UPCYCLE THIS BOOK by Gavin Wade

Title: Upcycle this Book
Author(s)/Editor(s): Gavin Wade
Publisher: Book Works
Pages: 300
Dimensions: 130×190 mm
Format: softcover
Year: 2017

The book collects for the first time the writings of Gavin Wade and explores a practice that he refers to as ‘upcycling’, a process of stealing, copying, recycling, using other texts and artworks, and responding to existing conditions.

‘Upcycle this book. Rewrite it as a manifesto. Steal and take and copy and change this book. Upcycle these twenty-six texts just as I have upcycled so many other texts and responded to many sets of existing conditions. Or unlike I have.’

Some of the texts are artworks – manifestoes, stories, statements – others are interviews, discussions, proposals.

‘I made this manual for survival with many friends and collaborators – James Langdon, Céline Condorelli, Paul Conneally, Herbert Bayer, Duncan McLaren, Paul O’Neill, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Frederick Kiesler, Gordon Dalton, Åbäke, David Burrows, El Lissitzky, Abbie Hoffman, R. Buckminster Fuller, Juneau Projects, and a host of other willing and unwitting accomplices, dead or alive.’

Upcycle this Book consists of twenty-six chapters, twelve constructivist drawings using the alphabet as a motif, and an introduction by David Burrows. It is co-published by Book Works and Stroom den Haag, in an edition of 1,000 copies, 2 colour throughout, with 12 colour illustrations. Designed by James Langdon.