This is a smart publication that works at a number of different levels. At its most basic its the reproduction, in printed form, of a 1970s slogan (Vive le dictariat du proletature) whose painted outlines can still faintly be seen on the wall of a university building on the Rennes University campus. With the original image fading this book was conceived as a way of fighting this disappearance, and of preserving a historical link to the social conflicts that embroiled this campus and many others in France from the late 1960s until now.
The phrase "the dictatorship of the proletariat" was adopted by the founders of Marxism as a description of the inbetween stage between capitalism and the full collective ownership that would come with communism.
Denis Briand works as an exhibitions curator and artist in the visual arts department at Rennes 2 University, France.
16 pages, single-sided, individual page 5" (h) x 4" (w), fully extended 6ft.
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| The back cover shows the outline of the original slogan as it was painted on the concrete facade of the building and the book replicates the spacing and placement of the original letters and words across the accordion folds of the book. |
