WT reader with contributions by Amir Avraham, Fred Cave, Yana Foque, Daniel Frota, Virginie Gauthier, Daria Kiseleva, Mathew Kneebone, Fay Kolokytha, Menelaos Kouroudis, Jungmyung Lee, Ivan Martinez, Laura Pappa, Christine Pogatchnik and Maria Jimena Sanchez. Edited by Daniel Frota, Menelaos Kouroudis, and Maxine Kopsa.

‘If magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all, it might be indeed possible to mistake one for the other. No wonder language found its origin in myths. This summer reader is about the cup of coffee that keeps us awake every morning. How much of it has to do with caffeine and how much of it with our will to believe in rituals? Amen’.

The view of translation as a second-rate, derivative form of writing, seems to prevail in Western discourse on the subject since sometime around the 17th century. The lowly status of translation is reflected in standard book publishing practices and in modern copyright law. It is perhaps because of our desire to think of the translations as a trancparency, a clear window through which we see the meaning of the original, that we lose sight of the obvious impossibility of one-to-one correspondence and take for granted the presence of the translator and the choices and praxis involved in the task (Matvei Yankelevich).

Compilation of notes and introductions written by translators on different attitudes towards the level of transparency and authorship of their mediation, as well as the inescapable trade-off they have to face between form and meaning. Fifteen contributors dealing with analogous concerns in their practices, selected pages from their personal libraries, present in the book as facsimile versions.

Contributions by Derek Byrne, Fred Cave, Cecília Costa, Paul Elliman, Yana Foqué, Daniel Frota, Virginie Gauthier, Will Holder, Mathew Kneebone, Menealos Kouroudis, Pedro Moraes, Miguel Nóbrega, Maria Jimena Sanchez, Lisette Smits and Sarah Tripp.

For this year’s LA Art Book Fair the Werkplaats Typografie was investigating the topic of Breaking-even. The Breaking-even publication presents a tangible outcome of the experience of Breaking-even at the LA Art Book Fair. Each workshop served as a chapter in the book and within that each participant’s contribution is represented. The six chapters of the book each present one of the workshops held at the fair, unraveling the mystery of breaking-even.

This first issue in a serial publication is inspired by a house located in the coastal town of La Marsa near Tunis. Taking the house’s close proximity to a gallery and a bookstore as a starting point for thinking through the book’s structure, the place quickly became both a literal and metaphorical character. The house is interesting not only in a historical sense, or for of the role it plays within the community, but due to its strong position as a host and the politics of hospitality it supports.