Högskolan i Skövde

The Paperology Reading and Activity Group took place during the 2020-2022 academic years. While the most common of everyday materials, paper has received less critical attention than it deserves. The objective for this group was to engage with the emerging research and growing literature on paper as material. In working towards an expansive approach to paper, we were less invested in what is on the page than we are in the page itself. Instead, we worked to better understand the material histories, forms, practices, and possibilities of paper. Paper has been of interest to artists, art historians, and book historians, but it has been surprisingly under examined as media and technology from the broader perspective of fields such as media and communication studies. 

Paperology: An Ephemeral Portrait is a handmade, cloth-bound artist book that functions as a substrate for interaction, inscription, annotation, and collaboratively created artworks from the participants in the Paperology research group. Shipped around the globe to participants among the 75-member group, as the book object collected contributions and became a co-created / co-authored snapshot documentation of the group in process, similar to the Victorian commonplace book or scrapbook traditions. 

Opening the book, the left side is comprised of a long, accordion fold panorama. Each panel of the accordion has a small, blue, hand-made envelope that contains a different type of paper sample inside. Samples range from handmade papers, to commercially made artist papers, to industrial paper such as deli paper and kraft paper, even a sample of a polypropylene based paper. Each envelope is labeled with the type of paper contained inside. The right side of the book contains three objects: two miniature books (one small and one tiny), and a handmade paper map folded "pocket map" style with boards of thick card at each end.