Book Burnings: An Anthology

Project Concept:
The project Book Burnings: an Anthology consists of a performance and book with leaflet. The project looks into the idea of a dangerous text, and why various regimes or groups of people find such a text dangerous enough to ban it or burn it. The book holds a collection of fragments from books that have been burnt or banned; the performance consists of reading the fragments around a campfire.

Book Design:
The publication, printed entirely in black and white, consists of 404 pages containing fragments from 20 books that have at one time or another either been forbidden or burnt somewhere. Books such as: The Anarchist Cookbook, Alice in Wonderland, Mein Kampf, American Psycho, and Harry Potter. The book pages have Japanese folding: each fragment is printed in coded form on the outside of the folded pages. For this purpose I created a typeface, built up out of squares. Starting with a very light grey ‘A’ the letters gradually increase in intensity. Culminating in a black ‘Z’, they form 26 shades of ash grey. After tearing open the Japanese folds a legible version of the text appears.

The premiere of the book performance took place at Welcome to The Village, a festival for music and arts in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. The audience could request a book, using the leaflet that functioned as a menu, showing the various books as well as the reason for burning or banning the book.