GRAUZONE
A completely black-and-white volume in a slender portrait format turns out to be an unpretentious autobiography of the 1980s Swiss band Grauzone, containing a substantial body of material in condensed form. From outside it looks like a hastily assembled fanzine, but inside it tells a thoroughly researched and even authoritative story in a strikingly straightforward manner. A multipart essay reconstructing the band’s short-lived yet legendary exploits with a wealth of detail runs in a relatively large font through the book. Each double page additionally features between one and five historical sources: concert photos, drawings for album covers, posters, reviews, letters and more. All are reproduced in high contrast in the manner of a photocopy, while a dozen works by visual artists from the band’s entourage are presented between them in the same way. The obvious resort to the media practice and aesthetic of punk is not mere mimicry, but an appropriation grounded in the subject matter: the publication is about the 1980s, and looks like it too.
