WOR(L)DS FOR THE FUTURE

A Republishing Toolkit for an Imaginary Atlas

SPECIAL ISSUE 13 - XPUB2020

Online publication: https://issue.xpub.nl/13

Words have the power to shape reality. Wor(l)ds for the Future is a set of map making tools to re-imagine and collect wor(l)ds, and to re-publish an everchanging atlas. We invite you to delve into the materials and traverse the texts in any way you desire: by cutting and pasting the printed matter, or by unravelling the texts online. The choice is yours. You can reconstruct images and reinterpret words to create Wor(l)ds for the Future.

This project is a republication of Words for the Future (2018), a multivoiced series of ten booklets. In the 2020 version, XPUB (Experimental Publishing) students from the Piet Zwart institute reinterpret the original material through methods such as annotating and prototyping in Python (a coding language we used to analyse text as texture). The ten booklets were cross-examined and mapped in order to find interconnections and links.

We approached this project through the perspective of cartography. Alfred Korzybski wrote: “The map is not the territory”. In other words, the description of the thing is not the thing itself. The model is not reality. Cartography always entails a selection and transformation of properties of a complex reality that affect the way maps – partial views of reality – are deciphered and received. With this notion in mind, we created a mapping to highlight our individual explorations and interpretations using a language of symbols created to represent our understanding of the original material of Words for the Future.

A map could relate to something that no longer exists. It could also relate to something that does not yet exist. Maps could be seen as fictions therefore, as spaces for the imaginary. Join us to un-map and re-map an infinite amount of potential constellations of tomorrow, and to navigate speculative wor(l)ds which holds the capacity to bleed into the very fabric of our shared grounds.

Conceptualised, designed, created, edited, produced, published and distributed by the XPUB 1 class of 2020:

• Kendal Beynon
• Martin Foucaut
• Camilo García A.
• Clara Gradel
• Nami Kim
• Euna Lee
• Jacopo Lega
• Federico Poni
• Louisa Teichmann
• Floor van Meeuwen

Tutors:

• Manetta Berends
• Aymeric Mansoux
• Michael Murtaugh
• Lídia Pereira
• Steve Rushton
• Nienke Scholts

Print

Print run: 100

• The risograph pages were printed on a Riso MZ1070 in van Beek paper of 120gr at Wdka Print Station
• The A0 poster was printed by repro-plotservice

Type set:

• Roboto
• Robotomono
• EBGaramond

Special Type set:

• Custom Roboto (All caps Roboto with 10 custom characters made by XPUB1 students)
• WFTF Regular (10 symbols made by XPUB1 students)

Thanks

Special thanks to Leslie Robbins, Wilco Lamberts and Printroom Rotterdam. Made possible by Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam, NL Winter, 2020