Causal Loops/Time Squiggles
Causal Loops/Time Squiggles* is a publication collecting work created by students and tutors at the XXV CSAV Artists’ Research Laboratory in Italy.
The laboratory is an experimental platform designed to provoke formal and informal discussions and exchanges among artists of different generations and nationalities, run collaboratively in 2019 by Ei Arakawa, Kasper König and Nora Schultz.
The blue of the cover references Lake Como, the location of the workshop and a strong influence on much of the work produced. The pattern was found by the artists within the Foundation’s archives, and this is juxtaposed with a scan of the Plan of The Raft of the Medusa/at the moment of its being abandoned (1818),† crashing and emerging from the water on both inside covers.
The artists’ exploration of future and past effects on their work is translated in several ways within the publication. From the tiled cover layout, to the ever moving placement of page numbers.
The typeface GT Alpina is used throughout in a mixture of regular, condensed and monospace styles. The letterforms of this typeface were designed by Grilli Type based on the memory of what a text typeface should be like – leading to a design that twists and shifts away from what is expected.
Format
120 × 170 mm
Extent
256pp
Binding
Section Sewn
Typeface
GT Alpina
* A ‘causal loop’ is a theoretical proposition in which, by means of either retrocausality or time travel, a sequence of events (actions, information, objects, people) is among the causes of another event, which is in turn among the causes of the first-mentioned event.
† The image is based on a drawing by the geographer Alexandre Corréard, one of the survivors of the loss of the French frigate, ‘La Meduse’, off the west coast of Africa, and probably comes from the English edition of the published account of the affair (1817) which he co-authored with Hubert Savigny, the surviving ship’s surgeon. This particular print relates to A. Gericault’s painting The Raft of the Medusa, 1818–19.