POSITIVE ENCOUNTERS
published by s/z
book launch24 Aug 2023, 16:00–19:00
positive encounters is a comprehensive monograph of work by the design collective bahraini—danish. The book presents as an overview of work produced between 2016-2022 narrated via technical illustrations, essayistic photography as well as archival material. It is an epistolary novel in some sense too — in media res — hence left empty of a page numbered ‘1’.
At stanza’s first location, we exhibited a few selected pieces by bahraini-danish as well as photography from the book.
Here, we try to describe bahraini-danish, as a practice, as a community, and as an unceremonious culture of making and talking. In this book, and within its loosely framed chapters, we show you glimpses of those ideas, uninterrupted, incomprehensive, and sometimes incomplete. We aim to present ourselves honestly and vulnerably. We aim to explain ourselves the way we want to be perceived and remain silent when we can see that words are unimportant.
—Batool Alshaikh, ‘Dear Reader,’ in Positive Encounters, 2023, p. 20.ةرلعماا ةسرة لمماادأك شنيد-ينيمحاولتنا لوصف بحر بلكتاا اسجل في هذن ضمن فصوله .ثيلحدالتصنيع وا نع سميةر لتصميم، كمجتمع وثقافة غيراو قاطعهايالأفكار، دون أن كلت نمات ضذا الكتاب ومه يف ضعرنؤطرة، مغير ال لمعنى ولما ينقصها ىستحالت أعمالاً منتجة، وأخراكتملت وا تشيء، ومضا لنحاو ،قلصدا أنفسنا بهشاشة نيتها ضنسعى لعر .عقالوا ضرعلى أ رتبلوت أن ىحين نر ةملك يأ لفهم بها، ولا نقوُن لتي نريد أنا أنفسنا بالطريقة حشر .لأهميةا ليست بتلك تلكلماا
—Batool Alshaikh, ‘Dear Reader,’ in Positive Encounters, 2023, p. 20.
The concept for the book was developed by bahraini—danish in collaboration with graphic designer Line-Gry Hørup, and is the second release by stanza’s imprint s/z.
I feel as if this book attempts to weave a different pattern of exchange. A friendly one for sure, in a motion moving around as in a game of billiard, where the cue taps a ball into a specific direction, with the attempt of a solid outcome. By refined trial and error, adjustments in concentration, and experience, tangible objects are eventually achieved. The collaboration manifests a certain exchange, rallied by potential, flexible as if the objects themselves promise a possible future. While working on the book, we aspired to reach an inner logic of how the images are dispersed throughout the book — as if midway through the act of remembering itself, they would interlock as documented facts. That is to say: this is where we have arrived.
—Line-Gry Hørup, ‘A Note On the Graphic Design,’ in Positive Encounters, 2024.