despalles overcomes the distance that still exists between the German and French language areas. Thus the artist's books of the edition are mostly conceived from the outset as bilingual, French and German, or even trilingual. As a rule, they appear as first publications, always with unpublished translations. In them, artists and poets from different aesthetic categories meet.
Louis Roquin
Berlin – Der Klang einer Stadt (The sound of a city)
Louis Roquin, French composer and visual artist, in the telephone directory the starting point for his exploration of the Berlin Walking in the streets of the German capital he each letter of the alphabet with faces and ordinary materials of which he took pictures.
Then he describes virtual sound events, he being performed or heard by those anonymous faces. Detecting that special sound of the city like “symphony”, he creates a very unusual work of musical language.
Original titel: Le son d'une ville – Berlin
Text, drawings and photographs by Louis Roquin.
Bilingual French/ German translation, book and realization by Despalles and Johannes Strugalla.
120 pages, 33 × 20,5 cm. archival inkjet on paper. Hardcover.
Edition: 70 copies, numbered signed by the artist. Copies I to VII
with a suite composed by drawings and signed photographs.
Paris / Mainz 2008.
