Mini Majellen: Found Things

Artist: Michelle Vandermeer
Year: Undated, since 2005
Country: Australia
Publisher: Self published zine, See http://shelbyville.typepad.com

I have been tidying up my bookshelves lately, only to find more ephemera and publications  for documenting on CataBlogue, unearthing this as my tidying drifted from shelves to the piles of papers on my desk. These piles – let’s say compendia – of papers accumulate in trays as ‘things to read’, ‘things to file’, ‘things to attend to’ or ‘things that have nowhere else to be’. Accumulating in this manner is, apparently, a breach of the rules of personal efficiency – never handle any piece of paper more than once. I identified immediately with the artist’s reference to her own “personal collection of ephemera and arty crap”.

Earlier this year, this book was purchased for $5 from (m)art, a contemporary craft and design store established by Artisan, at South Bank. The book is also on sale online in several craft and design stores, like Etsy and Madeit. When I bought this book, I considered it as an artist’s book and discovered that the artist describes it as a zine. This raised some curious questions about the definition of such publications, a question I have little interest in exploring at this point, but one that I should put my mind to. I have, incidentally, sat in far too many symposia, seminars and forums where conversations turn to how to define this or that, only for dynamic conversations to grind to a defeated halt. Definitions provide a sense of certainty for some and for others they are simply a constraint. This has certainly been the case with artists’ books. Even so, it is of passing and notable interest that the artist of this piece has nominated it as a ‘zine’. The cataloguer or collector, as classifier, may need to consider whether zines are a class of artists’ books. The taxonomies and semantics of such things are rarely clearly cut. As I handle this unassuming publication again, checking against website entries (such as the entry in Zinewiki), I experience some satisfaction that such a small and modest production has posed this challenge to all encompassing classification systems.

Measuring 10.5cm x 10cm, Mini Majellen: Found Things is a concertina book copied on brown paper and bound with two loops cut from a plastic binding comb. It was created within strict parameters:

1. Black-only print, able to be photocopied
2. Printed on a single A3 sheet, cut and concertina-folded into a small 12-page book
3. Created purely from found things.

These ‘found things’ include familiar items like advertisements, tickets, greeting cards, stickers and other ephemera. A sticker of Tom (the cat from Tom and Jerry) graces the book’s cover. The tip of Tom’s tail is a little crinkled, slightly raised from the paper where the stickiness has failed, and the hapless creature looks like it is falling, having missed its mark yet again. There is a mystery here though. I do not know what the title Majellen refers to other than an earlier and much larger work of that title. At first, with its allusions to exploration and discovery, I wondered if it was a reference (spelling aside) to the Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, whose travels and name reterritorialised much of the world. There is the possibility that ‘Found Things’ is not just a name or a description but also an instruction to find things including an adventurous spirit. This, then, may mean the book is a kind of map that guides its reader into unfolding and unwritten terrains.

Scavenged items are assembled and manipulated with texts that suggest activities that break with routine: ‘taste the ocean’ and ‘wait’ are two that I found particularly appealing as someone who rarely gets to the beach yet loves the salty spray of the sea and whose impatience can be overwhelming. These playful arrangements entreat us to explore and experience more of our lives and our environment. They evoke those moments when we say to ourselves or our companions, “I haven’t done this for years …” There’s usually a sigh in there somewhere, possibly a tiny tide of tears or stretch of smile when a memory surfaces. As gentle reminders of the pleasures that await us in the everyday, there’s a touch of sadness in the realisation that we actually need to be reminded.