Dec. 8 book launch focuses on ‘Codex,’ a book about the Minot Flood

Codex, a book focusing on the fate of book in the aftermath of the 2011 Minot Flood, will be featured at a book launch Friday, Dec. 8, 3 p.m. at the North Dakota Museum of Art.

The author, Micah Bloom, a professor of art at Minot State University, painstakingly photographed, collected, and recycled hundreds of books and this work became the basis of a film (2013) and an art installation (2015).

This year the Digital Press at UND published two versions of Codex that combined Micah’s photographs with a series of scholarly and reflective essays. The first was a large-format, limited-edition, fine-art book made available to wide audience as a digital download. The Digital Press has also published a low-cost trade paperback version of the book available at Amazon.

The publisher, William Caraher (UND History), connected with Bloom after seeing his 2015 exhibit at the North Dakota Museum of Art: “Micah’s haunting photos captured an event historically rooted in a time and place – 2011, Minot, ND – but by focusing on books, he made it speak to much more universal concerns. The destruction of the flood is brought home in an intimate way through Micah’s photographs and treatment of books. So it made sense for us to capture the exhibit /collaborate in this way.”

Roundtable discussion
The Dec. 8 event at the Museum of Art will feature a roundtable discussion with the artist and three collaborators: David Haeselin (UND English), Sheila Liming (UND English), and Thora Brylowe (University of Colorado- Boulder English) will join Bloom in a discussion of his work moderated by North Dakota Quarterly‘s Brian Schill.

“It has been a joy to find so much local support for this project,” said Bloom. “To now have a way to share a bit of our story with a larger audience is such an honor.”

Haeselin, who contributed to the book, remarked that “the essays help bridge the gap between scholarship of material culture studies, book history, and eco-criticism.”Haeselin’s course in Writing and Editing in the Department of English collaborated with The Digital Press to produce the book. Haeselin goes on to say “Student copy-editors were asked to work on a real book going to press. This meant that they had to fact-check and mark up their teachers’ writing, me included. Once they got past the awkwardness, they learned how to manage author-editor relationships, a core responsibility of any editor.”

To download or purchase Codex or watch the films go here: https://thedigitalpress.org/codex/

For more on the Digital Press go here: https://thedigitalpress.org