...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
This book is an interpretation of Borges' text. It's not only a visual, grpahic approach but it is an object take out of Borges' world. The book itself is covered with rest of the Empire's Map. Japanese binding that I used requires double-wide pages folded to the original page size. Created in this way doubleness is the perfect metaphor of this story. There are two almost the same layers, lying one on another. Low-density paper (60g) brings to light what is under the overlay.
All visual effects were created on photocopier. The original "matrix" text was enlarged about 14 times.
With every spread the "Map" part becomes more and more damaged. Holes and cuts reveal the original "Reality" layer which occures to be exacly the same as Map.
At first we stand too close to text - letters are almost abstract forms randomly appearing on spread. Every spread is like a step back from Map - finally we can read the whole text. Then we can take another step back to see the small piece of text as a part of huge surface.
