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A collection of small artists' books
dedicated to experimental, concrete and visual poetry,
or any work combining text and visual arts
in the spirit of dadaism or fluxus.
ANNA BANANA
"The true Confessions of A. Banana"
A6 format (10.5x15 cm / 4 x 6") - 40 pages - Oktober 2008
hardcover, thread and quarter cloth binding
laser printing on ivory paper.
price: 15 euro / 20 US $ / 13 UK Sterling
order your copy by email
or subscribe to the collection
and receive each book with invoice.
No postage charged.
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These pages have been selected from an ongoing series of one-of-a-kind books
(forty to date). A number of pages start with a hand-written notes that include
shopping lists, notes on phone calls, books, items heard on the radio,
calculations and colour tests of all sorts. These I've embellished with frottage,
collaged and stencilled letters, words and travel ephemera, using nail polish,
pencil crayons, felt and metallic markers, stickers and rubber stamps. Scanned for
reproduction, I made additional refinements in Photo Shop.
Anna Banana has authored numerous articles on mail-art and
artists, some published in the seminal book, Correspondence
Art (1984), Franklin Furnace's FFFLUE newsletter,
Rubberstampmadness, many network publications and her
own VILE magazine 1974-82, the Banana Rag, 1971-present,
Artistamp News 1991-1996, and International Art Post
(1988-2007 and continuing). She has been a speaker in
conferences by the ISHS (International Society for Humor
Studies) at Phoenix University, and the University of Ithaca,
NY, and at the Pop Culture Conference at the University of
Albuquerque, NM (2001), and was a panelist in a Mail Art
conference at the National Postal Museum in Ottawa, 1988,
which purchased 400+ items from her mail-art collection.
Her interactive performance work and interview, Bananas in
Distress, was broadcast on CBC(Canada's national TV) 1998,
as were earlier events such as the Going Bananas Fashion
Show, live on CKVU's 1982 Vancouver Show.
She gave 29 performances of Futurist Sound (Italian futurist
scripts) with her then partner in 13 countries in Europe in
1978, and across Canada in 1980, with an expanded
program, Toward the Future, after having presented her
Banana Olympics at the Surrey Art Gallery that same
summer. In 1993, she presented her inter-active research
project, Proof Positive Germany is Going Bananas, in
Stuttgart, Berlin, Ulzen, Hamburg, Bremen, twice in Minden,
Bergish -Gladbach, and in Budapest, with a senior arts
grant from the Canada Council, and in 2003, collaborated
with Karla Sachse in an installation of knots in the
Nordbahnhof station, where she performed Tie a Knot on
Me as part of Berlin's annual Transportale event.
Her works are in the collections of the Beinecke Rare
Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, the National
Postal Museum of Canada, the Art Bank of Canada, the
National Library of Canada, and the Research Center for
Artists' Publications, Weserburg - Museum fur moderne
Kunst in Bremen, where she has been invited to exhibit
her publications April 30-July 2009...
REDFOXPRESS
Francis Van Maele
Dugort, Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland
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