- documenta
„An exhibition guide, catalogue, companion volume, reader for documenta 14? None of those. This Daybook stands as a hybrid, which admittedly documents the previous Documenta exhibition, but also asserts the timeless validity of art […]
You could say that idea, leitmotif and design are synonyms in the case of this book. The conventional order of book production is so condensed here that it is hardly possible to talk about the design alone”, is what Rolf Wöhrle writes on the website of Stiftung Buchkunst about the Daybook that originated in the context of documenta 14 and which was selected for this year’s “Best Book design from all over the World” awards for Switzerland and was designed by Julia Born and Laurenz Brunner.
The international book design competition, which has been taking place every year in Leipzig since 1963, is considered to be unique in the world. An international jury of designers evaluated over 600 submissions from 33 countries in the German National Library in Leipzig. The award ceremony will take place within the framework of the Leipzig Book Fair.
The documenta 14: Daybook emphasizes the 163 calendar days of the exhibition in Athens and Kassel in 2017—a first-time extension of the usual 100-day documenta project—and the personal and subjective nature of the spectator’s relationship to them. Each documenta 14 artist is granted a day in the Daybook, which includes a newly commissioned text as well as images selected by the artist specifically for the publication. The texts are authored by a wide variety of writers—critics, curators, poets, novelists, and historians—and are close readings of the artists’ practices in an array of literary forms: criticism, letters, poems, and parables. The Daybook is accompanied by two map booklets, for Athens and Kassel respectively, that are available in the exhibition and can be inserted into the Daybook’s dust jacket, thereby completing the book.
Quinn Latimer und Adam Szymczyk
documenta 14: Daybook
Separate English, German and Greek editions
Design: Julia Born & Laurenz Brunner, Zürich
Publisher: Prestel, München
ISBN: 978-3-7913-5654-9
http://www.stiftung-buchkunst.de/en/best-book-design-from-all-over-the-world.html
