For quite some time now, ethnographic museums in Europe have been compelled to legitimate themselves. Their exhibition-making has become a topic of discussion, as has the contentious history of their collections, which have come about through colonial appropriation.

Clearly, this cannot continue. That the situation can be different is something that Clémentine Deliss explores in her current publication. She offers an intriguing mix of autobiographically-informed novel and conceptual thesis on contemporary art and anthropology. Reflections on her own work while she was Director of Frankfurt’s Weltkulturen Museum (Museum of World Cultures) are interwoven with the explorations of influential filmmakers, artists and writers. She introduces the Metabolic Museum as an interventionist laboratory for remediating ethnographic collections for future generations. 

“I shall corroborate the gap between objects and texts, interrogate the material order that design has imposed upon language, and compose a record which, though partial and far from infinite, will be profoundly significant for two fields that may seem merely adjacent—design and literature—yet which, upon closer inquiry, reveal themselves as mutually dependent, should one have the resolve to interrogate the very grounds of their meaning.”
— Edmund Stone, Approximations to the Object, 1827

This book provokes its reader. Aimed at bold designers, typographers, writers, and curious minds who thrive on provocation, Commentary on Approximations to the Object leads to a fundamental question: how does the flux between design and literature produce a distinct engagement with meaning?

Bernstein’s Commentary on the oeuvre of Approximations to the Object, a nineteenth-century treatise attributed to Edmund Stone, explores the possibility that certain material objects may have prefigured particular literary modes of understanding. As long as this thesis persists, the commentary keeps the reader on edge, engaging in its own material logic, only to diverge from it—reaching a peak of utmost emancipation, ultimately to: comment on it.

Harnessing historical gaps, predication, speculation, and the shifting boundaries between objects and texts, Bernstein’s textual and design inferences are far from incidental deviations. They propel the commentary into something beyond a mere study of influence, raising intriguing questions: What other objects might have influenced certain literary forms? How can the interplay between design and literature uncover the structures that shape interpretation and meaning? Why has Stone’s treatise remained overlooked for so many centuries?

It is best read in nearly one sitting.

Publication is a facsimile edition of the 1970 artist book by David Lamelas. It features contributions from thirteen international artists and critics who the artist chose due to their relationship to language-based practices. Produced from conversations with these fellow artists and writers, Publication collects their responses to three statements provided by Lamelas:

1. Use of oral and written language as an Art Form.
2. Language can be considered as an Art Form.
3. Language cannot be considered as an Art Form.