BURNING BOOKS WAS BORN IN OAKLAND. Then, in 1989, writer/editor Melody Sumner Carnahan and artist/designer Michael Sumner relocated to Santa Fe to, as Michael explains, “get away.”
To date, the pair has published 35 Burning Books, often with collaborators like John Cage, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley, Woody Vasulka, Madeline Gins, and Arakawa. They like, says Melody, “to produce in obsolete delivery systems: books, posters, pamphlets, postcards, and discs.”
Their newest book, Santa Fe For Art’s Sake, was done in collaboration with Theater Grottesco and Axle Contemporary. We climbed the stairs to their airy Marquez Place loft to hear more.
Where did your new book come from?
Michael: Theater Grottesco and Axle Gallery got us into this. Grottesco was doing this performance based on a grant from the city. The idea was to drive more people to art in town.
Melody: So they asked us to create an online survey about art in Santa Fe. Of course, we did our weird take on it, and the questions are kind of unusual. But the responders totally got into it, and…it’s funny!
All of the material was for Grottesco to do a performance based on the questions and answers, which they did. It was fantastic. They called The Santa Fe Survey “an absurdist vision of social media’s iconic information-gathering tool.”
Michael: The Grottesco guys are amazing. And Axle – an art gallery in a truck? Now that’s our wavelength.
So we did the online form and got great responses. I was going through all of them and thought Jesus, this is funny! People really took the questions and ran with them. And some are serious too. Like the What breaks your heart? question.
Anyhow, we read this and knew that we had to make a book out of it. I mean, that’s what we do.
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Photo SFM
