Quasi-Book On Poetry, Bureaucracy and Alibism

QUASI-BOOK: On Poetry, Bureaucracy and Alibism
Kolxoz and Viaindustriae, Foligno, 2024
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.