NEWS

04/02/08:

Spring is here. And it is more than just birds and bees that are buzzing. 10 new
books are blooming on the "shelves" of portabledocument awaiting your picking.

First to check out are the six volumes of Olga Adelantado's meta project, Six Impossible things Before Breakfast, which includes the work of dozens of artists and six curators. Next, Maria Pask has offered up the script for Starhawk! the musical , a raucous pedagogical romp into eco-feminism and the new age. For cyclists of all stripes, the first and the last editions of Lisa Anne Auerbach's Saddlesore series are now available on the site. Finally, Shannon Ebner's dark bloom, the beautifully haunting Signature, a meditation on language and landscape, can be enjoyed in its entirety, just a click away.

Happy reading!

--David Dodge

 

01/29/08:

Welcome to a new year of books at portabledocument.

Our first cookbook, a visual smorgasbord by Katie Grinnan and Tom Holmes, is online and ready to accompany you on your kitchen adventures. Mix & Mingle & Mangle and happy cooking! Justin Beale's Calender, a tone poem of design, advertising and art will be the perfect digestif for your evening.

When the midnight hour approaches and you are looking for religion, two very different takes on the popular pamphlet might be just the ticket..one by AUDC and one by Mungo Thomson. Enjoy.

Coming soon to our virtual bookshelves a six volume meta-book by Olga Adelantado... and much more.


---David Dodge

10/09/07: Great Scott! I can't believe that portabledocument is at last leaving its berth on my laptop and entering the great ocean of the internet. Putting up a website is no small task under any circumstances, but creating an online repository for 16 artist books that accurately reflect the artist's work and vision makes for a lot of emailing. I first had the idea early in the summer while working on the design of my own book. Wouldn't it be great, I thought, to be able to download and view some of the awesome zines and books that artists make and that normally only get printed up in in xeroxed runs of 50-100?

It would be easy to say that the hardest part of the project was just getting my hands on the pdfs themselves (Maria, I feel like a jilted lover waiting for yours, wink!). But actually the most challenging part of the project was creating appropriate contexts and descriptions for all the amazing projects that are available on the site.

The pdfs that arrived to my desktop had all manner of interesting stories attached to them. Allan McCollum was inspired to create new works based on Google searches of art-related phrases. Aleksandra Mir, whose book work is currently being shown at Printed Matter, sent in some of her classic Sharpie books. Marie Lorenz scanned her beautiful book of drawings entitled "The Five Coldest Nights of my Life" and emailed it to me chapter by chapter.

By hook and crook I have assembled the site and the most important thing, the books, are now ready for you to download, read and enjoy. And this is just the beginning. More books, artists and events will be added in the near future.

portabledocument
is just starting its adventure...
full steam ahead!

---David Dodge