Printed fleece and fabric rucksacks, two pieces

Overview

Primates is a set of two volumes, intended to created a shared reading experience. The pieces are worn on the readers' backs, meaning each has to read to the other. The text is a fragmented narrative in two halves, from two perspectives, about the shared lives of the two protagonists and their differing perspectives thereof. The text is printed on fleecy fabric and the tactile experience of stroking, smoothing and preening the material is an inherent part of the book. This sensuous element, combined with the suggested position of the readers, creates a sense of closeness, care and intimacy.

Background

For a while now I've been wanting to do something that allowed the reader to get more hands on and really dig in to a text. I experimented with a few things, but these early prototypes were unsatisfying, as I didn't really have understanding of what I could and couldn’t do.

Two courses helped bring this project in to focus. The first was a five-week paper folding and pleating course at the Working Men's College, taught by Thomas Prendeville. This gave me a better understanding of what was possible and also deepened my appreciation for the hands-on feel of working with paper and card.

The second was Artists Books - Theory and Methods by Ben Denzer, taught online from the Center for Book Arts in Brooklyn, NY. In just two short sessions, Ben introduced the wide world of artist's books and explained a lot of the theory and practice involved in making them. The first week was this overview and we were briefed to come up with our own artist's book for the next session.

The vague notions of folds and tactility combined with the living situation we were experiencing during Coronavirus lockdown. My partner and I get on well for the most part, but each of us was the only person the other saw for several months at a time. Being in such close quarters for so long requires patience and kindness to be active practices.

The image of apes grooming each other struck me as an intimate act of caring. Reading books is usually a solitary act and adults seldom get the opportunity to read aloud to one another. I wanted to explore the idea of reading as a shared experience. I sketched out a rough idea of two backpacks with strands of words on them that each person would have to untangle and read to the other.

The first prototype took the entire week to make. While I had the physical form very much in my head, trying to find the right tone for the actual words was difficult. I knew that the writing would be piecemeal, that a reader would not necessarily read things in any particular order, or might skip some. This meant short sentences and I had a lot of difficulty making it feel genuine without it being pretentious and poetic. In the end, form and content combined and I turned the text into a simplified ape-speak that could still be read by humans. (I also added in an unnecessary amount of references to bananas.)

Having made the prototype from paper and card, I looked into fabric printing options. T-shirt transfer sheets had a weird film on them and washproof markers were too fuzzy to read at the size I wanted. In the end I went with digital printing through a company called Contrado, who have a wide range of fabrics. After running through samples, I settled on polar fleece because it’s furry, feels nice and doesn’t fray.

Octavia was able to cut and assemble the printed pieces into these two wearable volumes.