Beyond a simple fascination for NASA, the manual is of interest for several reasons:
— It is an exhaustive presentation of visual identity – from letterheads to the markings on the space shuttle Discovery
— and thus allows the reader to apprehend the different formal, political and technical scales of the use of signs.
— The clarity of its texts which guided the personnel responsible for producing new documents contrasts sharply with the mainstream vocabulary in the communications field today.
— As an object, it is worthy of the interest it has created. It demonstrates the ambition and care taken in its presentation. Its format facilitates manipulation to ensure the organization, comprehension and implementation of the instructions and propositions it contains.

This book traces Jennifer Caubet’s work during her residency at the Centre International de Recherche sur le Verre et les Arts plastiques (Cirva), from 2017 to 2019. Immersed in Cirva’s studio as well as in her own, Jennifer Caubet was able to experience the many variations of the glass material through dialogue with the art center’s team of glass technicians. The sculptural projects she has developed at Cirva question various recurring notions in her work as an artist: how sculpture negotiates the relations to spaces and territories using scale measurements and the interaction with the human body; how gesture and movement determine shape; and where the boundaries between sculpture and landscape lie. Designed as a journey through the gestation stages of her work, the notebooks function as a score, offering, in all transparency, a reading of her preparatory drawings, annotations, studio gestures, and up until her finished works.

Texts: Isabelle Reiher, Lise Guéhenneux, Fabien Faure, Jennifer Caubet

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (1923-2014) is an Ivorian artist, poet, “re-searcher”, creator and inventor of the Bété syllabary. In 1989, he was thrust to the front of the international artistic scene during the Magiciens de la terre exhibition (May 18 – August 14, 1989, Centre Georges Pompidou, Grande Halle de La Villette, Paris). Introduced alongside a hundred other artists from all over the world, he would subsequently become world famous for his drawings on maps enhanced with colored pencil.
But in May of that year, Bruly Bouabré still cherished quite a different dream: that of becoming a writer. As he was getting ready to fly to Paris, leaving African soil for the first time, the poet was commissioned by his friends Odile and Georges Courrèges (then director of the French Cultural Center of Abidjan) to write the story of his trip. This is how, a few weeks after his return, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré would submit his “report” of 325 handwritten pages produced in “33 days”, in which he gleefully recounts his journey – at times punctuated by insignificant events  – while questioning the place of Man in Western society.
Until now, this tale of “a blind man in Paris,” as he first was to call it, had remained unpublished. The text – of pleasing findings and enchanting language – is that of an observer seeking to understand a changing world, with his own culture as a starting point. Imbued with such freedom and desire for identification and documentation, which characterize the work of this encyclopedic creator, the book is a very unique testimony to a milestone in the history of contemporary art.
Initiated by Odile and Georges Courrèges, who provided publishers with a copy of the manuscript entrusted to them by the artist, the project for this publication was also made possible thanks to André Magnin, who provided the original manuscript.

Foreword by Jean-Hubert Martin