Zweite Enzyklopädie von Tlön

News and Events
We will participate at the following events:
March 5 – 7, 2010: 6. Editionale Köln, Artists Book Fair in Cologne
October 6 – 10, 2010: Frankfurt Book Fair
October 30 – November 1, 2010: Book Gallery Mergemeier, Düsseldorf
February 6 – 9, 2011: CODEX International Bool Fair, Berkeley


About the project
»If our foresight is not mistaken, a hundred years from now someone will discover the hundred volumes of the Second Encyclopaedia of Tlön«, Jorge Luis Borges wrote 1941 in the epilogue to his tale »Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius«. More than 50 years later his text was animation and source of inspiration for a project that we understood as the attempt to reconstruct the Second Encyclopaedia of Tlön. Within ten years (1997– 2006) we have published fifty volumes. We saw the compilation of the right keywords (there is only one keyword per volume) and their interconnection as an important prerequisite for success. It should not be a patchwork of arbitrary keywords but a coherent work committed to the spirit of Tlön. Right from the beginning there were lists with suggested keywords. They were constantly changing, new ones were added, old ones discarded. Sub-groups were formed: flora and fauna, the three primary colors, the four elements, the title of Borges’ story: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. The more the project progressed, the more difficult it became to decide on the right keywords. If at the beginning we could still choose those that seemed the most interesting at the time from a great pool of keywords, as time went on we had to make sure to choose words missing in the completion of the whole picture. Because our system of order was the alphabet, we of course wanted all letters to be represented in the end. We did realize that we could only do justice to our presumptuous ambition of packing the whole world into fifty volumes in details and fragments; but we hoped the found shards would give a notion of the whole structure. Borges’ story, which we owed the encyclopedia’s title to, played an important role as a source of inspiration, but we could present the idealistic world of Tlön only mirrored on our own world. Already in the first volumes quotes from Borges’ had sporadically flowed in. But only after some years did we realize that, in the meantime, a substantial part of the Tlön-text, distributed over the various volumes, had found its way into the encyclopedia, and we then decided to gradually incorporate the complete text in the encyclopedia; like a red thread, so to speak, that winds its way through the project in intricate paths. Because we had used, besides a German translation, also the Spanish original as well as an English and a French translation right from the beginning, the text in the encyclopedia is now multi-lingual, many-voiced, in part not recognizable at first sight (e.g. on the black endpaper of the ZEIT volume). Just like Borges’ text had written itself into the project almost on its own, and at the beginning not even intended by us, so the project has also influenced and changed its makers. The work on the encyclopedia over the years has not gone by our work methods without leaving a trace. Thinking and working in an encyclopedic context has become familiar to us and has flowed into the way we work. On the other hand, of course our life circumstances and locations, our travels (real and fictitious) are all reflected in the project: people and books that influenced us. During the work on the project we have tried to be exhaustive, complex, all-encompassing, encyclopedic; all within our means. Now, after ten years, the fifty completed volumes lie before us, and we see they are actually only a tiny part of a huge ice-berg that is really a book-berg. Most of it we cannot see because it is below the (water) surface, but we are aware of its existence. We see the project connected to a multitude of other books and are happy that, by the incorporation into public collections, it is now literally close to an enormous number of other books.

The fifty volumes are published in an edition of forty numbered and signed copies. They all have a unified format of 12,5 by 20 cm, are handbound and usually thread-stitched. The spine thickness varies according to the bulk of the volume. The entire block of all fifty volumes has a length of ca. 63 cm. The covers are of various materials (cloth, paper; printed or unprinted), but all within a range of light to dark gray. One has a leather binding. Each volume carries a spine label, printed with the first four letters of its keyword (providing the keyword is longer than four letters). The encyclopedia can be purchased to only in its entirety and it costs 12.000,— Euro.


Tlön-Biography
1997 The first volumes of the Enzyklopädie are created and introduced at the Frankfurt Bookfair. 1998 The Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt shows the first volumes. 2000 The volumes published to date are awarded the Walter-Tiemann-Prize by the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig. // In his book Typolemik – Typophilie Hans Peter Willberg includes the Enzyklopädie in the ranks of typophile books. 2001 First tlön on tour journey along the US east coast. // The Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel shows the exhibition Zwischenbilanz im fünften Jahr, in which 25 volumes are presented. // Uwe Warnke writes an article about German book art for The Journal of Artists’ Books, JAB 16 (Atlanta 2001), acknowledging the Enzyklopädie. 2002 Second tlön on tour journey along the US east coast. // The Arts of the Book Collection of the Yale University Library in New Haven shows several volumes of the Enzyklopädie in its exhibition By Chance: Serendipity and Randomness in Contemporary Artists’ Books. 2003 The Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt and the Museum of Arts & Design New York show volumes of the Enzyklopädie in the Ninth Triennial. // Ulrike Stoltz writes about the Enzyklopädie in her article on contemporary German book art for the Artist’s Book Yearbook 2003–2005 (Bristol 2003). 2004 The Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt shows the 35 volumes published to date in a solo exhibition. 2005 Another trip to the USA, via Chicago to the west coast, we visit Barbara Tetenbaum in Portland. // In the exhibition Jung geblieben in the Deutsche Buch- und Schriftmuseum, Leipzig, the Stiftung Buchkunst also shows volumes of the Enzyklopädie. 2006 The Municipal Museum in Toyota, Japan, shows volumes of the Enzyklopädie in the exhibition 13+: Contemporary Artists’ Books from Germany. // At the end of the year we complete the series, all fifty volumes are now available. 2007 In February we take part in the book art fair of the Codex Foundation in Berkeley and present all fifty volumes for the first time. // In the summer the Public Library San Francisco (Skylight Gallery) shows volumes of the Enzyklopädie in the exhibition 13+: Contemporary Artists’ Books from Germany. // In the fall the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz will show all fifty volumes in the exhibition Zweite Enzyklopädie von Tlön. 2008 Exhibition Tweede encyclopedie van Tlön. Een boekkunstproject van Ines von Ketelhodt en Peter Malutzki, Museum Meermanno The Hague. // Exhibition Artist's Books: Ines von Ketelhodt + Peter Malutzki, Galerie der EDITIONALE Cologne. // Colloquium and exhibition Die Erkundung von Tlön, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. 2009 CODEX International Book Fair & Symposium, University of California, Berkeley. // HYBRID BOOK Conference and Book Fair, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

Public collections
Bibliothèque Municipale, Saint-Quentin
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum, Leipzig
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main
Harvard University, Fine Arts Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel
Jack Ginsberg Collection of Book Arts, Johannesburg, Südafrika
Klingspor Museum, Offenbach am Main
Library of Congress, Washington
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
Museum Meermanno, Den Haag
Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Hannover
Princeton University Library
Public Library, George Arents Collection, New York City
Reed College Library, Portland, Oregon
Rheinische Landesbibliothek, Koblenz
Rochester Institute of Technology
Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Frankfurt am Main
University of California, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California
Victoria & Albert Museum, National Art Library, London
Wesleyan University, Olin Library, Middletown, Connecticut
Yale University, Arts of the Book Collection, New Haven, Connecticut