Typographer Will Holder once read that oral tradition would lead us out of the post-modern condition and has since become preoccupied with ‘publishing’. More often than not, the publications do not take the form of ink and paper, and a large part of the preoccupation is spent in finding suitable ‘forms’ for transmission. He sees conversation as a tool and a model for a mutual and improvised set of production conditions, where design is a responsive moment rather than a desired end. This approach has resulted in working relationships and continued conversations whereby the usual roles of commissioner, author, subject, editor, and designer are improvised and shared, as opposed to assigned and pre-determined.

Will Holder is editor of F.R.DAVID, a journal concerned with reading and writing in the arts, published by de Appel, Amsterdam. In May 2009, he curated ‘Talk Show’ (with Richard Birkett) at the ICA, London — an exhibition and season of events concerning speech and accountability. Holder is currently editing and designing a biography of American composer Robert Ashley in the form of operatic notation (together with Alex Waterman), and rewriting William Morris’s News from Nowhere: An epoch of rest (1876) into a guide for design education and practice set in 2135.

Wednesday 30 November 2011
Nike theatre, Agriculture | 2–2.50 pm

External links: Will Holder at the ICA; at Frieze magazine