“On the Uses of Absence” is the title of Soapbox, issue 6.0:

Can we speak of a turn to absence? Across the contemporary academic conjuncture, theory is reapproaching the absent in its varying figurative and fleshly forms – revalorising the presence of absence as a critical matter. Whether in queer theory, trans studies, Black studies, Eastern European studies, or literary studies, enduring scholarly investments in re-presenting and re-presencing the absented body have become supplemented by an affirmative interest in staying with absence as such. This scholarship locates absence at the heart of myriad resistances against exploitation, appropriation, undoing, and normativity. For its seventh issue, Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis has invited scholars and artists alike to submit work on the uses of absence in and outside of theory today. As an object of study, a critical figure, and rhetorical tool, absence is given a shape, meaning, form; it is put in writing, where it has a function, a flavour, and a politics. Absence, in other words, fails every time to be purely nothing. How, then, to think the contradiction and the provocation of a contemporary aesthetics of absence?

The graphic design was made by Alice Machado and Paolo Barbieri. They used Adriane Text by Marconi Lima, Harber by Benoît Bodhuin and Superness Modulo – a digitization by Alessio D’Ellena and Alberto Malossi of Nebiolo’s Modulo.

Wieszczba wyroczni (“Oracle's oracle”) is an expression of people’s interest in divination and mystical beliefs in the 18th century. It was published in Warsaw in 1798. Thhe typography uses Adriane Swash, which offers a beautiful range of flourish letters with sets of alternate glyphs. Using swash fonts in modern designs is a very fine way to add historical and decorative character to any design. The body text uses Adriane Text.

Wieszczba wyroczni is part of the New Dimension of Old Typography series which consists of 10 redesigns of Polish books from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The designs were produced as a part of a doctoral dissertation at the Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku (Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland).

Read more about the project on Fonts In Use, or find out more about the project and the author on my portfolio website and Facebook.

Original edition of Wieszczba wyroczni czyli tablice kabalistyczne [...] from Ksawery Starzeński, printed by Michał Gröll in Warsaw in 1784.

Second Edition Project is an idea to redesign and republish selected books from the 16th to 19th century that have not been re-edited since their first edition. Read more about the project and its author.

The Medical Aspects of Death, and the Medical Aspects of the Human Mind by James Bower Harrison was first published by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London in 1852.