Website-documentation of the in situ piece “Comment j’ai appris à ne plus m’en faire et à aimer la révolution” by Marc Buchy, in Besançon, France.

+ Feminism is a fragile archive, fragmentary, scattered here and there, confined in boxes, attics, and memories. The Feminist Amateur Library aims to bring these shatters and splatters into the physical world, allowing us to touch them and to be touched by them*. Departing from a digital collection of North-American feminist periodicals (dating from 1968-1992), the library decided to take this collection into its own hands, or rather, to put it in the hands of communities, aiming to make these publications more accessible.
Brought to life through public sessions, the library invites its visitors to become amateur feminist librarians — contributing by reading, completing metadata, marking content, discussing, and sharing their findings with each other. For each session, a topical selection (arts, labour, ecology, etc.) of publications is re-printed from the archive. Alternating moments of reading and discussion, the sessions are a space for encounters, re-arrangement, and negotiation, where informal research and collective knowledge production enable the making of dynamic, community-centred herstories.

To accomplish the complex task of administrating and sustaining such a library, a series of friendly tools have been developed. Using solely open-source technologies, they adapt to the evolving needs of the library and allow it to continue living in other places, times, and forms.

*Some words are borrowed to the beautiful introduction of “Living a Feminist Life”, Sarah Ahmed, 2017

+ Bachelor thesis and documentation. This research focused on the Women in Print Movement in the Netherlands during the second feminist wave. Its aim was to shed light on histories unjustly excluded from the book history, highlighting their relevance and resonances in contemporary design and publishing practices. Through the analysis of the movement's archives, but also through interviews with its participants, emerge a rich and varied reservoir of ideas and approaches for more sustainable, inclusive and emancipatory publishing practices, but also stories of love, friendship and solidarity.
In resonance with the feminist publishing practices observed, giving a central place to the circulation of knowledge, to the commoning of resources, the thesis website aims to make the research work accessible and to document it. A printable web-to-print version of the dissertation (using paged.js) is available for download. The archive materials mentioned can be consulted in the ‘publications’ tab, while a map of the initiatives studied is available in the ‘map’ tab.

Two books presenting the students’ processes and proposals for the trophies awarded to the winners of the Joke Smit Prijs (Women’s Emancipation Prize), and the Jos Brink Prijs (LGBTQIA+ Emancipation Prize), granted by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW).

Design and production for a research project by Lissa Choukrane and Loraine Furter on the bindings of Belgian feminist periodicals: *Agrafes & bouts de ficelles* presents a research on the soft, messy bindings of Belgian feminist publications contained in local archives.

A series of books published by the (fictional) publishing house Serendipitous Editorial Encounters, specialising in the various objects that people forget, or deliberately leave in books.

+ In the special collections of Leiden Library is a very unusual book: De Lacrymis Libre Tres, written by Petri Petitus in 1661. A 212-page study of tears that combines literary, philosophical, medical and poetic sources. The text is divided into three parts and forty sub-parts, each attempting to answer a question, such as why do we cry? Or, can tears flow without suffering? Taking this text as a starting point, De Lacrymarum Regia proposes a reflection on the reactivation of individual and collective archived knowledges through an embodied and performative practice of the archive.
The visitor is invited to sit around a table. A guide is present to assist them in their wanderings. At the centre, a spatial representation of the book, a palace where each piece materializes one of the sub-sections and asks the associated question. The visitor can go to the room of their choice and decide to either answer the question, or to listen to the responses given by other visitors. The translations from Latin are deliberately approximate, sometimes even incorrect, reflecting the inevitable distortion of the original contexts and meanings of the book. Interpretation is left to the visitor, revealing the subjective and processual nature of the archive, and the new meanings created when confronted with personal narratives and experiences.

+ An open-ended and open-source identity for KABK's (Royal Academy of Arts The Hague) independent student newspaper. Flexible, collective and collaborative rather than authoritarian and restrictive, this protean identity intends to leave space for interpretation and evolve through time, along with the groups of students constituting the Journal team.
The Mosquito newspaper identity is meant to be taken over, as the design team is renewed for every issue. The challenge here was therefore to create a system that allows personal interpretation and complexity while preserving a sense of identity. A system that could be used by anyone, designer or non-designer, Adobe Indesign or not. That is how emerged the idea of an open-source, instruction-based toolbox, containing a stabilised font, lettering generator (developed on DrawBot ), and a fixed set of shapes.

+ *Who is afraid of the Witch?* is an editorial project articulating academic writing, articles and iconographic materials, all dealing with the figure of the witch in feminist movements and in literature.
Catalysed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville's essay *A reexamination of some aspects of the design arts from the perspective of a woman designer, Who is afraid of the witch?* is an attempt to present a text intended for academics in an apprehensible way, while avoiding any kind of over-simplification or essentialization. To make the book a space for perspectives, where the readers can create their own paths. To acknowledge the authority designers have and to leave room for complexity and ambiguity.
Rather than aiming for an impossible neutrality or objectivity, the design and the structure strive to propose several entries for this text without establishing a hierarchy between the different types of content. The academic text, written by Justyna Sempruch, constitute the skeleton of the book. The articles — inserted between chapters — offer perspectives, enlightenments or complementary informations. The images — linking the main text and the articles — exceed their illustrative role, presenting small visual essays, creating ambiguous meaning and putting in tension the written arguments.

A study of vernacular photography, through a series of interviews with the ones who make it and/or use it as an artistic medium. All of the interviews were prepared, conducted and transcribed exclusively for this publication.

+ Hieronimus is an in progress, year-long, research-driven process of reviving Renaissance types, conducted in collaboration with Barbara Strzeżek and Samuel Salminen.
A six-handed job, as in the original (De l’institution, usage et doctrine du sainct sacrament, Ph. de Mornay, La Rochelle, Hireonimus Haultin, 1598) where Guyot's Double-Pica italic (Ascendonica, Gros-parangon, 1557) meets the roman of an anonymous La Rochelle punch-cutter, and roman capitals by Pierre Haultin (La Rochelle Double-Pica Roman, 1598).

15 colours, 28 combinations, and a good dozen of hours spent with the Risograph. Imagined in collaboration with Barbara Strzezek, Two Colours is a technical and chromatic guide exploring colour associations and (a part of) the range of visual potentials specific to this technology.

+ Hiterto (until now or until a particular time)
This collective publication — created in the midst of the first lockdown — explores the multiplicity of reactions provoked by a threat invisible to the human eye, with their contradictions, their complexity and the enhanced polarisation of an already divided society.
Trapped in its own topicality, Hitherto cannot take a step back but looks both behind and forward. Emotional rather than rational, fragmentary rather than exhaustive, this publication doesn't pretend to write History but instead presents an immediate comment from the middle of an ongoing crisis. In an ever-changing, ever-evolving situation, Hitherto tries to lay down the first tiles of a bigger picture, aware of the impossibility of its contextualisation. Appropriating visuals that surfaced on the internet during the crisis, Hitherto explores how the pandemic affected every layer of social life, from economy to sexuality, from family to politics. Hitherto navigates through time — chronologically unfolding the milestone events of the crisis. We follow this thread through space — perpetually going back and forth from a macro to a micro scale, from public to private life.

+ A journey in the dry and ominous landscape of a creative block. What happens when ideas dissapear, when they become elusive, volatile, out of reach? A tale about feeling lost, being stuck and other internal struggles related to creation.
“The world of ideas is a strange place to be in.
It is a land where mountains grow within seconds and where the ground threatens to crumble beneath your feet at any time.
Its geology have vexed the greatest scientist of the kingdom.
Each stratum is the relic of a thought.
Bending every laws the universe holds.
Lately I found myself stuck in a desert where colours don’t exists.
Few rocks at my feet and tideless seas of oil.
Jet-black skies
Pristine sand
Starless nights
Windless days
Even shadows seem to have run away, far beyond the horizon.
In my desolated empire, I am the king of nothingness.
Exhausted by the weight of the clouds, I decided to stay there.
Slowly merging back into the mineral world.
Resolute to make uncertainty my best friend.
Resolute to find the colourful richness in black and white.”

+ A literary and visual dissection of my Sublime. 11 envelops were sent to 11 persons, asking them about their Sublime.
“At the crossing between time and space
tip-toe on the edge of the world
you can contemplate the universe falling

the grass the flowers the sky
spilling everywhere
and your heart raising so high
that it could escape your body

there is no night and there is no day
there is nowhere to be except right there

it tastes like metal and honey
it feels like eternity
a promise of storms and edens

so silent that you could hear the noise
of your own existence
and the clouds colliding

suddently a strike of clarity
an evidence echoing
in every particule of your being

it is simple
it is so simple
it feels like you uncovered
the best kept secret the universe holds
you feel thankful
you feel sorry
you feel sacred
an overwhelming empathy
for each living cell that exists
and have existed
including yours
finally weightless
defying gravity and reason

you think
it must feel like that to be god

you could run and never stop
there is no windows
no doors
no fences
fresh soil under your feet and in your hair
quiet flames in your open palms
and this sensless hope bouncing
between your ribs

greatness beyond any possibility of measurement.”

A nightmarish immersion in the dreams of a brain in lockdown.

Hulk is a bulky font programmed in Python (Drawbot), using the creative potential of non-standardised tools to invent new shapes.

If colours are qualia (individual instances of subjective, conscious experience) — and thus escape language by nature — can images fill the gap between speech and perception? A perceptive exploration of the colour red.

First piece of a collection dedicated to great choreographers of the late twentieth century, this publication focuses on Lucinda Childs' life-long work and collaborations.