Imprints of the New Modernist Editing Publication

Imprints: Art Editing Modernism is the centrepiece event of the Imprints of the New Modernist Editing project. The project followed on from the Network on New Modernist Editing, which ran in 2016-17 as a response to the observation that new editions of modernist literary texts were being produced in increasing numbers, and bring together those working on those editions to share their expertise and experience. The publication is a record of the five interdisciplinary workshops and centrepiece exhibition at Shandy Hall, North Yorkshire containing contributions made to the project by specially commissioned artists, designers and writers. The form of the publication was itself a response to one of the artworks we included as a reference-point in our call for works: Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare of her Bachelors, Even (Green Box) (1934). In this work, Duchamp gathered together an archive of 94 documents containing the notes he made while constructing the work of the same name between 1915 and 1923. Likewise, while this publication includes the material that one would expect to find in a conventional exhibition catalogue, it also acts as a record of the Imprints of the New Modernist Editing project as a whole, and breaks free from conventional form to offer the reader, or viewer, a multitude of experience – textual, visual and tactile – reflecting many of the ideas initiated and explored by the project in general and by the artists and writers in particular. The publication, therefore, in addition to catalogue material, includes a range of new writing (some commissioned in response to our workshops or to the artworks made for the exhibition, some offered by participants in our workshops in response to a call for contributions), as well as editions of a number of works included in the exhibition. Our approach to the publication reflects the perhaps paradoxical approach taken by Duchamp in his work: the material has been carefully selected, edited, and designed; but each item is left deliberately loose, allowing the viewer the opportunity to piece together their own interpretations of the material from this selection, to juxtapose them in their own way – or, in other words, to produce their own ‘edition’ of this project publication. We end, then, by handing over to others (literally putting in their hands) this record of the work of the Imprints project, in a form which invites them to experience some of the creative and critical challenges and pleasures that come from editing, and in the hope that this continues to inspire innovative responses to art, editing, and modernism. The publication includes works by: R H Lowe, Linda Parr, Pip Osmond-Williams, Kristin Mojsiewicz, Lara Eggleton, Maria Fusco, Scott Myles & Edwin Pickstone, Maura Dooley, Ane Thon Knutsen, Barbara Balfour, Design: A Visual Agency: Emlyn Firth, with Claudio Fabbro. Box: Gillian Stewart, Juju Books. Gallery photography: Christopher Morrison. Studio Photography: Patrick Jameso