Liner Notes

Conversations about Making Books. i.e. Leipzig

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FOOTNOTES TO ONE’S OWN PRODUCTION — In Liner Notes we introduce a number of books produced in recent years by book designers who had studied at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. However we weren’t attempting to identify commonalities between these designers or the foundations of a ’school‘, but rather the very different approaches and attitudes which are evident in their work. However, the definition ‚in their work‘ is rather misleading, because two of the editors, Markus Dreßen and Lina Grumm, had themselves studied book art and graphic design at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig while the other two, Anne König and Jan Wenzel, were involved in several of the publications as authors. Thus Liner Notes is also about our own books and the communicative networks in and around the Academy of Visual Arts in which we participate ourselves.

ALIENATING EFFECTS — How to talk about your own work? What would be an appropriate mode to rigorously avoid the obtrusive, marketing-like appearance all too prevalent in many self-presentations? Which aesthetic attitude would allow you to observe yourself from a playful distance? In Bertolt Brecht’s ‚Lehrstücken‘ [Learning Plays], especially in the Messingkauf Dialogues [Buying Brass] which spell out his theory of drama, we discovered performative models which could make our own positions and those of others visible. We liked Brecht’s
experimental setting which allegorised everyday speech and behaviour. We liked this gestural form of contradiction and affirmation, of exposure and concealment, of simplification and completion, because it allows the portrayal of a highly complex self-concept.

This book is published as an english text supplement to ‚Liner Notes. Gespräche über das Büchermachen, Leipzig z.B.‘, Spector Books 2009.