Purgatory Pie Press projects demonstrate the idea of “words in freedom.”

On February 20th, 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s “Manifesto of Futurism” was published on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro. The Futurists called for a break from tradition and the past in the arts, and advocated an energetic and wild celebration of technology, speed, and machines. The manifesto begins:

We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.

Some of Marinetti’s ideas are disturbing to say the least—he desires “to demolish museums and libraries, [and] fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.” But one of the more interesting—and lasting ideas—from the Futurists is the notion of “parole in libertà” or “words in freedom.” Marinetti wanted to liberate linear typography from left justification on the page and conventional spelling. His book, Zang Tumb Tumb, published in 1914, is the story of the siege of Arianople in the Balkan War, and is considered to be the masterpiece of Marinetti’s literary career and an exemplary example of “words in freedom.”

More than one hundred years later, contemporary book artists are inspired by this example, including Esther K. Smith, whose Purgatory Pie Press does excellent work with experimental  letterpress book projects. She told me:

Marinetti said PAROLE IN LIBERTA!  At Purgatory Pie Press, we believe in WORDS & FREEDOM. The Futurists worked with real type—we use real wood and metal type—much of which was manufactured 100+ years ago (so some of it could have been used by Futurists). We saw their work—beginning with the Russian Futurist exhibit at the Hirshorn in the early 1980’s, the El Litzitsky exhibit in MoMA (late 1980’s)—a Seattle exhibit in 1990, an exhibit Franklin Furnace, and even right now—the MoMA Inventing Abstraction exhibit.  Our impulse was to use type as image—seeing what the Futurists have done with type has inspired us to experiment in our own way.

Another book that takes the words in freedom concept to a new digital level, is Siglio Press’s project “Between Page and Screen,” a love story and correspondence between two characters, which can only be read by flashing the little black and white designs on each page in front of a web camera. The result is that words leap off the page, and you read them while looking at yourself, which adds another dimension to whole experience.