Peter Malutzki
Flörsheim, Germany
peter-malutzki.de
Giorgio Manganelli, Irrläufe: Hundert – Centuria: One Hundred
2019
accordion book
23.8 x 16.7 x 1 cm
Artist Statement
Manganelli’s ouroboric mini-novel (No. 100 in a series of a hundred) was used in both a German and an English translation. The two versions run across the accordion book as unbroken lines. The binding structure of the book (printed on both sides) allows to connect the text ends to the text beginnings, thereby associating it with a sence of endless (ouroboric) reading.
The mini-novel texts were set on computer in 30 point Polymorph South (slightly modified) and afterwards letterpressed, using polymer plates. On their meandering path through the book they “circumnavigate” glued-in text fragments from (rather well known) novels by:
Paul Auster, Simone de Beauvoir, Michail Bulgakov, Italo Calvino,
Willa Cather, Julio Cortázar, Fjodor Dostojewskij, Umberto Eco,
Max Frisch, Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Patricia Highsmith, Homer, Bohumil Hrabal, Siri Hustvedt, Franz Kafka, Selma Lagerlöf, Harper Lee, Stanislaw Lem, Giorgio Manganelli, Gustav Meyrink, Irmtraud Morgner, Haruki Murakami, Cees Nooteboom, Jean Paul, Georges Perec, Philip Roth, Arno Schmidt, Mary Shelley, Donna Tartt, Tatjana Tolstaja, and Virginia Woolf. (all in their original language) Since the novel fragments were taken from real books, each copy of the edition contains its own small extracts from the respective novels, and is in terms of the fragments one-of-a-kind.
Accordion in collaged clamshell box, 34 pages, Zerkall mould-made paper, 16.7 x 23.8 cm, 25 numbered and signed copies. 2019.