TBW#01 - The Art of Worms
66pp book - limited edition of 250 copies
SOLD OUT AT SOURCE
The first publication from The Bookworm.
Contents:
“Parasitic Infestation”, an essay by Ken Hollings.
Illustrations from the first 25 Tapeworm tapes,
including works by SavX, Derek Jarman and Leif Elggren.
Cover illustration: Savage Pencil.
66pp, 110mm x 171mm, soft cover, thread bound booklet – no ISBN.
Edition of 250 copies only.
Printed on Munken Print stock.
Typeset in Aldine 401, Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk and Miso.
The Tapeworm launches its new publishing venture, The Bookworm, with a tidy compendium of its coverart, alongside an especially commissioned essay by writer Ken Hollings, the author of the books Destroy All Monsters (Marion Boyars) and Welcome to Mars (Strange Attractor Press). Ken’s work has appeared in a wide range of journals, reviews and anthologies. He has written and presented critically acclaimed programmes for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4, NPS in Holland, ABC Australia and Resonance FM and has given talks and lectures at the Royal Institution, the British Library, the ICA, Central St Martins, the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels and the Berlin Akademie der Künste.
Hollings’ essay, “Parasitic Infestation”, is now archived on this site. Click here to read.
Reviews
Record Collector (UK):
Since 2008, The Tapeworm imprint has been busy celebrating that most anachronistic of formats, the audio cassette, disseminating a series of highly-limited spools, featuring all manner of specifically commissioned sonic art, from feral noise infections to spoken word pieces and conversations with Derek Jarman. The distinctive monochrome sleeves adorning these editions – the first 25 of which are collected here – reflect their esoteric content. Most display a spook of jagged cartoonish scrawl that’s instantly recognisable as the work of artist Savage Pencil, a fitting guide to the harshness inside. But other images, such as Dave Knapik’s The Lampshade Is Not A Past Tense or Oscar Henriquez’s Analog Apparitions, outline an amoebic-like galaxy of alien germ life, hinting at the parasitic infection described in Ken Hollings’ absorbing introductory essay. Alongside tales of country-listening cosmonauts, he celebrates an indefatigable mode of documentation and dispersal. In this context, The Tapeworm’s artefacts become totemic forms of defiance, affronts to contemporary high-tech culture’s easy-come, easy-go consumption strategies. Between main street stockists sounding their death knell and the underground’s attempts at a format resurrection, The Art Of Worms presents a modest manifesto for the continuing existence of the humble audio cassette. (Spencer Grady)
