Iconic books are texts revered as objects of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight. In religious and secular rituals around the globe, people carry, show, wave, touch and kiss books and other texts, as well as read them. This blog chronicles such events and activities. (For more about iconic books, see the links to the Iconic Books Project at left.)

Monday, April 27, 2015

Printing in Blood


A Lebanese Art and Culture magazine, Audio Kultur, has used human blood to print its issue commemorating the Armenian genocide.

NPR reports that

Lebanon became home to large numbers of Armenians fleeing the Turks during World War I. While many emigrated during the Lebanese civil war, several Beirut neighborhoods remain centers of Armenian culture.

So just how do you publish in blood? The magazine approached five notable Lebanese-Armenian artists, from musicians to designers. Phlebotomists drew the blood, collecting it in vials.

"Obviously when you do something like this it becomes a statement, and the reader will take away from it whatever they want to take away from it," Colacion told the Daily Star. "But what we want to do is just kind of celebrate this rich culture, which impacts all of us every day, especially in the arts."

Audio Kultur produced a video about the process and its goals:



The video ends with the text: "100 Years Later, Armenian blood is being spilled for recognition."

Writing in blood identifies texts with human bodies. The tendency to equate texts and humans is endemic to the history and rituals of textual culture, as demonstrated clearly by the multi-cultural essays in Kristina Myrvold's The Death of Sacred Texts. Blood writing has to my knowledge been used most recently to create a relic text at the opposite end of the political spectrum, a Qur'an written in Saddam Hussein's blood.

SCRIPT at EIR/AAR Montreal May

SCRIPT is providing two panels on the theme of “Devotion to and with Books” for the Eastern International Regional  meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal this week-end.

Both panels will take place on May 2nd in Room 204 of the Birks Building on the campus of McGill University

1:30 p.m.
Chair: Michael Como (Columbia)
1. Rachel Fell McDermott (Barnard/Columbia) “What Happens When Love is Transposed:
The Story of a South Asian Devotional Poetry Genre that was Birthed, Once”
2. Dai Newman (Syracuse) “The Family: A Proclamation in Three Dimensions: Contemporary LDS Scripturalization”
3. James Watts (Syracuse) “Book Aniconism in Christian Tradition and Ritual Practice”

3:00 p.m.
Chair: James Watts (Syracuse)
4. Michael Como (Columbia) “Buddhist Sutras: Desires and Devotions”
5. Urmila Mohan (London) “Preformed or Performed? Embroidery as Devotion in ISKCON”
6. Discussion: “Devotion to and with Books