Texto por PriscilaVanneuville

How does one keep record a time elapsed? How do we document our lives as individuals? The objects we possess or have possessed are filled with anecdotes and meaning. We can create a mental map of experiences through them. Alex Dorfsman chose some of his objects to extend the meaning of his memories, a small fraction of collected objects: his children’s books and some of his friends. This selection does not lack meaning in itself, be it conscious or unconsciously; Alex, lover of books, decided to review his childhood through a category of objects he values.

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The interesting part appears when this identity exploration, implicit at the moment where us humans resort to the tools that our experience has stirred, transcends through a detailed discursive exercise; another one. The carefully selected images in each book are organized by syntactic visual relationships on different levels. The first degree is made of collages, where the elements are related through the compositions on a double page. Then, this small cores of sense are, at the same tie, related linearly by the consecutive pages of a publication, that – lastly – are grouped into species of chapters by range of elements. Thus Alex “writes” a continuous visual sentence that can be read in different order.

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The collection of visual references that come up as a profound inspection of another collection (of books), is homogenized and readjusted through photocopying, which can be a metaphor for the memory, the same way that the speech reflects the way memories are structured.

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The work turns into a study of the elements of experience that a methodology uses, all of this used to create a visual dissertation of linear and transversal messages. The cover opens the reading with a symbol that seems to encompass the entire concept developed in the publication: a linear representation of a multi-sided polygon, where the intersecting lines can be seen as meaningful intersections; and the three dimensionality, as the same links explored in various directions.


Plot Your Progress  is a book where all the details have a premeditated value: from the selection of the tipe of references to the relationships that are created through the pages, to the selection of the material and finishing touches.

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