Situationist Books by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn. Another historical experimental publishing example that I love!
Top: Asger Jorn and Guy Debord, Fin de Copenhague, published by Bauhaus Imaginiste, 1957
According to legend, Fin de Copenhague was composed and printed in the space of just 24 hours. Or maybe it was 48 hours. Either way it was pulled off with a dizzying burst of speed and with nonchalantly scathing brilliance by the Danish artist Asger Jorn, credited as main author, and the French theorist and writer Guy Debord, who is named as “technical adviser for détournement”.
The book’s pages ripple with coarse trails of pigment and explode with wild energy. As the story goes, not long after they had arrived in Copenhagen Jorn and Debord stole a pile of newspapers and magazines from a newsstand, which they cut up to make 32 collages. At the printer next day, Jorn dribbled ink on to the zinc plates from the top of a ladder; these were then etched. The abstract shapes, like the frenetic daubings of a monkey wielding a paint brush, were printed on both sides of the sheet in gradated color, and the collage elements were printed in black on top of them. When the sheet was trimmed and bound, the formerly continuous marks and colors of Jorn’s carrying structure produced random collisions of colour and shape on the spreads. Pure chance completed the design.
http://designobserver.com/article.php?id=37720http://designobserver.com/article.php?id=37720
Bottom: Debord, Guy and Jorn, Asger. Mémoires: Structures Portantes d’Asger Jorn. Copenhagen: Internationale Situationniste, 1959. n.p. [64 p.]; ill.; 28 x 21 cm. White card wrappers with Viks no.2 sandpaper cover.
The book is most famous for its sandpaper cover. An auto-destruction feature that enabled it to damage not only the book it might be standing next to in the bookshelf, but also the person who would be reading it. An anti-book to destroy all other books.Permild writes: “Long had he [Jorn] asked me, if I couldn’t find a unconventional material for the book cover. Preferably some sticky asphalt or perhaps glass wool. Kiddingly, he wanted, that by looking at people, you should be able to tell whether or not they had had the book in their hands. He acquiesced by my [Permild’s] final suggestion: sandpaper (flint) nr. 2: ‘Fine. Can you imagine the result when the book lies on a blank polished mahogany table, or when it’s inserted or taken out of the bookshelf. It plans shavings of the neighbours desert goat [?]’.In all the literature that I have located, Debord is the person who is refered to as the inventor of the sandpaper cover. However, as it turns out Debord had nothing to do with it… Permild continues, «Asger loved – as he often expressed it, to place small time controlled bombs». This was certainly a bomb. A bomb invented by the printer, whose job is normally of a technical nature. The sandpaper cover was a really good idea, but practically it never managed to practice what it preached. It did, however, make its readers conscious about handling it or where to place it. http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2007/11/19/destroy-everything-you-touch/
