MyFace Book

MyFace Book (2014) is Çiğdem y Mirol’s first BOOKPERFORMANCE as a textual body. As its name suggests, through its critical (not positive or negative) and ironic references to Facebook, it invites readers to do some critical and creative thinking by reflecting on the fast pace and mundane impacts of social media on the printed book.
 
Its opening scene comprises a letter sent by the beloved author to the beloved reader(s) asking them “Shall We Reinvent Love?”  It goes through a series of scenes called  “The Lost Author”, “The Empty Notebook”  and “The White Pencil”, all of which together compose the scene “All of Myself” that urges the book to become a performance. And its closing scene, called the“Bookperformance Manifesto”  (11.11.11), introduces bookperformance not only as a worldview but as an artistic and literary expression in 7 items.

Transparency: MyFace Book (2014) was “transparented” from Yüzüm Kitap (2012)  by Çiğdem y Mirol, Özge Wambach & Thomas Alkins. The transparency is deliberately not fine-tuned in each text throughout the book. This is mainly because by mirroring digital means, the book reflects on how the English language is spoken today without an editor. Therefore, the reader is invited to a performance involving the re/tuning of the language so that genuine co-creation could happen. 

Performance: Unlike its Turkish edition, this first example of a textual BOOKPERFORMANCE in English was self-published (to enable the research) and has been aspiring to find its editor for over 10 years (2014-2024). Such a duration might look long to those who are used to the high speed of digitalisation. Nevertheless, for a printed work which has permanent intentions, a decade is an interesting length of time to observe how the collective consciousness as well as “authorities” in the publishing sector receive and perceive such innovations that authentically reflect the “authorship” journey of a contemporary writer in becoming an “author”. Once this time period has elapsed, the book  will be fine-tuned as regards language/transparency and be re-published together with the other texts in the QUARTET, all of which describe this journey and how it is potentially integrated into the history of authorship.

Both the English and Turkish editions have been featured at several book fairs in Europe and Turkey. Here are some examples of how it has been received by people who are receptive to the evolution of the book: Presentation of an Event: MyFace Book / Bookperformance  Let Bookperformance Expand Your Mind Visually!  An Unexpected Love Story: MyFace Book   Badious's in Praise of Love, Mirol's Bookperformance  The Key Words of MyFace Book: Multiplicity and Diversity Bookperformances: Let’s Catch Phases Bookperformance & The Personal Pronoun "We"  Éloge de la Transparence