Workshops Online Imaginary Books: The Book as Performance

Imaginary Books: The Book as Performance

Jul 14–28, 2026, 6–8pm

with Amaranth Borsuk

Imaginary Books: The Book as Performance - Summer 2023 image 0

Course Code: 26MPV002V

This three-week, virtual workshop takes place on Zoom on Tuesdays, July 14th - July 28th, from 6pm – 8pm ET.

Complete Schedule:

  • Tuesday, July 14th, 6PM to 8PM ET
  • Tuesday, July 21st, 6PM to 8PM ET
  • Tuesday, July 28th, 6PM to 8PM ET

Please Note: Registration for this workshop closes on June 30 at 11:59 pm.

About the Workshop:

This virtual class at Center for Book Arts is taught by instructor Amaranth Borsuk.
This workshop invites participants to consider the question "What is a book?" Taking our cue from the artists of Fluxus, we will collaboratively create a series of event scores—short, instruction-based artworks—based on imaginary books of our own devising, as simple or outlandish as our hearts desire. In this way, we will turn the creative process itself into an artistic practice and event, generating books as intimate performances we gift to one another. Our first session will be devoted to a short overview of the practice of event scores and to books made in unlikely forms and with surprising materials. We will ask ourselves, what is the most unusual or unconventional book we can imagine? Participants will come up with 5-10 imaginary books to share with the group during the first session. We will then work on composing event scores for our imaginary books, contributing them to a collective document. After the works are shared, in preparation for the second session, each participant will select one imaginary book score (their own or someone else’s) to realize. They will document their book with photography and a reflective artist's statement, which they will share in the third session, where we will compile the submissions into a book. At the end of the workshop, the instructor will collect the event scores into a digital chapbook, which will be offered as a gift to all participants after the session—a source for inspiration for when we feel creatively "stuck" and a playful artifact of our time together.

Required Materials:

  • This class requires no specific materials or tools.

About Amaranth Borsuk:

Amaranth Borsuk is a poet, scholar, and book artist whose work encompasses print and digital media, performance and installation. Her textual/conceptual artists’ books have been exhibited widely and are held in a number of library collections. She received an “Expanded Artists’ Books” grant from the Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago for the collaboration Abra, a limited-edition artist’s book and free iPad and iPhone app that received the Turn on Literature prize for electronic literature. Her latest volume is The Book (MIT Press, 2018), a concise introduction to the book as object, content, idea, and interface. That work inspired her to gather definitions of the book from artists, writers, librarians, publishers, and booksellers, which she compiled into the anthology The Book: 101 Definitions (Anteism, 2021). She is the author of the poetry collections Pomegranate Eater and Handiwork as well as four collaborative books of poems, including, most recently, W/\SH (Anhinga, 2026) with Terri Witek. Other digital collaborations include The Deletionist, an erasure bookmarklet created with Nick Montfort and Jesper Juul; Whispering Galleries, a LeapMotion interactive textwork commissioned by Site Projects for the New Haven Free Public Libraries, and Between Page and Screen, augmented reality poems created with Brad Bouse. Amaranth is currently Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. amaranthborsuk.com/

In order to best serve our community near and far, many of our online classes are pay-what-you-can. The amount you choose to pay goes directly toward our instructors and toward creating scholarship opportunities for the future. Please note that this workshop will not be recorded so you must be able to attend this session live if registering for this workshop.

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