{"id":4280,"date":"2026-07-29T17:48:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T17:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/?p=4280"},"modified":"2026-07-29T19:44:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:44:26","slug":"imaginary-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/2026\/07\/29\/imaginary-books\/","title":{"rendered":"imaginary books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In July of 2026, Steve Lawson and Jessy Randall (author of this post) participated in a <a href=\"https:\/\/centerforbookarts.org\/\">Center for Book Arts<\/a> online class, &#8220;Imaginary Books: The Book as Performance,&#8221; with instructor <a href=\"https:\/\/centerforbookarts.org\/people\/amaranth-borsuk\">Amaranth Borsuk<\/a>. (Borsuk, as it happens, is the author of the <a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/9780262535410\/the-book\/\">textbook<\/a> Steve and I use in our <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/2014\/07\/03\/history-and-future-of-the-book-printing-projects\/\">half block class<\/a>.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With our classmates, we wrote descriptions and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fluxus#Event_score\">event scores<\/a>&#8221; for imaginary books and then realized at least one of these in some way. Here&#8217;s what Steve and I made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Rest<\/em>, by Steve Lawson<\/strong> <br>Description: &#8220;A book that captures the feeling of love felt by those no longer on earth.&#8221; (The classmate who provided this description did so anonymously. It wasn&#8217;t me.) Twelve photographs taken from the point of view of headstones in Colorado Springs&#8217;s Evergreen Cemetery. White pages are Yasutomo Asagami paper. One of a kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-flickr wp-block-embed-flickr\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div style=\"top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;\">            <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"rest\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;\"  src=\"https:\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/photos\/55425968321\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>YOU: A Biography<\/em>, by Jessy Randall<\/strong> <br>Description, by Steve: &#8220;A biography of whomever is reading the book.&#8221; Text: You were born. \/ You learned to read. \/ You started reading this book. \/ Soon, you will be finished. \/ THE END. Heavy woven paper upcycled from an old Special Collections oversize folder. Edition of 12.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-flickr wp-block-embed-flickr\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div style=\"top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;\">            <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YOU a biography video\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;\"  src=\"https:\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/photos\/55428770643\" width=\"404\" height=\"720\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In July of 2026, Steve Lawson and Jessy Randall (author of this post) participated in a Center for Book Arts online class, &#8220;Imaginary Books: The Book as Performance,&#8221; with instructor Amaranth Borsuk. (Borsuk, as it happens, is the author of the textbook Steve and I use in our half block class.) With our classmates, we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cc-special-collections"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3q4oW-172","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4280"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4286,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280\/revisions\/4286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}