THIRD REPORT

Two of the protagonists of the final iteration of the exhibition project The Gutenberg Galaxy at Blaker were makers of books who have had a profound influence on the archival practice of Guttorm Guttormsgaard. They were also experts in the destruction of books. A friend of Asger Jorn (1914– 1973) once noted how the Danish artist “presented a danger to any book collection” as he used to tear out pages from books belonging to others in order to create his own. Jorn’s compatriot Rudolf Broby-Johansen (1900–1987) was also a notorious book slaughterer, leaving behind a trail of books full of cutouts (specimens now kept in Guttormsgaard’s collection confirm this).

When it comes to the book, this conflation of friends and foes seems to be a recurring phenomenon. In a 19th century tract on The Enemies of Books, the author William Blades included not only fire, water, dust, bookworms and other vermin in his authoritative catalogue of biblioclasts, but also book binders and collectors. As Roger Caillois noted in 1963, “any use of a book is a potential violation”: “Open a book too wide and its spine will break; cut or turn a page too quickly and irreparable damage will follow.” Digitizing a book often entails destroying it; the binding comes apart as the volume is pressed against the flatbed scanner, or, in larger scale digitization projects such as the one undertaken by the National Library of Norway, bindings are just as well cut off in order to speed up the scanning process. Gutters are flattened out; spreads become loose sheets. Today, as Matthew Fuller puts it in this report, the book indeed “exceeds its bindings”…