Before determining it’s content, the first step in developing any of Booklook’s issues is a hell of a lot of research into folding. Anouk always brings one central question to this stage of the next issues development: “How can I design a three dimensional object, starting from a flat sheet of paper or textile, using folding as a construction method to design both a publication and a garment?”, she says. “In my studio I have loads of these empty prototypes with no content yet but just the material.”
Closer to clothing than you might think, the first two Booklook issues Apron and Shirt were printed on a specialist paper made from textile (Lahnpaper) that can be carefully washed in the machine. Interested in furthering this material research with the magazine’s third issue, set to be launched this spring in the form of a two piece suit, Anouk is reassessing this boundary between textile and paper, considering how material impacts the use of a printed object.
For this next issue, Booklook is set to explore Speespak, a design made by artist Iris de Leeuw in 1966: a modular textile suit with zippable trouser legs that has ties to the sexual revolution in the Netherlands. “The first part is a publication that you can read and unfold into a jacket, sharing fragments of the many conversations we had during our intergenerational collaboration on topics such as modular systems, publishing, protesting and being a female artist in the sixties and nowadays,” Anouk shares. “The second part will be a publication that unfolds into a pair of pants containing a text written by Harm Stevens, curator history 20th century at Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, NL), where he shares the art historical context of this suit,” she ends.