Statische Revuen

An artist's book edition with hand drawings by Alexander Fahima, featuring a daily conception-log created as part of his production of the “Lehrstück” (The Learning Play) by Paul Hindemith and Bertolt Brecht, performed in 2014 with the Berlin Philharmonic. An analogous love letter to the hypertext, a maelstrom of ideas, and a facsimile - now at a standstill for the time being - ultimately representing a quarry of cultural capital. The aim being to arouse playful curiosity and the desire to add, complete and/or overwrite.

Books are like plants. They grow differently in different environments, they change in use, they participate in our life. And - like an opera, the artform I am working with - they invite their visitors to create an own time and space around themselves, only through the specific choice and order of both the content and the form.

The score of an opera can be regarded as a constantly changing hypertext. When I create a production, I add further links and levels, bring my ideas into a similar spatial order that flows alongside the temporal order of the music and the libretto. This happens long before the first scenic rehearsals. I usually plan a whole year for preparation and start a daily work diary. The first choice I have to make is the size of the pages and the pen I want to commit to. Sometimes I casually find a notebook, and its layout, proportions, weight, and haptics already have some influence on my artistic approach to this new piece.

I start with juggling a wide range of ideas and topics, but soon I let myself be seduced more by one than the other. I go on sorting, separating, refining, interweaving. Always overwriting, never deleting. The spacial order in which these ideas, thumbnails and sketches are put on paper reflects the way in which their future embodiments will be placed on stage. Every curlicue is deliberately made, as is the size of the letters, the style of the drawings, the use of post-its and marker pens.

This diary can be read as a stage plan, a graphic score and a program note for an imaginary opera. And like any good stage performance, it can challenge the viewer through both emotional and rational stimulation.

ISBN 978-3-86485-168-1
Textem Verlag 2016
Edition of 270 copies

170 x 220 mm
facsimile, 4-color print with special color

120 pages, thread stitching, ribbon bookmark, hardbound, matte black vinyl cover

Available in the U.S. at Hauser&Wirth Los Angeles (limited red vinyl edition) and Printed Matter, Inc. New York

special edition
(30 copies)

signed and numbered,
with original micro drawings, various stickers and 18 dog-ears