Year: 2012 Event: Salone del Mobile Commissioner: IN Residence Curators: Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò Location: Milan, Italy
Materials: Paper, cotton, brass Project assistant: Sarah Laaroussi
In Search of Lost Time is part of ANOTHER TERRA, an exhibition gathering the works of 16 designers commissioned by IN Residence to design objects they would bring along should they have the opportunity to go settle on another planet.
This version of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust was made as a book to accompany a very long spaceflight. Time, as a measurable value, is a man-made creation set in accordance to earthly factors. Therefore, once away from Earth, eventhough the human need to follow the run of time remains, it nevertheless looses all significant relevance. This version of In Search of Lost Time offers therefore two levels of readability: an obvious one as a litterary piece, a time consuming occupation for a long journey; and a second one as a relative time marker with no defined context when flipped through. The layout of Marcel Proust’s novel was therefore redesigned in order to symbolize the run of time. The volume contains precisely 1440 pages (as the number of minutes in a day) divided into 24 booklets (for hours) of 60 pages bound together. Each page is then marked with two subtle clock arms running through the book. Therefore page numbers become unnecessary and the various chapters of the book can be found on the table of content according to their time position. Lastly, as a long standing protection the cover of the book is made out of brass, the most commonly used material in clock mechanisms and the back of each booklet alternates between black and white as the grades that indicate hours on a clock face.
