The Social Life of the Book #3: Infant A

Established by the Parisian gallery castillo/corrales (FR) as a way to explore further the varied practices of the persons with whom they work, Paraguay Press’s titles are published in small editions and often defy the expectation of what an artist book, monograph, or essay should be. The organizers work closely with the authors, sometimes in conjunction with exhibitions, sometimes as wholly separate entities that stand alone as works that take print forms.

Direct from Paraguay:
“…a co-operatively run, independent art publishing company, managed by the group of artists, writers and curators behind castillo/corrales and section 7 books…to reclaim control of the means of creation, production and distribution of the books in which their work appear…all depart from an understanding of the space of the book, considered not as a medium of documentation nor a vector of promotion, but as an act of translation and the extension of artistic, critical and curatorial thinking into a graphic, mobile, democratic and durable form.”

It makes sense that Louis Luthi would use the framework of a fictionalized conversation between his protagonist and the figure of Ulises Carrion (Mexican writer, expatriated to The Netherlands) to examine the uses, meanings, and significance of the letter “a;” further down the rabbit-hole lies Warhol’s a: a novel, as counterpoint. As a designer he is known for investigations of language and their influences on visual representations, but it’s his deft zig-zagging, a kind of exuberance in figuring it all out that makes it work. Edition of 1000. Design by Will Holder.