Carson & Miller play again at Artist's Book Fair Liverpool - 20.06.2009

Join Carson & Miller to play Another Game We Made Up at Artist's Book Fair Liverpool, A Foundation on Saturday 20th June 2009, 3-5pm.

Carson & Miller will be playing Another Game We Made Up and invite you to come along. The game is based around the simple selection of cards and the asking and answering of questions - a preview of the rules is pictured above. You are welcome to come and play or to simply observe.

Carson & Miller will also have a stall at the Fair on Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st June where many of their books and other printed matter will be for sale.

For more information about Artist's Book Fair Liverpool and A Foundation (inlcuding location details and opening times) go to http://www.afoundation.org.uk/.

all the islands we have visited: 1981-2009 (2009)

155 x 120mm, edition of 20, inkjet printed on 120gsm paper.

Using the formal language of the map and their experience of visiting islands, Carson & Miller invert the expectancy of what a map should do. Rather than providing an accurate geography and a sense of how to get somewhere, all the islands we have visited: 1981-2009 records Carson & Miller’s travels to disparate island locations.

The resulting distorted geography owes more to memory than it does to reality. Scale and location is ignored; an unlikely list of islands is formed and displayed.

This publication is made in response to Ø (a Danish vowel but also the word for island). all the islands we have visited: 1981-2009 will be exhibited in Denmark’s Doverodde Book Arts Festival, 2009. For more information about the exhibition and the festival go to http://www.bookarts-doverodde.dk.

Four Questions: a comic (2009)

105 x 210mm, edition of 50, inkjet printed on recycled paper. ISBN: 978-0-9557181-1-3

As the title suggests this book draws on the storytelling techniques of the comic format and tradition. Each story uses as its starting point a question. The resulting visual narrative is explored using a set formula created by Carson & Miller in their 2007 book The Exquisite Fold (see earlier post).

A Game of Truth & Fiction (2009)

each image 148 x 105mm, litho printed postcard

Of particular interest to Carson and Miller is the complex and shifting notion of truth and fiction. Their investigations take a variety of forms; in this pair of postcards Carson & Miller document their game playing and provide you with rules to play by yourself.

A Game to Play on Friday November 14th 2008 between 2pm and 6pm at A Foundation, Liverpool (2008)

In November 2008 at A Foundation, Liverpool, Carson & Miller played a game of their own devising based on the principle of question and answer (founded in the surrealist game of exquisite corpse).

This one-off live event was the first time Carson & Miller had played one of their games within a gallery setting, allowing the audience to not only view the playing of the game but also to be invited to take part. The game explored some of the principles of Carson & Miller's artists' book The Exquisite Fold (2007), a publication developed by the artists in collaboration with Dr. Patricia Allmer and Dr. John Sears. These four practitioners collaborated again in 2008, writing the journal article Your Turn: experiments in narrative and play in The Blue Notebook: Journal for Artists’ Books (Vol. 3 No. 1: October 2008) - see below.

Your Turn: experiments in narrative and play (2008)

Your Turn: John & Your Turn: Patricia, each image 210 x 297mm, digital photographs

Published in The Blue Notebook: Journal for Artists’ Books, Patricia Allmer, Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller and John Sears explore the making of the artists’ book The Exquisite Fold in their article Your Turn: experiments in narrative and play. Alongside the article are artists’ pages (pictured above) recording the narrative game playing undertaken by Patricia Allmer and John Sears under the instruction of Carson & Miller. Copies of The Blue Notebook (ISSN 1751-1712 - print, ISSN 1751-1720 – online) are available at http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/bnotebk.htm.

A Game We Made Up (2008)

In A Game We Made Up (a new work they have completed during the first half of the Swap/Vaihto exchange project) Carson & Miller have created a series of bespoke narrative games, designed to be played in specific locations matched to particular players (drawn from the people taking part in the exchange). The resulting work - on show at Bureau Gallery, Salford until 9 August, 2008 - documents the playing of the games in audio and text format.



Presented here are a series of documents which detail the questions asked and the rules they played by. Also available are short audio files from some of the games played - to hear these excerpts click on http://www.box.net/shared/33egf5wso0.



Carson & Miller thank all of their fellow players - they know who they are!

For more information regarding the Swap/Vaihto project go to http://www.bureaugallery.com
and http://swapvaihto.blogspot.com.

Stories We Have Been Told (2008)

Stories We Have Been Told starts where A Game We Made Up (see above) ends. In this multi media work - presented in audio and print - Carson & Miller reconsider the results of the games they played in A Game We Made Up, condensing and re-telling the narratives they documented when they played.

A partner work to A Game We Made Up, Stories We Have Been Told is produced specifically for the second half of the Swap/Vaihto project. Both works will be exhibited in the Cable Factory, Helsinki until 19th August 2008.

To hear selected excerpts from this work please visit http://www.box.net/shared/ifpypdfr0n.

Carson & Miller thank all of their fellow players who inspired Stories We Have Been Told - they know who they are!

For more information regarding the Swap/Vaihto project go to http://swapvaihto.blogspot.com.

A Reading, Recalled (2008)

111 x 175mm, inkjet printed on paper

As part of Carson & Miller’s exploration of re-telling, A Reading, Recalled borrows the principles of their previous works synopsis and A Tale Re-told. Here, Carson & Miller have negotiated the meaning of a novel resulting in an abbreviated, single text. Using letters cut out from two different copies of the novel in question, the sentences Carson & Miller have negotiated are laid out in alternating font. The resulting fractured aesthetic represents the settling of the artists’ negotiation.

synopsis (2008)

148 x 210mm, edition of 20, inkjet printed on 150gsm cartridge paper, bound by hand.

This work considers the experience of reading a book and then, in turn, recalling it. Carson & Miller have used the idea of ‘synopsis’ to distil the relationship between the reader and the text being read. Each page captures a narrative that is filtered through the prism of memory and the language of the authors.

Things We Have Seen (2007)

100 x 190mm, edition of 3, text set by hand using transfers, stickers, rubber stamps and typewriter on blotting paper. 32 unbound pages contained in a card sleeve.

The loose leaved volume, Things We Have Seen, considers the manner in which we look and the way in which we remember. The contents of the VHS-style sleeve are remembered fragments of films, television programmes and news footage, interspersed with “real” memories that belong to Carson & Miller. Each page records a pivotal moment in a narrative which, through the process of recollection, has been transformed and re-presented.

Might you be lost and not know it? (2007)

594 x 841mm, laser printed poster.