Also available by emailing me at d.plessner@lcc.arts.ac.uk or at The Book Arts Bookshop, The Whitecross Gallery
Published by the University of the Arts London.
Size: 35cm X 25cm
ISBN: 0-9548074-4-8
Edition of 300
£15.00
A Rootless Cosmopolitan’s Guide to Home-hunting is a visual commentary on the Wizard of Oz story. It focuses on Dorothy’s journey through Oz by honing in on the central theme--her search for a home. However, the publication is not a simple retelling of that theme. Instead, it is an extension of my interest in the ‘anti-book’. That is, the book employs devices that cut across common assumptions about the book’s form and purpose.
The publication is designed to be visually frustrating to read, hence the vibrating background patterns, the narrative is solely pictorial (speech bubbles, for instance, are made up of wingdings), there is no real beginning, middle or end and the reader has to destroy the book in order to resolve the central dilemma—is there such a thing as a home for Dorothy? The aim is to engage the reader in Dorothy’s frustrated quest by making the entire experience of reading the book difficult and irritating. Equally, the illustrations combine public references to toys, film characters and comic books in an attempt to gently parody Baum’s tale.
