Artist's Book Yearbook 2003-2005 - Book Arts - University of the ...

Editions F. Despalles was started 20 years ago by
Françoise Despalles and Johannes Strugalla in
Paris (France) and Mainz (Germany) as a
printing, publishing and distribution house for
graphics, paperworks and artists’ books. At the
same time, Editions F. Despalles serves as a
bridge between France and Germany,
publishing authors and artists who might be
quite known at home but would easily remain
unknown in the other country. Bilingual
editions are a speciality of Editions F. Despalles’
programme. In addition, Johannes Strugalla is
an artist, typographer, and author himself.
Ziemlich gedichtkopfkissen is a text by the Austrian
author Friederike Mayröcker, published here
for the first time, including the first translation
into French (presque oreiller poème). The unusual
images Friederike Mayröcker creates in her
texts are accompanied by monochrome
etchings by Monique Frydman that point
towards what lies beyond words. The
typography by Johannes Strugalla transforms
the texts into visual structures – readable
images that do not illustrate the text, but add
another dimension.
Zinnober/Cinabre is a book with images and texts
by Johannes Strugalla. In a meditative mood,
Johannes Strugalla reduces his visual
vocabulary to black vertical lines, drawn with
a bamboo pen, creating a certain rhythm and
tension. These lines meet with pages of pure
rich vermillion and yellow. The texts were
written parallel to the visual work in French
and German. Here the artist/author plays with
linking different levels of reality.
The next artist of 13 + is Barbara Fahrner.
She has been working with artists’ books for 23
years. She is an artist, an author, a philosopher,
a scholar. To her, writing is drawing, drawing is
writing. In her work, text and image cannot be
separated. For Leuchte Barbara Fahrner took a
text by Georg Büchner, Lenz and re-wrote it,
using a method called “oulipo” (a term that
refers to “Ouvroir de la littérature potentielle”:
workshop for potential literature). In doing
this, every word is substituted by another,
following certain rules, and the new text
generated creates another sense that sort of lies
behind the original text. (The book includes a
dictionary to re-translate to the original text.)
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Leuchte Barbara Fahrner
The project which Barbara Fahrner has realised
during the last 5 years with the help of her son,
Markus Fahrner, and his wife, Fitnad Aboudye -
Fahrner, is as large as manifold. The title Zweite
Enzyklopädie von Tlön (Second Encyclopaedia of
Tlön) refers to a novel by Jorge Luis Borges,
where he says: “In a hundred years time some
one will find the hundred volumes of the
Second Encyclopaedia of Tlön”.
Zweite Enzyklopädie von Tlön Barbara Fahrner
Barbara Fahrner’s Encyclopaedia shows the
whole range of her thoughts, material, and
artistic techniques she uses: little sheets of
paper with notes and sketches, long texts
written by herself, quotations from different
authors throughout the ages, exquisite
drawings and prints on precious papers, hand
writing and type setting, all sorts of collage,
kept in envelopes and document files. This
encyclopedia does not pretend to include the
whole world, although it shows the world’s
complexity in every part. It is not a bibliophile
beautiful book. Instead, it is a presentation of a
concept of world perception, that asks and
demands from the reader a new understanding
of the traditional, re-reading what seemed to be
well known, experimenting with the order of
image and text.