Almanach Ecart. A collective archive
Elisabeth Jobin, Yann Chateigné, Dan Solbach
A polyphonic and playful presentation of the Almanach Ecart, a compendium and experimental publication published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the collective co-founded in Geneva by John M Armleder.
At one and the same time a collective, a self-managed gallery, artists’ publishing house, bookshop and tea room, Ecart is an artist-run space jointly founded by John M Armleder, Patrick Lucchini and Claude Rychner. Throughout the 1970s, the group endeavoured to develop and explore, to bring together and to exhibit a wide range of experimental artistic practices linked to the Fluxus movement. The fruit of two years of research, the Almanach Ecart presents some 400 previously unpublished archival documents.
The result of an interdisciplinary study carried out by a team of international researchers, this editorial experiment enables readers to dive into the world of the Genevan group in a playful manner. This book thus offers a subjective, anachronistic and intertextual incursion into a fictional year of Ecart activities. Essays, commentaries and questionnaires shed new light on this Swiss port of call active within an international network driven by the immateriality of exchange and dialogue. A network which was based, in short, on friendship.
The Ecart archives, deposited at the Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD – Genève), have been inventoried since September 2017 in partnership with MAMCO.
This presentation, offered by a number of the authors-designers of this collective work, itself rests on a rule of the game, turning the traditional book launch into a more unexpected experience. The book, jointly published by HEAD – Genève and the Lausanne art&fiction publishing house, received the 2019 Most Beautiful Swiss Book Prize as well as the Golden Letter, the highest award of the 2020 edition of the Best Book Design From All Over the World Awards.
Elisabeth Jobin, Yann Chateigné (eds.) with Dan Solbach, Emilie Parendeau, Pierre Leguillon and Mathieu Copeland, Almanach Ecart. Une archive collective, 1969 – 2019, HEAD – Genève, art&fiction, Lausanne, 2019
