Recoding Alphabets

Language and its written notation unfold amid ordering cosmos and living chaos. What new arrangements of existing codes are possible? How can character systems such as algorithms in music, body constructs or technological history be recoded and creolized? Spector publisher Jan Wenzel and artist Olaf Nicolai present the design DNA of the book series that they created. In a conversation with Mathias Zeiske, curator, publisher and author Sarah Shin introduces the sixth volume Carrier Bag Fiction and talks with him about bookmaking. Artist Jasmijn Visser devotes a lecture performance to the connections between climate crisis and war using the combinatory poetics of Russian poet and futurist Velimir Khlebnikov. And musician Alexandra Cárdenas makes algorithms dance in a live coding set.

The series, recently awarded the 2021 Most Beautiful German Books prize by the Stiftung Buchkunst, is published in collaboration with Spector Books Leipzig and 26 volumes will be published by the end of 2022.

7.30 pm
Introduction
With Bernd Scherer, Mathias Zeiske

7.50–8.15 pm
The DNA and Design of the Book Series
With Olaf Nicolai, Jan Wenzel

8.15–8.40 pm
Carrier Bag Fiction
With Sarah Shin, Mathias Zeiske

8.40–9 pm
A Global Climate Event
Lecture Performance by Jasmijn Visser

9–9.30 pm
Live-Coding Set
Alexandra Cárdenas