RAGE PEN
David Blackmore and Michael Hampton
Folium
2025

108 pages
8.25 × 5.83 in. closed
Perfect-bound softcover with perforated fore-edges
Xerox printing with embossed cover
Edition of 100

In 2017 artist David Blackmore turned his studio into a rage pen (rage room for American readers) and invited anonymous collaborators to vent their frustration by destroying a symbolic object. Blackmore documented the participants’ destructive actions with photo and video, but first he interviewed them about the source(s) of their frustration — and had them sign a liability waiver. RAGE PEN presents some of this photo documentation along with context about rage in society and destruction in art. The book’s most striking feature is its perforated pages, which remain folded at the fore-edge. One must rip these seams open to read the book. Any psychological discomfort this may cause is eased by the fact that the top and bottom edges of the text block have already been trimmed, to put it mildly, using a miter saw. (In fact, Blackmore chopped the books down in a live performance at the book launch.) The difference between power tools and perforation exemplifies the tension RAGE PEN sustains between frustration and catharsis.

RAGE PEN achieves this tension by withholding as much as it discloses. Readers expecting access to the interviews between Blackmore and his ‘ventees’ might be disappointed, or rather, frustrated. We do get to read the liability waiver and the email Blackmore used to solicit participation, but the bulk of the book is photographic documentation. The photographs are sandwiched between an introduction by Michael Hampton, an artist and writer whose expertise includes artists’ books and destruction in art, and a conversation between Hampton and Blackmore. Both texts add substantial cultural and art historical context without detracting from the book’s transgressive thrust. There is also a reading list, which offers interdisciplinary perspectives on destruction.

RAGE PEN is carefully sequenced, so it retains a strong sense of rhythm even once all the pages are cut. Many of the photographs alternate between action shots of participants smashing their chosen objects with isolated close-ups of the tools of destruction: a sledgehammer, baseball bat, hurling stick, and so on. Blackmore splits the close-ups across the gutter; one page emphasizes the tool’s handle, inviting the reader to take part, and the other page shows the business end, scuffed and scratched from use. No such details are visible in the action shots, where bits of debris fly through the air with remarkable force. Interrupting these are quieter moments, where the absent participant leaves the light gray background to fill most of the frame, and the remnants of their unfortunate object occupy only a fraction of the page.

These mostly empty spreads enhance the book’s pacing, but they also serve to frustrate the reader. At times, Blackmore leaves the most satisfying, salacious part of an image outside the book’s margin or buries it inside the gutter. Other images are stills from videos we are not invited to watch. A pair of safety goggles, cropped in half, and a shattered mirror evoke the reader’s limited vision. Likewise, a pair of earmuffs, neatly stacked with a face shield and protective coveralls, reminds the reader of the immersive, multisensory experience they are not, in fact, experiencing. No doubt Blackmore’s background in socially engaged art helped him calibrate this relational exchange between book and reader.

Which is to say, RAGE PEN also offers pleasure. The perforated pages emit a satisfying zip as they are separated (I used a bonefolder, but a ruler would also work). The sawn edges feel as luxurious as the deckled pages in a fine press book — only more subversive. (Blackmore is at pains to reject the fetishistic consumerism of much art publishing, though RAGE PEN is a well-crafted object.) If the goggles and earmuffs remind the reader of what they are missing, the safety gloves draw attention to the book’s tactility. Further, by withholding as much as it does, RAGE PEN requires the reader to more fully imagine what it’s like to attack a printer/scanner with a sledgehammer or bludgeon dinnerware with a baseball bat. The reader might even imagine what object they would choose to destroy, and what frustration it would represent.

Perhaps to leave room for the reader’s interpretation, RAGE PEN avoids prescriptive formulae for frustration, rage, destruction, and creation. By referring to 1960s artists like Gustav Metzger, the book posits destruction as a calculated response to consumerism, a major theme in Blackmore’s art, not just an outburst of frustration. However, this distinction may support Hampton’s contention that rage is on the rise. The fractious politics of 1960s Britain — Metzger’s circle participated in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, for example — might only be surpassed by the Brexit referendum, which occurred while Blackmore conducted his initial research into “frustrative violent acts.” It is telling that RAGE PEN could be published nearly a decade later and still feel vital.

In fact, in today’s context, it may be rage — as opposed to Metzger’s cooler conceptualism — that retains the creative potential in destruction. The populist politicians who call for the creative destruction of the status quo (“take back control,” “drain the swamp,” etc.) never hesitate to suppress authentic outbursts of rage among the people. As Hampton writes, “Rage needs to be quelled, kettled, stopped, punished.” Blackmore shows that destruction, even contained within a studio, can transform individuals and create new social relationships.