type="endsheets"›Rives‹/substrate›
‹media type="ink"/›
‹otherMaterials›none‹/otherMaterials›
‹color type="yes"›Streaks of hot pink paper on the front and back covers, but completely black and white inside the book‹/color›
‹/physDesc›
‹productionInfo›
‹productionMeans type="letterpress"/›
‹productionMeans type="digitalLaser"/›
‹productionMeans type="linoleum"/›
‹productionNar enAuthor="J. Drucker"›The edition included hard-bound Rives copies and paper-bound Mohawk copies, mainly because of the cost of Rives and the work of binding. All the production was the same, otherwise, for the text and the images (all of these were printed letterpress). The most important production feature seems to be the fact that this was laid out using the images as a way to structure the openings and the book as a whole.‹/productionNar›
‹/productionInfo›
‹criticalAnal enAuthor="J. Drucker"›
‹desFeatures›
‹typographic›Agenda was chosen for its dark, heavy bluntness. A no-frills, direct quality inheres in its forms.‹/typographic›
‹imagistic›Expressionistically influenced, the images were carved in linoleum to get them to become angular, somewhat harsh, and to exaggerate the emotional affect of their quality. Most have some source in a newspaper image.‹/imagistic›
‹graphical›Much thought was given to the page layout design -- whether to have any header or footer, how to make the text block appear on the page, how much to reference a "book" as a literary form. The book block sits on the page with quite conventional stability. But each line in the text was set in a separate text box in Quark and then given a different angle off the horizontal. The effect is meant to be disturbing, but not so radical as to prevent reading.‹/graphical›
‹openings›All of the openings were structured by the images. The images were laid out first, before the text was put into the book. In every opening, a gaze connects the figures across the gutter. Only one opening has a figure who faces towards us, the man kneeling by the gravestone. He asks us to bear witness.‹/openings›
‹turnings›Changes of scale structure the shift from opening to opening.‹/turnings›
‹development›The images move the reader through the book, from the hideous corpse of the starved dead bird, to the futile end.‹/development›
‹/desFeatures›
‹critDiscuss›A book about trying to get hold of what was going on. Not sure how to process the information that was coming at me that spring -- from friends, from the news, the weather, from anecdotes and observation. The awfulness of the war machine, cranking up on lies, and the sense of everything delicate, living, vulnerable being crushed. The winter kept coming back, freezing and breaking young trees, new growth. Truly a dark time. All told and processed through a personal point of view, but not about me. This isn't my personal story, the damage was not mine, except as it was collective, shared.‹/critDiscuss›
‹detailedAnal›
‹study›
‹comment›The pathetic figure of that weeping woman was one of the first I carved. Her misery was so intense. And carving that block, the day of graduation at UVa, sitting in my studio, BF sitting in the chair, while we tried to decide whether to go see the Jack Nicholson movie about a man retiring. We went. Despair was everywhere. I wanted to be home carving. That block was so satisfying, its forms so communicative, seemed to provide some succour, some salvation, balm, just to make something. Had not been able to make books, or even write much that year, dreadful year without staff in the program, trying to keep things from falling apart. Didn't sleep through the night once that year. So, in the aftermath of graduation ceremony, to sit for a minute and be able to carve that block was like a reprieve.‹/comment›
‹image›dsprEd1Ob1_tb_0016_00.jpg‹/image›
‹/study›
‹/detailedAnal›
‹genComment enAuthor="J. Drucker"›Rarely have felt such desperate anger and powerless despair as that spring. Though Deterring Discourse, written at the start of the first Gulf War, had some of that emotion in it as well.‹/genComment›
‹/criticalAnal›
‹exHist›"Love and Terror" exhibition at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Fall 2003, was the first time this was exhibited.‹/exHist›
‹genComment enAuthor="J. Drucker"›George Riser was one of the most perceptive readers of this book. His comments on it were most gratifying. He also noted that it probably wouldn't find its readership, especially not immediately, given its complexity. He was right, of course.‹/genComment›
‹objects›
‹object id="dspr0101"›
‹provenance›
‹note enAuthor="A. Schutte"›In the artist's posession since production.‹/note›
‹/provenance›
‹repository›
‹institution›n/a‹/institution›
‹collection›The Collection of Johanna Drucker‹/collection›
‹locationInfo type="artistsArchive"/›
‹rights›Johanna Drucker has all rights over this work.‹/rights›
‹/repository›
‹particulars›none‹/particulars›
‹condition type="veryFine"/›
‹conservationTreat›none‹/conservationTreat›
‹exRequire›Exhibit with care.‹/exRequire›
‹genComment enAuthor="A. Schutte"›There were also 75 copies of this book produced at the same time on Mohawk Superfine, with folded wrappers to cover.‹/genComment›
‹/object›
‹/objects›
‹/volume›
‹/edition›
‹/editions›
‹/work›