
Hence | Here … | Or | Option
- Publisher
- AVARIE
- Year
- 2018
- Specifications
- Soft cover, otabind, for Hence and Or
Hence 13 x 19.5 cm, 64 pages; Or 12 x 18.5 cm, 48 pages
Here … leporello, 16 x 24 cm unfolded to 24 x 128 cm, offset and letterpress
Option poster, 16 x 24 cm unfolded to 48 x 48 cm, letterpress
Black and white and colour plates
Papers Fedrigoni Arco Design and Symbol Matt Plus Premium White
Digital print
Text in English
Works, texts and design by Peter Downsbrough
Creative direction Giuliana Prucca and Vito Raimondi
Option issued in 50 signed special boxes
Nominated, Prix Bob Calle du Livre d’artiste 2019
A composite publication, articulated in several volumes and a leporello, which explores different printing techniques and invites a reflection on the passage from horizontal to vertical, from linear to three-dimensional, and on movement as converging time and space. Preserving their autonomy, the items intersect, meet and divide at once, while their editing and their sense vary according to how readers connect words and pictures. Together they propose a critique of the power structures — architecture, urbanism — that influence social relations and permeate the landscape.
Once the body has disappeared from the representation, the image stays alone, independent of a reality it modifies and subverts in the heterotopic space of the volume, making visible, through a displacement of the point of view, what is normally invisible because of an inability to see. If the utopian image is a subversive one, subversion is in turn utopian yet continuously desirable, intrinsic to humans: one cannot stop imagining, even in the awareness that the image will remain the incomplete and fragmentary sign of an absent space.
“All the rest of the city is invisible... Millions of eyes look up at windows, bridges, capers, and they might be scanning a blank page.” — Italo Calvino