Becoming a Body of Text by Alix Stria

Becoming a Body of Text is the title of Alix Stria’s graduation project made at the Sandberg Design Department. It was exhibited as part of By Design, the Sandberg Graduation Show 2022, at Kunstkapel Amsterdam. Stria describes the project as follows:

A book, among other things. They are results, or maybe stepping stones, of an experimental writing practice that revolves around the intuitive, the unknown and the non-permanent. Blurring the lines between writing and reading, thought and material, body and identity, they attempt to expand the meaning of text. Maybe, in this sense, writing can become a tender tool for knowledge production and internal reflection rather than a means for documentation.

All the words that are written here, have been used before. Two reverse soft covers holding poetry, short texts, a script and the essay The Rest Is Still Unwritten; On Becoming A Body Of Text, which uses skin as a metaphor for questioning the relationship between the meaning and expression, body and text. It reveals the author’s obsession with text and typographic details, while investigating the space between the words and their complicity to the creation of meaning in language.

The book was edited by Juri Velt, Mino Buonincontri, and Mariana Fernandez M. It was offset printed at Drukkerij Raddraaier in a single purple color. The cover was screen printed in blue at Sandberg Instituut. For the typography, Stria used Ambiant Sans (Laura Csocsán), Dark Academia (Céline Hurka), Louise (Ange Degheest; Luna Delabre & Camille Depalle), and Ovo (Nicole Fally).