i want to know (2020)
written by Amanda Bailey, Owen Davis, Alex Ellsworth, Zachary Good, Deidre Huckabay, Lia Kohl, Jenna Lyle, Zach Moore, Andrew Tham, Chris Wood, Ryan Zerna. Published by Spiderf*rt Press
Mocrep identifies as a collective that embraces artmaking in numerous forms - including performances, videos, internet happenings and an album - now they lend their signature adventurous spirit to the task of writing a book with eleven authors. At times serious, funny, absurd, and heartbreaking, I want to know is a testament to both wonder and the mundane.
Written in list form, the book is a catalogue of things the collective wants to know. If you think that sounds boring, sometimes it is -- and sometimes it’s a form that pokes directly into the heart of human vulnerability, fear, and curiosity. Because the list has multiple authors, it allows for a multiplicity of perspectives that nudges the book toward an inclusive curiosity: what do you want to know?
The book is beautifully designed by Chicago-based power duo Sonnenzimmer, who bring their weird and wonderful imaginations to creating an object worth looking at as well as reading.
Knowledge: what is it, and how is it shared? How does one acquire it, and how does one keep it? Encyclopedic and idiosyncratic, anaphoric and acrobatic, I Want to Know feels like being at a party with a bunch of super-smart self-aware friends who are determined—with humor, melancholy, and self-revelation—to explore the depths of the body of information, principles, and truth that have been (and can be) acquired by humankind.
~Kathleen Rooney, author of the novel Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey
Designed by Sonnenzimmer