ANTONIS ANTONIOU

visual REsearch/REmix + editorial spaces + architectural pop +
out of scale + notes on notes + soft definitions + bibliographic lab +
about maps + illustration acts + schematic play

Decoding Manhattan


Authors: Antonis Antoniou & Steven Heller
Cover art: Christoph Niemann
Publisher: Abrams
Publication date: April 2021
Language: English


A visual thesis about an island of diagrams called Manhattan.

DECODING MANHATTAN documents and celebrates the intricate relationship between the city and the diagram to present a retelling of Manhattan’s chronicles. Its language is a rich vocabulary of maps, sections, cutaways and charts, that traverses lines, dots and data to embrace the diagram with a more playful attitude, in its softer definition.

»The sheer amount of specific detail and ephemera that the authors have gathered—for a city that changes so rapidly—is heartening proof that, even as a new stratum of the city devours the one that came before it, there’s some kind of human order to it all.[...] “Decoding Manhattan” is a loving excavation of a singular place, and a reminder to keep your eyes open as you walk around Manhattan, where idiosyncratic treasures can pop out of the ground every day.«
[The New Yorker]
Conceptsvisual REsearch/REmix + architectural pop + out of scale + soft definitions + about maps + illustration acts + schematic play
AccomplicesSteven Heller
LinksDecoding Manhattan[Abrams]
Manhattan as a Muse[The New Yorker]
A Visual History of New York Told Through Its Diagrams, Maps and Graphics[ArchDaily]


Cometes


Prototype, CC BY-NC-SA
Edition Guild 2023–24
Centre d’Arts Santa Mònica


The word comet comes from the Greek ἀστὴρ κομήτης meaning ‘long-haired star’, like the trail that comets leave behind as they pass by. COMETES is a publication experimenting with citational practices within collective artistic research. It’s a free, DIY publication, binded manually when activated in public: its contents are individual flyers of different sizes and colors that invite the creation of open and personalized publications, making the reader the editor. The remixed citations are thus transformed in the encounter with others, and multiple readings and conversations are generated.

COMETES shows the interweaving of voices that accompany the research process of each mediation group of the SANTA MÒNICA ARTS CENTRE. The groups, or guilds, shared their references, resonances and inspirations related to their research, understanding citation in its broadest manifestation. COMETES, in Catalan, means both comets and quotation marks. Concepts notes on notes + soft definitions + bibliographic lab
AccomplicesVerónica Lahitte
Carla Lupa
Mòniques 23-24
LinksSanta Mònica Research Groups 

Visual Vocabularies


Edition Guild 2022–23
Centre d’Arts Santa Mònica

VISUAL VOCABULARIES is a translation project of the SANTA MÒNICA ARTS CENTRE’s Vocabularies: fifty-one terms that together form an open-ended glossary that constantly rethinks the arts centre’s “structure, nature and function.”

We invited and accompanied seven artists to transform these terms through their particular visual language. Together, they compile a deck of cards that offers multiple possibilities for play, to be published in 2025. The illustrations formed part of the book Instantánea de una nueva institución: Vocabularios para la colectivización artística (GALAXIA GUTENBERG, 2024).

VISUAL VOCABULARIES is an invitation to play, expand definitions and contribute to the process of collective and multiple lexical composition that SANTA MÒNICA cultivates. Concepts soft definitions + illustration acts
AccomplicesMarta Cartu
Néstor F.
Alba Feito
Julio Linares
Gala Pont
Clara-Iris Ramos
Clara Sáez
Links [CAT]Instantània d’una nova institució [ESP]Instantánea de una nueva institución

FIU
Biblioteca Móvil de Libros Album Anticolonial


Prototype, CC BY-NC-SA
Edition Guild 2023–24
Centre d’Arts Santa Mònica


FIU is a mobile library of anticolonial picture books. The books it keeps propose stories that challenge hegemonic narratives and open doors to imaginaries that resist the extractive model proposed by the West. They move between different languages ​​and encourage infinite translations. FIU is constructed in conversation with others: artists, activists, academics, poets propose the books kept in its boxes.*

We put FIU on its wheels to activate communal spaces around the act of reading, like public libraries, schools, or the street. Its destinations become collective events that combine reading, singing, dancing, performance, and conversations.

FIU is conceived in the context of the Raval district in Barcelona, yet it is designed to be replicable everywhere in the world. A manual will be published soon.Concepts editorial spaces + bibliographic lab + illustration acts
AccomplicesVerónica Lahitte
Carla Lupa
Mercedes Saya Rosés Fujiwara

*The titles that make up this project have been proposed by val flores, Diego Falconí, Pluriversidad Nómada (Ce Quimera + Lucía Egaña), Macarena García, Nadia Jabr, María Berríos, Karo Moret, Jesús Arpal and Sujeydi García, in conversation with the Edition Guild 23-24 of the Santa Mònica Arts Centre.
Links@fiu.biblioteca[Instagram]

Balda


Prototype, CC BY-NC-SA
Edition Guild 2022–23
Centre d’Arts Santa Mònica


 BALDA, true to its name, is the three-meter shelf that houses a collaborative, dehierarchized bibliography, while generating a memory or trace of the exhibitions that took place at SANTA MÒNICA ARTS CENTRE. This bibliography is built from contributions by independent Barcelona bookstores (and one record store). BALDA is also the title of a series of bookmarks designed as a periodical publication that form a record of all these references.

BALDA, finally, is a space within SANTA MÒNICA created around this shelf, in constant transformation, a place where you can read or rest, a space we designed and generated organically with the arts centre’s team, that has been embraced by the public.

BALDA aims to compile a series of bibliographic references for a wide spectrum of audiences, including novels, essays, artist’s books, stories, comics, fanzines, children’s books, etc. We carried out three editions coinciding with the exhibitions that took place throughout our residency. Conceptseditorial spaces + bibliographic lab
AccomplicesMarta SeséPense (shelf production)

BOOKSTORES:Vol.1—Dozing on the accidental provocation
Taifa
prole.
Casa Anita 
Fatbottom
La Caníbal

Vol.2—Utopia Rambles
Continuará Comics
crisi
laCapell
Nollegiu

Vol.3—Holey
Terranova
Finestres
Sendak
Discos Paradiso

A Map of the World


Editors: Antonis Antoniou & gestalten
Cover art: Vesa S
Publication date: 2020
Language: English
A bestselling compilation that handpicked contemporary pictorial and experimental maps by over 90 illustrators and artists. A MAP OF THE WORLD propelled the genre providing necessary space and a careful look at pictorial cartography.

Its success reveals the continued relevance and appeal of maps. It is also available in Spanish, Japanese and French. An updated and expanded version was released in 2020.
Concepts visual REsearch/REmix + out of scale, about maps + illustration acts + schematic play
LinksA Map of the World[gestalten]Illustrators and Visual Storytellers Map the World[The Marginalian]Mapas del Mundo[Libros del Zorro Rojo]
世界のデザイン・マップス[Graphic-sha]

Mind the Map


Editors: Antonis Antoniou & gestalten
Cover art: James Niehues
Publication date: September 2015
Language: English

MIND THE MAP continued the documentation of the exciting cartographic projects created by artists, illustrators, and graphic designers that began with A MAP OF THE WORLD, to explore in depth the work process of today’s heterogeneous mapmakers. The volume has become a reference in the field of information graphics.
Concepts visual REsearch/REmix + out of scale + about maps + illustration acts + schematic play
LinksMind the Map[gestalten]Mind the Map: a Book about Charting the Uncharted and Mapping the Familiar[yatzer]

Random Architecture Memories


WEB
2016–2022


A curated video archive around a popular, expansive reading of architecture—think both MTV and MIT.

R.A.M. used video as its main format to explore architecture, its representation, memory and potential as a popular concept. Gathering from diverse sources (music videos, TV series, reportages, documentaries, commercials, etc.), R.A.M. functioned as a type of notebook designed on a simple grid layout. Each video entry included footnotes in the form of a collage of quotes that generated internal or external connections, along with tagged and categorized contents, indices for people and buildings, as well as a map of video locations. Concepts visual REsearch/REmix + editorial spaces + architectural pop + notes on notes + soft definitions
LinksThe most popular video on RAM also marks its spirit: the MTV CRIBS 2002 episode featuring Paulina Rubio at Ricardo Bofill’s La Fábrica. Other popular choices included Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (dir. Julian Cooper / 1972), Massive Attack’s Protection (dir. Michel Gondry / 1995), and a timelapse of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window Timelapse by Jeff Desom.

Visual Families


Editors: Antonis Antoniou & gestalten
Cover art: Max Dalton
Publication date: August 2014
Language: English


VISUAL FAMILIES unveils playful and inventive visual ways of observing, ordering and visualizing the world. This compendium finds joy and humour in the art of picturing taxonomies, from music and film to flora and fauna .

»Adding a bit of excitement and colour to stories that would otherwise be dull and boring, the works contained in Visual Families ask the viewer to take a closer look, make comparisons and perhaps discover a message hidden underneath their colourful surface.«
[yatzer]Conceptsvisual REsearch/REmix + out of scale + illustration acts + schematic play
Links

Metrographies


Ongoing graphic experiments with underground maps.

Barcelona

Metro maps are simplified abstractions of a complex urban landscape that need to be very practical. These dominant images inevitably affect how we read the cities we inhabit. Within their design I see a kind of sacred urban geometry. I enjoy experimenting with metro maps of places where I’ve lived and routinely took the metro. In this sense, this is also an autobiographical project.

METROGRAPHIES is an exercise in diagrammatic abstraction and exploration of its visual language: breaking down and playing with the diagram’s essential syntactic elements, concepts of readability, practicality and beauty, while deconstructing the domination of these hegemonical images.
Conceptsschematic play + about maps
Paris
Barcelona
Barcelona
Madrid
Barcelona
Madrid
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