We are proud to announce that again this year two of our titles are included in The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2021, launched by the Swiss Federal Office for Culture. The competition, created to promote design printing and make it more accessible to the general public, saw the participation of over 400 books, among which a quality jury selected the 23 most deserving to be awarded.
The two winning Swiss volumes printed by Musumeci in 2021 are Retail Apocalypse (F. Fischli; N. Olsen; A. Jasper Ed) and State Fiction - The Gaze of the Swiss Neutral Mission in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (Denise Bertschi).
The first book, “Retail Apocalypse”, is a sort of compendium of case studies, interventions and lessons on objects saved from the bonfire of the retail culture. As shopping goes online and the economic shocks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic drive bankruptcy cases to unprecedented levels, retail faces its own version of the end of days. The arsenal of commercial techniques developed by retail can no longer function as it used to. The volume investigates how the intricate worlds of architecture, fashion, business and art that provided these techniques now appear to us in a whole new way.
The second volume awarded and printed by Musumeci is “STATE FICTION”, by the artist and researcher Denise Bertschi. The book reflects on the role and construction of Switzerland's “neutral” national identity, focusing on the Swiss military mission in the DMZ and on the images she produced during her stay, from the 1950s to the 1980s. Several essays on the subject by Heonik Kwon, Hans-Ulrich Jost and Bertschi herself accompany the photographic and cinematographic material.
The exhibition and the related launch of The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2021 catalog will take place in Zurich from 23 to 26 June. The quality of the Musumeci print and layout have contributed to making these two books true works of art: having been able to print two publications so rich in value both from an aesthetic and a content point of view makes us particularly proud.
