Production Narrative

by J. Drucker

The drawings were done on layout tissue with markers, the texts were produced on an IBM selectric in Tamia Marg's father's office at U.C. Berkeley. I can't remember if it was printed at the West Coast Print Center or not, but it was done from pasted up sheets of tissue and typed text. All the rest of the work was done in the warehouse.

Critical Analysis

by J. Drucker

Design Features

typographic: IBM selectric fonts.

imagery: Comics for sure. But the specific images had their own references, like the little guys on the cover with their beefeater hats and individual jet packs.

graphical: High contrast black and white, with a heavy emphasis on patterns of line and texture rather than on shade/shadow illusion. No illusions at all here, actually, since this is anti-naturalism.

openings: In many cases the images go across the gutter.

turnings: Scale changes and changes of venue depicted open like scenes in the turnings.

development: At the narrative level, some bit of a trajectory can be mapped, and the book ends with an image that has a long view, rather than some of the closer up images in the book.

sequence: No particular attention to sequence.

Critical Discussion

The aggressive quality of the images and layout were gratifying in their impact. The book has always seemed too big for itself, as if all that information couldn't be kept on the pages. Something about it is unresolved, as if it needed another layer or stage of digestion or refinement, but then, that has always seemed like its strength as well, that it was so raw. Looking at it now (2005), I'm still struck by recognizing the venues -- downtown Oakland, the warehouse and neighbouring buildings in the complex, 80 Langton Street, and other places. As a book it holds together mainly as pastiche, not as coherent or synthesized form.

General Comments

What else is like this? A curious combination of esoteric and accessible, vernacular and obscure. As usual with my work, especially in that period of the 1980s. The references to the popular culture sources may be there, but they've been processed through so many filters that they are radically transformed. [J. Drucker]

Just As

Agents

Johanna Drucker

type: initiating

role:
artist
author
designer

nationality:
born: United States
active: United States

dates:
birth: 1952-05-30

Publication Information

edition type: editioned

publisher: Druckwerk

place: Oakland, California.

dates:
production: 1982 The drawings and writing were done in 1982-83.
publication: 1983

edition size: 500 copies

note: Place of publication is not mentioned in book. [A. Schutte]

Measurements

horizontal: 10 inches closed

vertical: 16 inches closed

Production Information

production means:
offset (local)

binding: other stapled

substrate:
bookBlock: paper

media:
ink (local)

other materials: staples

Appearance

general description: Book is large format, in black and white with glossy paper.

format: codex (AAT)

color: no

Content

pagination: unpaginated

numbered?: unnumbered

signed?: unsigned

Colophon

This publication is made possible with funds from LINE. Copyright 1983 Johanna Drucker