Quasi-Book. On Poetry, Bureaucracy and Alibism

Quasi-Book is an artist’s book by Kolxoz Collective, the last part of the residency project of the same title curated by Mahler & LeWitt Studios and Viaindustriae in 2021. The residency took place in the spaces of Sol LeWitt’s studio in Spoleto and was intended as a platform for the dissemination and contextualisation of artistic publishing practices. After iterating as an open studio, a temporary bookshop, a platform for sharing and discussing book-making practices, and a space for convivial moments, the Quasi-Book project has now become an ‘actual’ quasi-book. Its chapters are quasi-chapters, collecting materials according to the predominant characteristics and techniques employed by Kolxoz Collective. For example, their promotion of a communal ‘inter-language’ as a way to facilitate new ways of communication and collective identification (Glossary); the use of the postal service to deliver materials, artworks and drawings to collaborators (Post Bridge); the thermal printing technique used by Kolxoz as a transportable publishing desk (Other Books); and drawing-statements which merge short texts and visual information (Diagrams). These materials are accompanied by an extract from a conversation – posited as a ‘live dictionary’ – between Kolxoz Collective, Viaindustriae, and the Mahler & LeWitt Studios.