Barbara Visser’s works explore the uncertain relationship between registration and dramatization, between notions of original and copy, the natural versus the staged, and the tension between what we call the documentary and the fictitious. Using a wide variety of media and formats, her work sheds a new light on our understanding of civilized man, and the objects with which he surrounds himself. By rigorously separating text and image, the book offers multiple interpretations, triggering the reader’s own memory and associations.

As Jörg Heiser writes in his text on myths, ‘It can be read as an intricate set of experiments exploring three distinct ways of ‘navigating’ myths, and a possible notion of truth that we inevitably need in order to do so. These three different ways, correspond to the three different types of empirical knowledge as defined by Donald Davidson: knowledge about what’s in my mind, in the world, and in other people’s minds.’

Designed by Mevis & Van Deursen and Felix Weigand in close collaboration with the artist.

English text.