'3 Communiqués is dense with connections between the histories of political idealism, aesthetic revolt and plain crankishness. The book itself embodies its infolding themes: its design somewhat resembles that of Georges Bataille's ‘Documents' (1929-30), and the parts are concertinaed together so that the whole looks as eccentric as its inspiring and absurd subjects.' Brian Dillon, Art Review

(.pdf Books Review: 3 Communiqués )

3 Communiqués

3 Communiqués, published by Bookworks London, September 2007
pp. 80, 230 x 165mm, full colour publication in 3 parts;
designed by Simon Joesbury, Secondary Modern
Supported by Arts Council of Wales,
Arts Humanities Research Council
& University of Reading
ISBN 978 1 870699 91 4

Available here: Bookworks

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The Protein Man is embroiled in an argument. He wanders the city streets campaigning for the suppression of desire. His pamphleteering outlines the connections between nutrition, sedentary life and human sexuality. In parallel, a second constellation recounts the consistency of a non-conformist group founded on action-analysis and bohemian schedules. No project, perhaps, has so radically attempted to place desire at its centre. Elsewhere, socialist-utopian Charles Fourier forms the basis of a discussion about a state in the process of becoming. His passional series and visionary designs of the Phalanx rouse the search for a virtual islet of resistance.

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' 'It is an occultation, not dead but marginally present, ripe for speculation. And, perhaps to whatever remnants of past visions it has thrown off, like so many sparks from a comet. The frozen and flat scene exists outside the real, outside narrative and historical time. There is the outline of a landscape, a possible romantic object, and straightforward metaphor. Even so there is also an uncertainty that derives from the juggling of pronouns and perspective between I, you and we, suggesting that the unity of the scene does not hold.'

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3 Communiqués is a documentary fiction charting a journey through the marginal histories of communalism, self-presentation and collective agency. The narrative speculates as to the significance of a small pamphlet, a strange orange flower, the disappearance of a statue and the productive misreading of theory, while succumbing to the vertiginous unreliability of archives.

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