Magical Ritual/Endlessly Repeatable Movement (Entzauberung)

Magical Ritual / Endlessly Repeatable Movement (Entzauberung), 2021, Single Edition Photobook, 48 pages

Photographs and text: Zoé Fauvel, Design: Jeroen Cavents, Publication: August 2021 - Leipzig

In between mediums and light-years, Magical Ritual/Endlessly Repeatable Movement (Entzauberung) builds on the exploration of the relationship we maintain to celestial objects as they are made familiar by the extensive body of knowledge we have produced about it – photographic dissemination being one amongst many.

With the telescope disappearing from our view of the heavens and beyond, we are offered the possibility to see the cosmos as never before and by doing so, to possess a new kind of visual acuity: an acuity without frontiers, free from apparent viewing devices, self-explanatory in its representation, and without traces of data manipulation.

As our makings reach the edges of the solar system, how do we negotiate the flux of data between reason and vision, between the alien and the familiar, between seconds and light-years? As one looks at this book, and perhaps holds it in their hands, how do they negotiate the staging of distances and the desire of understanding and possession?

It took the New Horizons Mission:
9 years of travel
A covering distance of approximately 5 billions kilometers
Some 3.7 hours per 1b of data to be received on Earth

Did I take these photos of Pluto?
Yes, I did.
--

BEDEUTUNGSGEFLECHT

Curator: Jeroen Cavents
Artists: Dominique Rivard, Francis Nowak, Guy Eytan, Jeroen Cavents, Joris De Hondt, Laura Aponte, Luka Van der Cruyssen, Orgil Oyundelger, Raf Wollaert, Zoé Fauvel
Printed and bound by Buchbinderei Leipzig

Documentation images: Jeroen Cavents

Bedeutungsgeflecht is a curatorial project conceived in the framework of Cultures of the Curatorial program at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. The project consists of multiple books in a modular open-source format that can be merged together as interleaved books.

The project aims at questioning narrative book structures, the position of author, reader and subject, and seeks to experiment with the medium of a book as a curatorial and inspirational device. It cuts loose from authorial or unambiguous curatorial intentions and underlines the importance of gaps in between the material and the attempts to stitch them together.

Artists and writers were invited to design a book in a standard format, using the same specific font, page size and number of pages. The participants were free to use any medium such as text, poetry, found footage, photography, drawings etc. Contributors were encouraged to use a broad variety of different (artistic) languages. The project results in a collection of artist books not intended as an organic whole or to be read in a specific order.

Bedeutungsgeflecht was presented at Short Dated in Galerie Stephanie Kelly (Dresden, DE) from 26 - 29 August 2021.

Short Dated:
Pop-up-Store for artist books and magazines

The concept of the Pop-up-Store transforms the gallery into a curated book space; a hybrid that is both exhibition and sales space. This transfunctional character weaves itself like a thread through to the exhibits: The book as an artistic medium functions on one hand as a means of artistic expression and on the other hand as a mediator of knowledge. To be observed as a work of art in its own right, the artist’s book becomes the object of a concept transcending the boundaries of the book. Under the premise of temporality and the deliberate detachment from clear structures, Dresden is receiving a contact point that has hitherto remained virtually unconsidered – artistic publishing.