Jo Cook & Wesley Mulvin

The Institute for the Science of Identity Temporary Office and Reading Room

This new 40-page catalogue documents the peripatetic activities of the Institute for the Science of Identity as they take over various locations for their temporary office and reading room. Printed by Jo Cook and Wesley Mulvin, this publication is a catalogue of low-tech printing techniques. Letterpress posters for various takeovers and makeovers of other institutions’ spaces are cut up and bound within the publication. Deliberately poor-quality photocopies sit alongside carefully printed woodcuts. Other pages are printed with rubber stamps, Print Gocco and letterpress. An interesting variety of coloured papers is used throughout. A reading room membership card is included in a library pocket on the inside back cover.

40 pages. Perfect-bound with stiff cardboard covers. Three-colour wraparound paper dust jacket. 22,5x14,5 cm. 2010.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-64-0

Jo Cook

Voyages On Surd

Written during a Printed Matter residency in Halifax, Nova Scotia sponsored by Eyelevel Gallery and The Dawson Printshop, Voyages on Surd is a work of science fiction and visual poetry. Functioning as a reader’s companion to the letterpress print portfolio also titled Voyages on Surd, the illustrations here include maps, timelines, rubbings of Surdian hieroglyphic cylinders and their translation.

Printed in an edition of 70 signed and numbered copies. 48 pages, 14 with black-and-white illustrations. Hand-sewn binding. 20,5x13,5 cm. 2009.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-51-0

Jo Cook

Voyages on Surd Print Portfolio, 2008

Five letterpress prints based on visual poems found carved on Surdian hieroglyphic cylinders. Transcribed and printed by Jo Cook from transmissions received from Planet Surd. Printed on Classic Laid text at the Dawson Printshop in Halifax, Canada, in February 2009.

Cover envelope printed on Papeterie St-Armand handmade paper in 60-point Eve, a rare typeface designed by the German typographer Rudolf Koch (1876–1934).

Published in an edition of 20 signed and numbered copies. Envelope measures 13.75x9.5". Individual prints are 12x9". Portfolio includes a letterpress colophon page. 2008.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-91-6
 

Andrew Topel

Letters Patterns Structures

In his monumental study Pattern Poetry, Dick Higgins writes: “The earliest known pieces that are possibly pattern poems are the two texts on the faces of the ‘Phaistos Disk’. . . from roughly 1700 BC.” Andrew Topel’s figures on the pages of Letters Patterns Structures expand the materials and capabilities of this tradition of sign making. Forces held within individual letters radiate, diverge and clump to form buoyant figures that hum with the mechanics of their making.

24 pages, all with black-and-white illustrations. Letterpress cover. Saddle-stitched. 18,5x13,5 cm. 2010.

OUT OF PRINT        

ISBN 978-1-897243-66-4

                   

Bucky Fleur

Discours de la Poésie Épique

Here for the first time, the pages of obscure image and text from the Autobiography of Bucky Fleur are deciphered and explained. Included are the original Crime Stopper drawings, MACtac installation photos, and Town without Pity text.

16 black-and-white pages, 4 in colour. 21,5x17,5 cm. 2005.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-07-7

Barry Doupé and James Whitman

The Foul Girl Relaxes

When James Whitman isn’t drawing he can often be found whistling and singing. One day James asked the award-winning animator Barry Doupé to write some lyrics for him to sing. This songbook with Barry’s lyrics and James’s performance notations is the result of their collaboration. Also included are 12 new collaborative drawings by Barry and James produced especially for the book.

36 pages. 12 black-and-white illustrations. Two-colour letterpress and linocut cover. Saddle-stitched. 22,5x14,5 cm. 2010.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-63-3

Cook, Mancini, Pencarrick and Whitman

Book of Cöck

On the third night before Christmas, four friends, with dozens of collaborative projects between them, sat down to have some fun with five sheets of thirty-year-old cracked Letraset® and a stack of cheap paper. The Book of Cöck was drawn, printed, folded and stapled from start to finish in one sitting. Shockingly intimate and hilarious, this chapbook has already become an underground classic.

Now in its fifth printing! 16 black-and-white pages. Colour cover. Saddle-stitched. 22,5x14,5 cm.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-67-1

James MacSwain

Eruption

Over many years of practising his craft, James MacSwain has developed a large body of collage and film work that taps into our collective consciousness by recycling imagery from an astonishing number of sources. MacSwain’s collages are often dark, always poetic and deeply involved with dreams of transformation. In Eruption, specific archetypal characters of flickering gender travel through time and timeless geographies, becoming lost in the lush, sensual pages of handwritten text, maps and images. Printed in an edition of 60 signed and numbered copies.

28 pages, 23 in full colour, 5 in black and white. Letterpress cover on Papeterie St-Armand handmade paper. Hand-stitched binding in red linen thread. 22,5x14,5 cm. 2009.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-58-9

Julia Feyrer

Comedy Tragedy

Comedy Tragedy is an omnibus of methods for invention and image processing—absurd, repetitive, hand drawn, found and messed up. In Feyrer’s world, a wig is a mountain not a molehill, bananas are a glove’s fingers, clothes are shadows of body parts and a pizza is a face is a fruit is a slice of the earth. Set out as an eccentric collector’s catalogue this compendium overturns the story and the history. Structure is the subject, funny and fun.

Printed in an edition of 75 copies. 56 black-and-white pages. Perfect-bound. 20x14 cm. 2009.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-57-2

 

Jo Cook

Alchymicall Anatomy

This collection of text and alchemical derawings was first self-published in 2002 as a folding pamphlet titled Your Chemical Body.

The deluxe new edition is printed in an edition of 75 signed and numbered copies. 8 full-colour pages on Southworth linen paper. Letterpress cover printed on India handmade paper with deep red endpapers. Hand sewn with red linen thread. 15x11,5 cm. 2009.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-59-6

Wesley Mulvin

It's Hard Being Canadian

It is well known that it’s hard being Canadian. In this succinct panphlet, Mulvin lays out the physical and metaphysical origins of the difficulty from the beginning of Time. Illustrated with humorous quasi-scientific diagrams in coloured pencil.

Printed in an edition of 60 signed and numbered copes. 6 full-colour pages. 19,5x13,5 cm. 2009.

OUT OF PRING

ISBN 978-1-897243-44-2

Frances Zorn

The Road to Disappearance, 24 Celestograms

Completed during the summer of 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, this book is a record of twenty-four transmissions Zorn received from planet Coelan DZ_13IX. This book is a facsimile edition of the manuscript found among Zorn’s papers on extraterrestrial communication, which she was in the process of preparing for publication shortly before she disappeared. The Road to Disappearance is Volume III in the Collected Works of Frances Zorn. Volume I, Dragons of the Air, and Volume II, The Apocryphal Codex of Resolutions, are both published by Perro Verlag.

Printed in an edition of 60 signed and numbered copies. 32 pages, 1 in colour. Hand-stitched in red thread. 20,5x13,5 cm. 2008.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-51-0

Frances Zorn

The Apocryphal Codex of Resolutions

This facsimile edition of the first series of incomplete transmissions from planet Coelan DZ_13IX is Volume II in the Collected Works of Frances Zorn. It contains drawings and text, with Zorn's introductory Note to the Reader. Co-published by The Suitcase Art Gallery Space Research Centre and Perro Verlag. Edited by Michael McCormack and Florentine Perro.

32 pages, 11 in colour. Printed on blue and cream paper . 12,5x11 cm. 2008.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-53-4

Aby W Blake, editor

Documents of Psychic Amateurs

This periodical publication is dedicated to the dissemination of research by both faculty and students at the Institute for the Science of Identity. The first issue represents the work of twenty artists: Aby W. Blake, Mark Connery, Jo Cook, Mily Goodden, Claudine Hubert, Sally Ireland, Doug Jarvis, Malena Kirlianova, Chris Lloyd, Ross Angus Macaulay, Billy Mavreas, Michael McCormack, Tammy McGrath, Wesley Mulvin, Florentine Perro, Sally Rees, Liz Solo, Julie Voyce, Matt Warren and Frances Zorn.

It was published on the occasion of the exhibition International Psychic Amateurs Work/Study (iPAWS) at Lucky’s Gallery in Vancouver, Canada, and printed in an edition of 50 numbered copies.

58 pages, 24 in full colour and 34 in black and white, printed on various coloured papers. Perfect-bound. 8.5x11”. 2008.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-49-7

Åg Zorn, editor

Dragons of the Air The Roswell Notebook of Frances Zorn

In late April 1947, the brilliant paleontologist Maude Johnson and her lover, the poet Frances Zorn, began living together in Roswell, New Mexico. The notebook Zorn kept in Roswell during that summer recorded UFO events she and Johnson witnessed while, at the same time, Johnson was making the astonishing discovery of bird-headed dinosaur remains in the Roswell area. Then, in late August, the two women vanished. Local police and the FBI were unable to find any clues to help solve the mystery of the two women’s disappearance. The notebook Frances Zorn was keeping before she disappeared has been edited by her niece, the artist Åg Zorn. The notebook’s diagrams, sketches and notations are meticulously reproduced here, and the chaotic form of the journal has been edited into a readable facsimile of the original. The composer Susan Hawkins digitally remastered the sound recordings Zorn and Johnson made documenting the pulsing, humming, rumbling, clicking and accelerated buzzing that accompanied the visions Zorn describes in her notebook. The CD included in the book reproduces much more clearly what must have been an eerie audio experience.

Printed in an edition of 60. 32 pages, including 5 full-colour images, 3 two-colour illustrated pages and 7 black-and-white drawings. Screen-printed on both front and back covers.

Perfect-bound with blue binding tape. 26.5x19.75 cm. 7.5 cm CD in a printed envelope on the inside back cover. 2007.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-52-7
 

Wesley Mulvin

Altered Faces, Faithless Altars

For this new artist’s book, the Canadian designer/builder Wesley Mulvin has sketched a variety of faces and invented episodes, using both art history and his own history to illustrate comic pseudo-narratives. Using chance operations to title each drawing, he arrives at phrases like “What is nicer and easier than falling asleep?” This phrase is repeated four times in variations for a portrait of a sleeping figure. In another drawing, a swimmer who may or may not be having trouble keeping afloat, appears to be asking the question “What shall we do in art?” while a dancing devil is titled “Last Day of School.”

Printed in a signed and numbered edition of 60. 36 pages, including 33 black-and-white drawings. Two-colour screenprinted cover on Fabriano cover stock, with blue endpapers. Perfect-bound with black binding tape. 21.5x16.5 cm. 2007.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-43-5

Wesley Mulvin

Drawings: dogs, nudes, plans, other
4th edition

With pages of loose and humorous brush-and-ink drawings, this chapbook reproduces some of the works exhibited at Lucky's Comics in Vancouver, Canada, in July 2005. 32 black-and-white pages. Colour facsimile covers of the original sketchbook. 19x13,5 cm. 2008.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-01-5

 

Emily Goodden

Does This Feel Like Home Yet?

This beautiful mail-art booklet is a diagram of Goodden's apartment, made with lines from aged sheets of Letraset®. Printed on vellum with layers of detail and Letraset fonts, the book includes images of Goodden's kitchen cupboards, also painstakingly diagrammed.

The folding colour cover, designed for mailing, is a photocopied vacuum cleaner bag. Unpaginated. 12,5x15,5 cm folded. 2006.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-32-9

Jo Cook, Wesley Mulvin & Petra Poldlahová

Czech Birds, Šílení Lovci, Wild Hunters
3rd edition

The bilingual text for this book was written in the Czech Republic one afternoon while Cook, Mulvin and Poldlahová sat in the sun at a picnic table drinking Czech beer and playing the Surrealist language game Cadavre Exquisse. With black-and-white ink drawings by Mulvin.

24 pages. Soft cover with Japanese handstitched binding. 21,5x19,5 cm. 2008.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-37-4

Jo Cook, Owen Plummer

Cyclops' Dreams: Artists' Books, Comix & Zines

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 1-897243-03-0

 

Jo Cook
(self)Publish or Perish

 

OUT OF PRINT

 

Jo Cook, Wesley Mulvin & Petra Poldlahová

Czech Birds, Šílení Lovci, Wild Hunters

The bi-lingual text for this book was written in the Czech Republic one afternoon while Cook, Mulvin, and Poldlahová sat in the sun at a picnic table drinking Czech beer and playing the Surrealist language game of C adavre Exquisse. Black and white ink drawings by Mulvin and hand-painted covers by Mulvin. 21,5 x 19,5. 2nd printing, limited edition of 30 numbered copies stapled with yellow binding tape. Perro Verlag, Vancouver 2007

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-37-4

Florentine Perro

AField

OUT OF PRINT

Noxious Secter (aka Ted Hiebert, Doug Jarvis & Jackson Two Bears)

World Telekinesis Competition, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011

These catalogues for Noxious Sector’s World Telekinesis Competition, held in various venues from Victoria, Canada, to Seattle, USA, document the events in which more than 31 teams from around the world spent one hour attempting to remotely influence the behaviour of a candle flame using only their minds. The catalogues provide a thorough documentation of each team, their members’ profiles, tournament boards and match results. There are comprehensive essays in each year's catalogue. The 2008 catalogue essay by Ted Hiebert begins with a quote from Jean Baudrillard, “Facing a world that is unintelligible and problematic, our task is clear: we must make that world even more unintelligible, even more problematic.” This quote could also be Noxious Sector’s guiding aesthetic for this annual event.

Each year’s publication: approximately 125 pages, 94 in colour. Perfect-bound. 21x13,5 cm. Catalogues for 2010 and 2011 are still in production.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-54-1

Doug Jarvis

it's all in my head

This artist's book, published on the occasion of an exhibition at Access ARC Project Room in Vancouver, represents some of the wild and very funny activities an artist can get up to if the artist is Doug Jarvis. Inspired spherical thinking.

28 full-colour pages. Colour covers. 20x13,5 cm. 2007.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-40-4

Wesley Mulvin

Modern Carpentry

This catalogue was produced to document Mulvin's Modern Carpentry performance at the Ministry of Casual Living in Victoria, Canada. It includes drawings, collage, helpful hints and a technical quiz, and a free postcard is enclosed.

24 pages, 4 colour and 20 black and white, printed on various coloured papers. Colour covers inside and out. 20x13,5 cm. 2006.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-33-6

Jo Cook, Wesley Mulvin, Owen Plummer & Terry Plummer

Exquisite Dino Corp.

Drawing on the collaborative dinosaur drawings these four artists made for the exhibition Welcome to Dino World, at the lowercase reading room in Vancouver, Canada, this book is another in the Perro Verlag series of books generated while playing the Surrealist game Cadavre Exquisse. Each drawing is printed on a different type of paper.

Published in a limited edition of 30 copies. 22 pages. Yellow covers, side-stapled, with red binding tape finish. 21,5x13,5 cm. 2007.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-41-1
 

Ian Campbell

Young Scandinavian Artists

A catalogue and design project by Campbell, who curated the exhibition for the Ministry of Casual Living in Victoria, Canada, and Access Artist Run Centre in Vancouver.

12 full-colour pages. 21,5x13,5 cm. 2005.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-26-8

Jo Cook

A Room without Experiences

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 1-897243-10-3

Jo Cook

The Infinity Project Catalogue

This publication documents an exhibition curated by Cook for the Helen Pitt Gallery, an artist-run centre in Vancouver, Canada. Cook asked 100 artists to make objects, drawings, sculptures, etc., to represent their ideas about infinity.

36 pages. 8 in colour. Fold-out poster in the centre. Black-and-white soft cover. 21x14 cm. 2005.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-04-6

Jo Cook, James Whitman

James and Jo drawings

A small, select sample of more than 100 collaborative drawings exhibited by these two artists at Access Artist Run Centre in Vancouver, Canada, in 2003.

20 full-colour pages. Colour covers inside and out. 21,5x14 cm. 2003.

OUT OF PRINT
 

Jo Cook

The Last Four Cows of North America

This densely layered book of text and image begins with a quote from Eugène Ionesco’s Journeys Among the Dead: “Genealogy is where we find emanations, emanations. No, genealogy is where we no longer find, where we have never found, emanations.” Mixing fiction with historical documents, found images, family photographs, newspaper clippings and comics, Cook excuses history from being linear while documenting her roundabout journey through a melancholy genealogy.

Printed in an edition of 50 signed and numbered copies. 20 pages, 4 in colour. Numbers 1–10 have letterpress covers. Grey endpapers. 18x21 cm. 2008.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-27-5

 

Bucky Fleur and Owen Plummer

Owen Plummer Remixed

Plummer's complex world is de- and re-constructed here―vaudeville hot dogs, Hollywood pickles and the famous Plummer disco balls. In her introduction to the book, Bucky Fleur writesL "Yo! Peebles! Here in iz da werk uv da reemarkuble Owen Plummer remixt 4 ur viewing plezur on Hot August Nites. Owen didn't give his permishun but he also never said 'Don't remix my stuff' so we hope he likes it."

12 pages, 8 black-and-white pages on heavyweight glossy card stock. 21,5x17,5 cm. 2005.

OUT OF PRINT

ISBN 978-1-897243-08-4