The last straw, the stone in David’s slingshot, a flower that has grown secretly – among other things for me the artist’s book is all that as well as an inseparable part of other forms of expression. In Lehmo, on the 12th of July 2007, the earth has been so warmed that you just have to step on it. The breeze before the rain is also warm – there’s enough for the other cheek, too. I rest on the spine of the book like one of its pages – so light is a warm feeling.
For a long time I thought that due to circumstances I was forced to make artist’s books; they remain artist’s books because publishers aren’t interested. One work, and it can still be divided – one artist’s book, not even five loaves of bread and two fish.

I got an invitation: “Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 23:13:57 +0300 From: Egle Babilaite-Sitas. At the moment I am preparing the project ‘Syndrome of capital’. Do you remember, I told you about ‘Vilnius 2009 - European Capital of Culture’. We are considering and correcting our project with Vilnius municipality. Would you like to participate in this project the May of 2009?  During two weeks we will have the symposium in the wonderful place of historical capital Kernave near Vilnius. Every artist should arrange workshop (one day or half day) with children from street, or disabled, or girls from dependency.”

I visit the Mission Possible website (http://www.mp.org), an organization that works with street kids. Powerlessness ties you up in knots and you try to find the way to justice. Yet I don’t know and at the same time my uncertainty comes from a different world because I’m not a child without any security. I work in my garden and think and in my consciousness goals crumble... I read Timo Airaksinen’s Arvojen yhteiskunta [A Society of Values] and Eero Suvilehto’s aphorisms and approach clear-eyed understanding. But how do you stop the construction of the new detention facility at Gatwick and how do you take a step towards humanity – these days?

Väinö Kirstinä’s Luonnollinen tanssi [A Natural Dance] first taught me that a book is more than just writing. Lettrism – a fascination with danger or a call to rediscover meaning. And I’m grateful to Gunnar Ekelöfs non-figuration och situationspoesi - En studie I hans förankring i det europeiska 20-talets avantgarde [Gunnar Ekelöf’s non-figuration and situations poetry - A study of his position in the 1920s European avant garde], edited by Ulf Thomas Moberg (1982), for allowing me to find Pomada (1913) – pictures by Mikhail Larionov and poems by Aleksei Kruchenykh; for Henri Michaux, Elena Guro and the Russian poetry, especially that of Elena Svartz and Aleksandr Gornon, which was introduced in the 2/2007 issue of Idäntutkimus [The Finnish Review of Eastern European Studies] that just through the letter slot.

For me the artist’s book means the presence of the poetic, whether in the form of materials, typographic shapes of the words, concepts or poetic imagery – it is something partly between the pages and  delicately honest... Though I waited twenty years and yesterday saw pictures of three of Mikhail Larionov’s color lithographs on gold paper on the New York Museum of Modern Art website, I’ve known Aleksei Kruchenykh’s Pomada poems by heart for fifteen years; but I’ve gained two things: a piece of fulfillment and expectation.

Leena Nylander 
Lehmo, Kontiolahti, 16 July 2007

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we listen as if it was the radio when the bones make their morning call – when we get old, now we leave on a journey and the first stage is distance