Amaranth Borsuk publishes new book and participates in Virtual New York Art Book Fair

This month, IAS faculty member Amaranth Borsuk publishes The Book: 101 Definitions, a collection of responses to the question What is the/a book?, which she posed to artists, poets, bookbinders, librarians, publishers, and booksellers. Published by Montreal artist's book publisher Anteism on the occasion of Printed Matter's Virtual Art Book Fair, the book is volume 5 in the Documents series published in collaboration with the Centre for Expanded Poetics (CEP) at Concordia University.

Anteism's Bookfair booth featured an interview with Borsuk by book artist Maia Donnelly about "Books in Many Hands," an exhibition of Borsuk's collaborative works that took place at Anteism's Gallery this fall during the Volume Art Book Fair. The exhibition featured collaborations with Brad Bouse, Kate Durbin, Ian Hatcher, Jesper Juul, Nick Montfort, and Julie Wills that spanned the computational and material. Borsuk was a featured speaker at the October book fair, and her talk, "The Hybrid Materialities of the Book," was accompanied by a conversation with CEP founder Nathan Brown.

Of the publication and collaboration with Anteism and CEP, Borsuk writes, "this project began in the gift economy, with admired friends (and friends-of-friends) sharing their words with me. I'm so excited to be able to give their ideas a wider audience, since I believe strongly that what we mean when we say "book" is best understood through dialogue. These definitions have helped shape and expand my own thinking about what books can be and do, and I hope they will inspire further definitions and negotiations."