English / 한국어
The 24th issue of I Am Still Alive, published in the catalog of Typojanchi 2013, takes the form of a fictional interview with two twin sisters who write a novel about two twin sisters who are building a twin city. The story is set in twin typefaces, Didot/Bodoni and Helvetica/Arial, and presented with (twin) pictures of two twin sisters and their twin photographers. Along the way, it contemplates on the notions of identity, doubling, difference and repetition, and how all these are conveyed by and embedded in typography.
As the term Åbäke suggests, however, the Swedish word for a large and cumbersome object, Francesco suspects that the group supports the burden of design on commission only to learn rules and conventions that it is happy to deconstruct at other times. Åbäke, indeed, is also responsible for meta-design projects, independent, transdisciplinary, strictly collective and often participatory: the dialogical digital platform for architecture Sexymachinery (2000–2008), the relational culinary events of Trattoria (2003), the publishing project Dent-De-Leone (2009), the propaganda for the imaginary Victoria & Alferd Museum (2010), and the spy agency Åffice Suzuki (2010).
For Åbäke constantly attracts the attention of the art world: most of its projects do not certainly meet criteria of functionality, but raise questions about how design conveys the forms of transmission of culture. Publications, curatorship, talks and workshops, indeed, are integral parts of their activities. So when Spampinato invites the group to be part of his book on art collectives, Åbäke agrees to contribute if Francesco writes in exchange this biography, inserting himself, “so it isn’t authorless,” in third person, putting thereby in crisis the role of the critic and the conditions under which he normally associates intellectual values to cultural phenomena.
[Francesco Spampinato]
Courtesy: the artist