Veronika Schäpers
Germany
www.veronikaschaepers.net
BArch, DR 1/2385
2023
Letterpress and blind embossing on Mitsumata paper, Rayon paper and Toshaban (waxed Ganpi paper), hidden japanese binding in Kozo covered Enduro Ice paper with embossed title, multicolored acrylic box with silk-screened title
13′ x 7′ x 1′ + 18′ x 12′
Artist Statement
BArch DR 1 / 2385 or: Se una notte d‘inverno un viaggiatore / If On A Winter‘s Night A Traveler
“Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,” Arkadian Porphyrich says. “What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks. To be sure, repression must also allow an occasional breathing space, must close an eye every now and then, alternate indulgence with abuse, with a certain unpredictability in its caprices; … ”
In spring 2023 in the course of some research, I came across the print approval process in the publishing industry of the GDR and the efforts of many publishing house employees to circumvent censorship through clever argumentation.
The Ministry of Culture (BRD) writes in the Federal Archives: “The constitution of the GDR did not provide for censorship. In fact, however, censorship was carried out under the substitute term of printing approval and affected almost the entire book production.“
An interesting example of a GDR publication despite critical content is the novel “If On A Winter‘s Night A Traveler“ by Italo Calvino. Although Calvino describes, among other things, the censorship authority of a repressive state with its chief censor Arkadian Porphyritsch, which is not dissimilar to the system in the then GDR or Soviet Union, the novel is published in 1984 by the publishing house Volk und Welt. The fact that it was published in the GDR was largely due to the skillful argumentation of the publisher‘s reviewer Carola Gerlach and her clever choice of Sigrid Siemund as an outside reviewer.
The printing approval procedure for “If On A Winter‘s Night A Traveler“ can be found in the Federal Archives under the designation BArch DR 1 / 2385. In this artist‘s book, I have quoted a passage from Calvino‘s novel in which Arkadian Porphyritsch justifies the censorship with the love and appreciation of literature.
Prophyritsch‘s praise of the repressive police state is embossed on a total of six thin, waxed papers, the transparent paper turning white at this point. This handmade material was originally used as a stencil for mimeography, a precursor to xerography. The mimeography stencil is representative of the many simple techniques writers and artists used to reproduce texts that had no chance of publication in the official publishing system of the GDR. The six sheets lie loosely around and cover a narrow booklet containing two expert assessments from the Federal Archives.
To read Calvino‘s text, the reader must open the sheets like a wrapper and fan them out. Through use, the wax layer will gradually acquire small white fractures; over time, the fine and fragile text may become completely illegible, its materiality disappearing, but the content has impressed itself on the reader.
The booklet inside contains the two expert assessments on the novel submitted to the Central Administration for Publishing Houses and the Book Trade, a publisher‘s assessment by the editor Carola Gerlach and an external assessment by Sigrid Siemund. In their reviews, both argue for publication, whereby Carola Gerlach mentions the critical passage quite offensively and presents it as a fine and clever satire by Calvino: “In the distorted image of satire, the international organization for the exchange of politically questionable and trivial texts has taken the place of world literature in the interaction of humanistic national literatures, which absorb readers and authors alike and render them subjectless, keeping them mentally in total manipulation. In this somewhat gloomy world view of the trivial novel, in which revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries work blithely with and against each other as “organizations,“ one cannot actually blame the bourgeois author Calvino‘s fine satire on the censor Arkadian Porphyritsch in the imaginary land of Irkania.“
The two texts are printed on a handmade Mitsumata paper, which in its coloring and through small inclusions is reminiscent of the thin typewriter papers from GDR production. Underneath is another sheet with black block stripes, they indicate the constant threat of censorship.
The gray cover with yellow embossing is reminiscent of a file veiled by the thin waxed papers with Calvino‘s quote critical of censorship. Both are kept in a multicolored acrylic box with the file number of the approval process as the title.