Publication and Site-Publishing Practice: Go to the River
WIP Project of Royal College of Art MA Visual Communication
2023 Tokyo TDC 提名奖 Nominee Works
Go to the River is an independent publishing project based on an old river in London: the New River.
‘The New River is neither new nor a river.’ A joking remark, but coincidentally points to the shifting definition and temporal impact of the New River. The stories of pedestrians along the New River (like poet George Dyer, who walked into the New River by accident but was rescued) are what this publication wants to visually retell. By creating a long-distance/time dialogue between people (from different times and spaces) and Dyer with editorial typography, what this book would like to record is a fatalistic phenomenon: the path one was walking on was once a river that nearly drowned a man, destinies have intersected because of this river.
The meandering forms of the tree branches and the river will be abstracted and used to express a visual impression of the New River. Documents and poems relating to Dyer are excerpted in the book, in dialogue with poets from other countries and eras, as well as the designer’s monologues walking the New River Walk. Some of the text in the book is inverted, and the reader may need the assistance of a mirror to complete the reading. Whether the mirror represents a real mirror or a clear river, there is another world in the mirror that records the present and can also refer to the past.
For the choice of material, light white kraft paper was used, which is smooth on one side and relatively rough on the other, to create a subtle sense of dialogue inherent in the material. This kind of paper has high tear strength, bursting power, and dynamic strength and is somewhat water-resistant, not breaking up in the water and causing environmental pollution. It is semi-transparent, and the drawings on the next page can peer through the text on this page in a blurred shape, creating a stronger connection between each page.
Books are placed in the natural landscape of the New River Path to create an installation, which can also have a dialogue with each pedestrian of nowadays New River Path. They will be read, interacted with, and slowly become worn and decayed after a winter. The publication itself is only part of the project. Over a long period, the environment and the traces left on it by those who read it will complete the project. This formal concept of the publication consisting of itself and the space in which it is located is also worthy of long-term consideration.
Medium:
Light white kraft paper 85gsm
Size:
148 × 210 mm, 112 pages
