Bourn again

I am thrilled to be publishing ‘Subjective Interfaces’ by UK video art pioneer Ian Bourn on Piece of Paper Press. I have greatly admired Ian’s work for a long time, and ‘Subjective Interfaces’ is an important and unflinching piece of writing. The book will be launched at PEER on Hoxton Street on Monday 19 September.

Photo: Robert Ellis

Here’s the blurb:

Piece of Paper Press and PEER are delighted to invite you to celebrate the launch of ‘Subjective Interfaces’ by Ian Bourn, a British artist best known for his pioneering work in video art from the late 1970s onwards.

Bourn uses fictional characters and the monologue form to speculate ‘how things might go’ in terms of an imagined or exaggerated autobiography, also exploring ideas of the author as the hero of his or her own story. With works such as Lenny’s Documentary (1978), Bourn established what Felicity Sparrow describes as ‘his own pantheon of imaginary tragi-comic characters, pitched somewhere between Tony Hancock and Harold Pinter’ (Luxonline, 2005). In Subjective Interfaces this process of creating fictional personas seems to be both exhausted and reversed as B finds that when he is forced by circumstances to be himself and in order to maintain his dignity and humour in face of the stigma of unemployment and workfare, the persona of the artist may be all that he has left.

The launch event will include a reading, and a screening of Ian Bourn’s Breathing Days (1992).

‘Subjective Interfaces’ by Ian Bourn is produced in a numbered limited edition of 200, of which up to 75 copies will be distributed free at the launch.

PEER, 97-99 Hoxton St, London N1 6Q. Monday 19 September, 6:30 – 8:30. There will be a reading by Ian Bourn at 7:15.

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