The Making of the Interspecies Futures [IF] Catalog

Join Claudia de la Torre, founder of backbonebooks, in conversation with curator Oscar Salguero, as they discuss the making of the Interspecies Futures catalog. The pair will discuss the design decisions behind the conceptual sci-fi paperback style catalog, as well as speculations as to how the book might exist beyond the duration of the exhibition.

Note: Center for Book Arts will hold this event entirely online. A Zoom link will be sent in an email to all registrants.

About the Speakers

Claudia de la Torre founded Berlin-based backbonebooks in 2011 to formalize her own practice and publish other artists’ books. Creating objects, fields, spaces in relation to the book as a highly historical & contemporary medium – backbonebooks performs consistently in a flexible, conceptual and collaborative process, aiming to open a new perspective into what a book can be.

Oscar Salguero is a researcher, critical designer, and independent book curator based in Brooklyn, NY, where he runs The Antilibrary. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently, as part of non:agency’s The Age of Entanglements during Stockholm Design Week, 2020. The Antilibrary identifies unconventional trends and predicts future attitudes via the study of independent artist books. More than a library, it is an experiment in cultural pattern recognition and culture alteration. Some subjects of interest include: Trumpiana, post-fossil design, olfactive futures, AI-poetry, interspecies interactions, wetware, etc. The Antilibrary believes the book remains the most advanced information technology ever devised by humans.

About the Exhibition

Interspecies Futures [IF] is the first survey of bookworks by leading international practitioners from the contemporary fields of bio-art and speculative design who have turned to the codex as a tool for the proposal of alternative human-nonhuman scenarios.