
Encyclopaedia
- Publisher
- BLOW UP PRESS / JEDNOSTKA Gallery
- Year
- 2024
- ISBN
- 978-83-965969-6-3
- Specifications
- Hardcover, cotton with hot stamping
Text by Weronika Gęsicka, essay by Charlotte Cotton
Book design by Aneta Kowalczyk
Paper: Munken Pure 130g
225 x 300 mm
252 pages, 862 photographs
English
Print run: 1500 copies
Printing: Argraf, Warsaw; cover by Marceli Printery
Weronika Gęsicka undertook the heroic project of searching old encyclopaedias for entries that had been created in order to prove plagiarism in the form of illegal reprinting of their content. She illustrated each of the headwords she found in her own way: by modifying stock photos and creating new images using artificial intelligence. In this way, a unique Encyclopædia of fake events, animals, characters and objects was created. 'Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942–1973, American photographer. She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris and rural American mailboxes.' Behind this seemingly amusing collection lies a very important question: how can we function in an age of information manipulation and fake news, when even encyclopaedias cannot be trusted? The book is divided into nearly two hundred sections covering astonishing animals, infamous massacres, spectacular inventions, untraceable cities and supernatural figures—each accompanied by archival images that appear to leave no room for doubt, yet are entirely fabricated. The book is accompanied by an essay by curator Charlotte Cotton.