The newspaper-book Alcools — 2005-2006 edition is my second and most favorite experience in the genre of the artist's book. The reason for its creation was an exhibition dedicated to the centenary of the release of Guillaume Apollinaire's Alcoholics. Andrey Suzdalev invited me to participate, for which I thank him very much.
«Алкоголи» is a book of poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, with parallel text in Russian and French. The book fit into nine editions of the newspaper. Each issue had at least one spread (4 pages, a print with a turnover, like a real newspaper). The biggest issues are eight strips each.
In the bottom line of the newspaper cap is proudly typed: "Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire. Translated by Mikhail Kudinov. Yuri Gordon did the rest." Actually, the Epson 1290 printer did a lot of the rest, but I described his exploits in detail in LiveJournal.
The page format is 31.11 × 44 cm. The newspaper book was printed on an Epson 1290 home inkjet printer, A3+ format, with a print resolution of 1440 dpi. Agate paper, light gray vergeer. The first pack was donated by the artist Valery Orlov about ten years before the project. When the Agate ran out, I began to buy verges of different densities and colors in car dealerships. Therefore, part of the circulation is blue, part is light green, part is pale yellow... The pictures on the site do not reflect this.
For "Alcoholics", Kostro was drawn in a Painter and translated into font in FontLab — three fonts: antique, italics and grotesque. The font has a legend: it was supposedly made by Apollinaire's friend, a young typesetter from the Montparnasse printing house, who decided that the best poems in the world should be typed in the best letters in the world. The name Kostro is the youthful nickname of Wilhelm Apollinarius Kostrovitsky, the future Apollinaire. It turned out a little crooked (I just drew by hand, and la prima), but mentally. Over time, Bonfire became the favorite font of artist friends.
The format of the book-newspaper is dictated by two considerations. I wanted to make a rather large, larger than an ordinary book, form for the exhibition. The newspaper could not have been better suited for this. In addition, the A3 plus printer, purchased specifically for this project, allowed A2 sheets to be printed folded. At the same time, I immediately decided to release the entire book, not limited to a couple of exhibition issues. So it was going to be something like a "novel newspaper", a print with a sequel.
Initially, I planned to release only a few author's copies of the book. But at the exhibition, seven copies of the first issue were suddenly and instantly stolen by the public. And then I decided to announce a subscription. It's a serious decision, and considering that the subscription was free, it's probably a little crazy. But back then, at the beginning of the project, I still didn't know what I was getting into.
Even before the announcement on LiveJournal, I had several subscribers — the organizers of the exhibition and close friends, about ten people. I was counting on a circulation of 20-25 copies. However, the project aroused such interest that it was necessary to stop the subscription at point 50 by force of will — otherwise it would not be possible to cope with it. In the end, the circulation was 54 copies, including two for museums.
Thanks to LJ, subscribers were scattered throughout Eurasia — from Omsk in the east to Baden-Baden in the west. That is, the Russian Post was included in the case, and the whole idea turned into mail art. The envelopes became part of the project: for each issue, its own envelope with an illustration was printed. Only a set of newspapers received by mail was considered "correct". In order for the newspaper to fit in the C4 envelope, it had to be folded in half. This influenced the composition of the strips and made Alcools a very real newspaper.
It is not easy to publish a book on an ordinary string player, even in a small edition. But it didn't seem enough to me. Apollinaire is for me a part of my youth, like a close friend, not just a poet. And so it turned out that an imaginary dialogue between the publisher and the author began inside the book of poetry. And Guillaume himself turned into the main character of the book. This semantic layer is one of many in Alcools newspaper.
Three more designers — illustrations, design and layout. I didn't limit myself to any one style. Among the illustrations there are pencil ones, vector ones from the Illustrator, and color ones from the Painter. Some copies of the newspaper were hand-colored.
The text can go vertically, at an angle, upside down, superimposed on the picture — in general, complete design arbitrariness.
But even that didn't seem enough to me. Many copies of the newspaper book were supplemented with marginalia — by hand, in pencil — to each of the subscribers. He wrote different things, depending on what he wanted to draw the attention of this particular person to. By the way, I tried to find prints for everyone on papers of different colors. Thus, no two subscription packages are the same.
The publication was accompanied by a series of posts in LiveJournal under the general heading "Alcohol chronicles". There I informed about the release of a fresh newspaper, talked about the hard struggle with a printer that spoiled expensive paper and desperately chewed envelopes, described interaction with mail (very difficult) and even wrote an introduction and an apology for the project (about in the middle of the process).
After the publication of the ninth and last issue of Alcools, the book was shown at the British School of Design. The organizer of the exhibition is Vyacheslav Yaroshenko with the assistance of Ilya Ruderman. There was a problem with the display: a shortage of copies. The entire edition was sent to subscribers, it was impossible to show the sheets on both sides. I had to dig into the marriage. At the same time, I found out that the printer and the printer had ruined 120 sheets — in total, two copies of one issue. It was a good thing that I didn't have to report to anyone for overspending paper.
I have exhibited Alcools several more times using the kit of my good friend Igor Voronin.
