Bookdeath: Live and Let Die / Elizabeth Humphrey

Among the ‘special collections’ section of Chelsea College of Art and Design Library are a number of ‘art-books‘. In this collection I discovered a book titled Live and Let Die. I was attracted by its shape; its cover was made of card, this card also worked as a lid to the rest of the book, which externally was a bottle-green plastic trough. The card cover was attached to this trough by a black duct tape which acted as a hinge. Opening the card cover was a surprise in itself, the other side of the card had the following instructions: “Peel back cellophane, water the surface pattern, leave for a week and eat your edible cress book – enjoy!” Opening the cover I expected more pages, but in fact there was a single page. Under the cellophane was a sheet of card with the letters cut out like a stencil, it read…

L I V E

A N D

L E T D I E

Through the letter-shaped-spaces I could see the watercress seeds. The idea being that watering the ‘book’ would allow the seeds to sprout – growing through the letter shaped gaps.

The artist describes this process leading to an ‘edible cress book’. I ask myself is it a book? Yes, it has a cover – but it could as easily be described as a ‘lid’…a lid to a miniature garden bed perhaps…and because the ‘bed’ and the ‘trough’ are one and the same, it wouldn’t even be fitting to think of it as a single page book…it might be more accurate to describe it as a cover with writing on the inside sleeves - without any pages. There is also the absence of physical journey one associates with a book; the turning of the pages, physically going through the book is a kinetic experience.

Live and Let Die operates by describing itself as a book, while deviating from the normative look, construction and content of a book, the question of ‘what is a book?’ is therefore brought to the foreground. What is the quality (or set of qualities) that makes an object a book?

Self-labelling/definition is used as a strategy to encourage the reader to revisit, re-asses or rethink the(ir) dominant/normative meaning/use of the words present in the label/definition.

Engaging with this strategy, contrary to my initial doubts Live and Let Die possesses a number of qualities analogous to a ‘normal’ book.

The cress seeds when watered will grow upwards from the seed-bed into three-dimensionality, this can be seen as a kinetic experience, to be enjoyed and relished, equivalent to the reader moving through the book…The text moves towards the reader. It is the text encroaching upon us. The recognition of movement is given primacy over its direction – and who or what is moving, but there is the same sense of discovery that a regular thriller possesses, with its twists and turns, present in the unpredictable unfurling of the shoots over time - as we invest time in it…even the stalks of cress are cousins to the narrative threads of a novel. Both Live and Let Die and a normal book are ‘time-dependent-systems’ ; they need time’s passing to function; drawing power from their respective potentials and its interplay with our imaginations.

The dormant seeds are explicit symbols of potential and future growth. Growth kept at bay beneath the cellophane seal. They wait to be peeled back and watered. To fulfil their function: to germinate. And they continue to wait, even now as you read this text, in the library. And so these seeds and the work it comprises (Live and Let Die) remain unfulfilled - like an unread text in need of a consciousness to unlock it, to be moved by it - in a state of suspension…in this state the work can only fulfil itself in the reader’s imagination.

I must confess a desire to ferret away this ‘art-book’; find a watering can, peel off the plastic and water it. The work’s potential is realized through physical action. The symbiotic relationship between reader and book is explicit. The book needs the reader. The notion of reading has been transposed to a physical act. One reads Live and Let Die’s instructions, which lead to an action that unlocks the content. The word is made vegetation (by flesh). By activating the reader in this fashion we return to Barthes’ notion of the ‘death of the author’. I imagine the book in my possession, the cress has grown, it is bright green, I have liberated the work, allowed it to reach its potential – but of course, in doing so I have set off a chain of events that will inevitably lead to this book’s death.

A text on a page can be read again and again, meanings might shift, but rarely irretrievably lost or destroyed. If the cress grows it must die.

One of the reasons we treasure ideas is their material indestructibility; their detachment from the compromises of realisation. Books derive much of their cultural status, power and danger as vessels of ideas. The burning or confiscation of books is never as effective as the destruction of those who create the ideas that the books contain. Usually it is the book as object most under threat when the book is destroyed. But not here. Physical construct and concept are interwoven. Had I acted on my fantasy not only would the potentiality of the piece be exhausted, therefore the work irrevocably altered as would its relation to others in the future: distorted. Its being part of a library makes it a communal object…protected from the unregulated desire of the individual. And so its life remains in stasis, so that our collective enjoyment of it can be extended, shared and propagated indefinitely.