Abstract 04.04.13

4.6 billion years ago, Earth was formed. Meteoritic bombardments, volcanic eruptions, or ice ages occurred and had direct consequences on the landscape and life on Earth. What is the best medium to visualize this content? A format that offers a lot of space for experimentation, sequences, series and narrative stories. An object that gives the reader/viewer an experience, a feeling by touching, flipping, tearing, folding… the artists’ book. It is an art work itself. The content dictates the format and its features, following the structure of a geological timeline. The illustrated evolution of an animal comes to life within this frame, adapting throughout the various events and periods of time. Evolution hasn’t stopped. New species will emerge, continents will drift, new mass extinctions will occur, leaving Earth to the power of nature.

Abstract_16.01.2013

This project aims at understanding the evolution of the artists’ book since its emergence around the 1960’s. Artists started to create them in order to distribute their vision to a mass public in an affordable way. The book is not just showing art but is an art form itself. Interviews of artists, independent publishing houses and artists’ books collectors had shown that today publications are proliferating. Technology has evolved and so has its accessibility. For the past few years, Art book fairs, workshops, and presentations were popping everywhere. Today, they occur to discuss about the economy and the futur of independent publishing. Did the peak of independent publishing already occur or is it happening today?  How are the publications going to evolve?  The answers to these questions differ according to points of view. But what everybody agrees on, is that printing technology and its accessibility gave the chance to independent publishing to arise.

It’s book about why we are here and what the artists’ book have to do with it. Add about twenty Edding 0.1 and geology to it and you will get evolution.