Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book. Vol I of V

by Shubigi Rao

'Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book', is the first volume of five, by writer and artist Shubigi Rao. Part of a decade-long film, book and visual art project about the history of book destruction, censorship and other forms of repression, as well as the book as symbol and resistance, this volume takes five approaches to the subject.

Softcover with dustjacket. Map inside dust jacket drawn by author and highlights a few egregious historical examples of libricide, especially as corollary to genocide.

Genres: History

320 pages

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Writer and visual artist Shubigi Rao’s interests range from archaeology, neuroscience, outdated 13th – 19th century science, natural history, scholarship and exploration, to language, libraries, and historical acts of cultural genocide. Her immersive and tongue-in-cheek books, artworks and installations employ puns (text and visual) and wordplay, from creating archaeological archives of garbage, writing How To manuals for building a nation and a culture from scratch, discovering and diagnosing peculiar forms of urban malaise where digital dandruff and pixel dust accumulate like lint and cloud the contemporary brain, building immortal jellyfish, to a pseudo-museum environment in which issues ranging from the nature of collecting, the mechanisms of knowledge accumulation and storage to destruction and cultural genocide are referenced.

Publications include 'Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book' (2016) the first volume of five books from her current ten-year project on the history of book destruction, 'History’s Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul' chronicling 10 years of artwork and writing under the pseudonym S. Raoul (2013), 'Useful Fictions' (2013), three pseudo-art history books (2006), 'Bastardising Biography' (2005), and a number of limited edition artist books. She has also authored numerous essays and reviews. She regularly conducts talks and performance-lectures, notably a series under Artlink, supported by the National Heritage Board, Singapore (2012). She was a featured writer at the Singapore Writer’s Festival (2013), and an invited Speaker at ‘The Library: Art Research and Methodologies’, National Library, Singapore (2011), and at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles, USA (2006).

She lectures part-time in Art Theory at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. Her numerous awards include a year-long residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany, (June 2016 – May 2017), an artist residency at NTU CCA Singapore (Oct 2015 – Jan 2016), the Creation (2013) and Presentation (2013, 2012) grants from National Arts Council Singapore, and twice the Award for Excellence in the Arts for most outstanding student of the year (MFA First Class 2008, BFA First Class 2006). She also holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature from Delhi University, India.

Reviews

[Shu Wen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent short biography about the book; its history as a symbol of resistance, cultural-building, ideological framing and the story of the book and its place in public and private libraries is essentialy the story of nation-states and its citizens (The side/footnotes in the book were entertaining and informational in equal measure; don't breeze through them!)