Specious Books by Dicey Studios

This contribution by Dicey Studios is part of the special issue of the Pervasive Labour Union zine on the Entreprecariat. Read it here and download it for free as PDF or EPUB.

Specious Books was launched by Dicey Studios as a means to investigate questions of content production, legitimacy … and other dilemmas, by use of graphic design — as an edition of books which probably don’t exist. Through Plausible Props the ambiguity embodied in these books finds its way from the screen right into your hands: Specious Books will be welcome additions on your bookshelf or might be put to use as unique paperback-style notebooks. However, Specious Books are more than mere signifiers of literacy. Their pages are not empty — each title offers just enough space to approach its distinctive topic in an individual, yet ever surprising manner (every book contains 144 pages of low-white book paper bound in a soft cover and comes in the convenient format of 130 × 196 × 15 mm).

The production of these books as actual objects poses questions of presentation, promotion, distribution, selling etc. (in short, publishing) that are directly connected to and that carry on the issues initially addressed by Specious Books. This happens in the shape of a contemporary small-scale business (where everybody involved works out of passion) utilizing and misappropriating the tools and possibilities available for DIY-entrepreneurs, freelancers and other promising unemployed: Plausible Props presents its products on a social shopping website, runs a YouTube channel with look-inside-the-book videos, distributes its publisher’s list in befriended indie book stores and galleries and performs as exhibitor on independent publishing and art book fairs. All that said though, the name Plausible Props is to be taken quite literally.

Please find more information on the individual books on http://www.plausibleprops.com.



Also published on Medium.

 

Silvio Lorusso

Silvio Lorusso is a designer witouth qualities, an artst without a gallery and a writer without spell cheker. Get his first book, entitled Entreprecariat, here!

 

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