{"id":762,"date":"2020-03-19T14:30:04","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T18:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/?p=762"},"modified":"2020-04-16T10:22:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T14:22:44","slug":"a-users-manual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/a-users-manual","title":{"rendered":"A User’s Manual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A User’s Manual<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Ji\u0159\u00ed Kol\u00e1\u0159<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Written in the 1950s and \u201960s, the \u201caction poems\u201d comprising a A User\u2019s Manual<\/em> were published in their complete form in 1969 when they were paired with the 52 collages of “Weekly 1967”, the first of Kol\u00e1\u0159\u2019s celebrated series in which he commented visually on a major event for each week of the year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking the form of directives, largely absurd, the poems mock communist society\u2019s officialese while offering readers an opportunity to create their own poetics by performing the given directions. The collages on the facing pages to the poems are composed of layered documents, image cutouts, newspaper clippings, announcements, letter fragments, reports, or decontextualized words, oftentimes forming concrete patterns or the outlines of figures, to create a sort of \u201cevidential\u201d report on the year. Text and image taken together, the volume displays Kol\u00e1\u0159\u2019s enduring interest in extracting poetry from the mundane to demolish the barrier separating art from reality, or even to elevate reality itself through this dual poetics to the level of art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What art historian Ars\u00e9n Pohribn\u00fd wrote about “Weekly 1968” equally applies to “Weekly 1967”: it \u201cshocks with its abrupt stylistic twists\u201d and is \u201ca Babylonian, hybrid parable of multi-reality.\u201d The volume also includes the complete Czech text as an appendix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text adapted from the author’s press materials<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Rose profiled Ji\u0159\u00ed Kol\u00e1\u0159 in “Controlled Madness”<\/a>, which appeared in Kolaj <\/em>25<\/a>. PURCHASE THE ISSUE<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ABOUT THE BOOK<\/strong>
A User’s Manual<\/em>
by Ji\u0159\u00ed Kol\u00e1\u0159
142 pages; hardcover
7.9″x6.7″
ISBN 978-8-0862-6454-7
$24 US \/ \u00a318
Twisted Spoon Press<\/a>, Prague, Czech Republic, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purchase the book from the publisher HERE<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ji\u0159\u00ed Kol\u00e1\u0159
\nTwisted Spoon Press, 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":763,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,69],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jiri-kolar-a-users-manual-cover.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8O04t-ci","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}