Backstage by AGATHE MATHEL

Prompted by an interest in production processes, Backstage understands graphic design as a situated and contingent activity, where knowledge is fabricated through continuous negotiations.
Throughout 36 paragraphs, the text examines the importance of the increasingly compressed interval between conception and realisation by closely observing its gestures, deviations, dead ends, and prolongations. This book dramatises the construction of graphic decisions that usually remain implicit behind finished forms, and asks what it means to take responsibility for a process rather than for a result.
As an embodiment of its content, the cover consists of a series of monoprints made during testing phases. The last print, having reached the standards, ended the conversation with the press, ink, rollers, and paper while also determining the number of copies that could be produced.

2026, self-published
100 pages, language: English, French, 25 x 19 cm