Liberature is literature in which the material form is considered an important part of the whole and essential to understanding the work. The genre has been invented in 1999 in Kraków by Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberature]
Liberature is an influential genre to my artistic practice and a category that I include my works to.
Re[d]akcja techniczna (2012)
In 2012, during my Polish Philology studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, I decided to deconstruct my debut poetry book called „Jestem tylko kruchym demonem” and create a new book, in the form of an exhibition. I used words and letters from my poetry book to create new artworks – using tcechniques from as collage, concrete poetry and blackout poetry. I also cut my own name to Ale Ksandra back in that time. The event was a symbolic transition moment for me – a ritual that placed my art practice from the medium of literature to the border between poetry and visual arts.
During the opening of the exhibition, I lead a workshop called „Coś z Nietzschego”, where I invited people to deconstruct Nietzsche’s text, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (I chose this text because of a Polish pun in Nietzsche's name). Below you can find a video from that event.
Dotknij, aby dodac do relacji (Master's Thesis, 2024)
My Master's thesis, called „Dotknij, aby dodać do relacji. Interfejs jako przestrzeń poetyckiego doświadczania”* has been designed as a reference to liberature style called "book in a box", used in books such as a legendary 1960s experiment in form, The Unfortunates by B. S. Johnson. In this style, the chapters are presented unbound, to be read in any order the reader chooses. In case of my work, "book in a box" is a nod to one of the key points of my thesis, which is the fact that in 2024 we use our smartphones as a main tool for reading – hence my paper has been placed in an iPhone box. In my diploma project, I researched various reading strategies that are not a linear, left-to-right, pages-turning reading behaviours and choreographies; with my main focus on scrolling – a reference to the previous than codex book form – a scroll.
*[untranslatable to English – includes word play from Polish version of Instagram's interface: in Polish, Instagram Story is called ’Relacja’ – a homonym to the Polish word for a "relationship"]
