Mesmer: Secrets of the Human Frame. Toni Dove. Granary Books. 1993.
Mesmer: Secrets of the Human Frame. Toni Dove. Granary Books. 1993.
Mesmer: Secrets of the Human Frame. Toni Dove. Granary Books. 1993.
Mesmer: Secrets of the Human Frame. Toni Dove. Granary Books. 1993.
Mesmer: Secrets of the Human Frame. Toni Dove. Granary Books. 1993.

Mesmer: Secrets of the Human Frame.

Granary Books, 1993. Item #GB_28

8 x 11 in., 64 pp., metal binding with slipcase.

“Toni Dove’s Mesmer, after having undergone several metamorphoses (computer-driven slide and sound installation, radiophonic work, essay), has most recently been recreated as an artist’s book. This work, which refers to itself as ‘a fractured icon, an unstable portrait,’ is both a study of the construction of female identity and an elegy to the intersecting 19th century origins of psychoanalysis, cinema, and industrial technologies ... Through a dialogical collage-montage in the voices of Freud, Dora, Echo, and a Cyborg Angel ... Mesmer is a mediatic robotic machine that investigates how the soul is nothing but corporeal facade and speech act.”
–Allen S. Weiss, Art + Text

With many layers, the book is densely visual. Printed offset in several shades of metallic ink by Lori Spencer at the Borowsky Center for Publication Arts in Philadelphia, it uses both transparent and opaque papers and includes a three-dimensional centerfold pop-up. Bound in metal by Daniel E. Kelm and staff at the Wide Awake Garage, with slipcases made by Jill Jevne. This is from an edition of 60 copies, of which 10 are hors commerce and 50 are for sale; each signed by Dove. Out-of-print.

Six additional copies were bound: one binder’s copy in full metal and five others in screen and cellophane, for the Borowsky Center.




ABOUT TONI DOVE

Pictured: cover; slipcase; pp. 9–10; 25–26; and 41–42.

Out of Stock