This post is part of he subjective library project “Unopened Book”
An assignment initiated by Corinne Gisel and Nina Paim [graphic design]
in cooperation with Henk Groenendijk and Matthias Kreutzer [supervision]
Intro part 1 /The Assignment
Assignment as presented
Select a book from the library collection based solely on its spine.
You will be given only a short amount of time to make a choice, you probably have to make a very spontaneous and subconscious decision. We will take your book away to make sure that it remains unopened. It will be kept together with the other unopened books in a vitrine in Rietveld Academy Building for the time of the assignment. Now rationalize your decision:
Why did you choose for this spine and not for another? What do you think this book is about?
Write a Blurb on this Unopened Book and visualize that imagined content in a vitrine![x]
read all “Blurbs” and see all “Vitrines” imagined as part of this assignment, by selecting Unopened Books from the “Projects” Menu
Intro part 2 /The Lecture
Fernand Baudin Students Publications March 2012 was the first edition of a yearly event dedicated to students publications. It was an event dedicated to editorial productions by students in Belgium and connected to the international scene. The first year was an experimental, reflective and prospective one – engaging students, teachers and ‘professionals in public discussions on the practice of making and thinking books today. It was also a moment to think about publications (book fairs, book awards, book exhibitions, etc) questioning their relevance to the realities of students’ practice today.
As part of discussions and presentations, organized during this event, Nina Paim and Corinne Gisel gave a lecture presenting their 2012 graduation project Library Talk of which “Unopened Books” was a part initiated in cooperation with the Basic year’s Design/DesignResearch program.
This lecture is integral published in the book “Fernand Baudin Students Publications/This Is Not A Most Beautiful Books Award” and can be lend in the Rietveld Library [lib no: ]. Mixing different times and spaces this publication proposes another way to document that event. It publishes elements retracing its making, explaining its structure. It makes public what happened before and during the event –the pieces and the facts– but also what happened after and is still happening while those lines are written.
Lecture about "Unopened Books" by Nina Paim and Corinne Gisel as part of their "Library Talk" graduation project
“click on image above to download lecture [15 pages]
thanks to Nina Paim for permission to publish the lecture
thanks to Lorain Furter for donating a copy of the book to the library