Product Description
Rewind Forward by Olaf Nicolai (*1962 in Halle) received the 2003 Golden Letter from the Stiftung Buchkunst for being the “most beautiful book in the world.” His new artist’s book was once again designed in collaboration with Markus Dressen and Jan Wenzel. Nicolai’s installation Coral Gardens and Their Magic (2007) serves as the starting point for the publication. This field of ethnological research was “invented” by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who published a study of the same name in 1935. Nicolai opens up to question Malinowski’s thesis that it is possible to objectively describe a society and relates it to socio-cultural developments in recent history. Over the course of a three-year research period, during which he explored associations between social utopias, modernist stylistic elements, and considerations on an “ideology of forms,” the artist developed a cross-genre installation comprising architecture, sculpture, animated films, and new contemporary-music compositions. The accompanying text is the result of the collective work of a team of authors.
