Archive of Dark is a performative book project in collaboration with artist Kirstine Roepstorff. Weaving together a dense collection of historic imagery into an organic and emotive narrative flow, it features a series of letters from a variety of contributors that include perceptual, intellectual, spiritual, scientific and artistic reflections. The book is case-bound in dyed linen with four cover variations, each with a different combination of extracted images.
The book is not didactic; rather, an interpretive attempt to develop an added layer of meaning to an existing body of work. In line with the collaborative ethos of the InOtherWords publishing imprint, and informed by a holistic approach guided by process, the concept evolved through a series of conversations creating a rare synthesis of practices, transcending both textual and visual levels to form a single work in the form of the book.
The Archive of Dark
OK-RM (Rory McGrath and Oliver Knight) [UK]
OK-RM, founded by Oliver Knight and Rory McGrath in 2008, is a studio intent on pushing the potential of what a design practice can be. For OK-RM, design is here understood — in its broadest sense — as a means of communicating; a transitive verb that operates laterally across disciplines and media, and finds realisation in an arresting and accessible aesthetic language.
Each project pursued by the studio — be that a book, an identity, exhibition or installation — grows out of a process of conceptually rigorous investigation, with Oliver and Rory attending closely to both the formal properties and the context within which the project participates. A project is therefore a proposition, a means to interrogate beliefs, procedures, behavioural, temporal and material realities, and (re)consider what it means to be in the world, and work together.
Indeed, working together is at the heart of their studio practice. Artisans, practitioners and cultural protagonists within the fields of architecture, literature, music, academia, performance, fashion and design all participate in OK-RM’s expanded collaborative network. Embracing the contradictions and confluences enabled by interdisciplinary dialogue, OK-RM operate at the pivot point where attitude becomes form. OK-RM aptly defines such a process as akin to choreography: the orchestration of moving parts to create an integrated whole.
Maintaining the curiosity and nuance of OK-RM, InOtherWords — the studio’s experimental publishing imprint — was established as a means to further pursue collaborative exchange exclusively within printed matter.