LIFE
book | h 60mm x w 140mm; six printed facing pages | plays with the Kierkegaard quotation ‘life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards’ | printed inkjet on 300gsm Bockingford watercolour paper | 2018 | £5 | purchase
The reader must solve the puzzle of the book: the reader needs to begin reading at the final page with the word ‘life’ and then read the book from the back page to the first page along the top line. Having reached the first page of the book the reader then needs to start reading the bottom line through to the last page, starting with the word ‘but’. The reading process and form of the book mirror the content and philosophy of the quotation, so in reading the book the reader enacts the philosophy.
p6 life / forwards
p5 can / lived
p4 only / be
p3 be / must
p2 understood / it
p1 backwards / but
