An international jury examined close to 600 books from 31 countries that had already won prizes in national competitions. Switzerland, which featured among the 11 winning countries, received the highest distinction this year, the “Goldene Letter”, for the book Almanach Ecart. Une archive collective, 1969-2019, jointly published by HEAD – Genève and art&fiction publications. The book’s graphic design is the work of Dan Solbach. Almanach Ecart has also been selected for the Leipzig Book Fair, a major global event in the publishing industry that will take place from 12 to 15 March 2020.
The result of two years of research carried out at HEAD for a research project financed by the HES-SO strategic fund, the book features close to 400 archival documents as well as a dozen essays that showcase the wealth of the Ecart archives. Currently deposited at HEAD, the archives have been the subject of an inventory carried out in partnership with MAMCO since September 2017.
Ecart was an artists’ collective, a festival, a gallery, a library, a publishing house, a printing workshop and a tea room. An almanac is an annual periodical, a calendar, a horoscope, a collection of pictograms, a companion, a meteorological indicator and an ephemeris. Almanach Ecart is a book that interweaves the stories of an informal and extended network of experimental artists.
Created by a team of people following Ecart’s principles, Almanach Ecart gathers together documents handpicked from the collective’s archives. The publication thus features a subjective, anachronic and intertextual foray into a fictional year of the activities of the Geneva-based, heterogeneous and protean group of artists from the 70s who were affiliated with the situationist and Fluxus movements. Essays, commentaries and questionnaires cast fresh light on this Swiss collective, active within an international network driven by the immateriality of dialogue and knowledge-sharing.
Almanach Ecart will be introduced at the 2020 Best Book Design from all over the World during the Leipzig Book Fair from 12 to 15 March 2020 on the stand of the Buchkunst Foundation, Hall 3, D 502.
Almanach Ecart was also singled out during the Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition, which aims to reward particularly successful achievements in the production and art of books. It was chosen among the 19 most beautiful Swiss books of 2019 selected by the Federal Office of Culture on the recommendation of a jury consisting of five members headed by graphic designer Gilles Gavillet. The most beautiful Swiss books will be exhibited at Helmhaus in Zurich from 3 to 6 September.The exhibition will then tour nationally and internationally.