Tomás Saraceno
From Arachnophobia to Arachnophilia , 2022
11 3/4 x 16 1/2
x 17/16
in
This hand-cut, hand-bound volume is intended to draw attention to spiders, their webs, and our shared environment through the participatory form of the pop-up book. It unfolds in five hand-cut scenes, revealing a spider attached by a filament to its web; a spider and its web in a museum building, not far from a human spectator; a constellation connected to web-like threads, as cosmic arachnid architecture; an enchanted cobwebbed forest; and a layered image of diving bell spiders, beings that spend most of their lives underwater. As the planet faces the mass extinction of spiders, insects, and other invertebrates, with enormous environmental consequences, Saraceno’s project encourages new threads of connectivity to move us from arachnophobia to arachnophilia.
Saraceno designed and produced this volume in collaboration with book artist Chisato Tamabayashi, in London; Studio Tomás Saraceno and the Arachnophilia community in Berlin; and May Castleberry, editor of Contemporary Editions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, who organized this publication for MoMA’s Library Council.
Tamabayashi cut and engineered all five pop-up scenes including images of a spider attached to a filament and a web, a museum interior, a constellation, a cobweb-covered forest, and underwater spiders. Jasmin Schenone and Studio Tomás Saraceno sewed the cobwebs on the museum page and the constellation page. Four of the five pop-up scenes were printed by silkscreen by Darren van der Merwe, London as well as by Mark Stonehouse, London. Leslie Miller designed and printed the text and the tarot card on the cover by letterpress. Miller, with Studio Tomás Saraceno, designed the cover, which was printed by silkscreen on cloth by One-Way Screen Printing in Northampton, Mass. Mark Tomlinson bound the book by hand in Northampton, Mass. Additional cobweb “bookmarks” were made in wood and paper by E.R. Butler & Co and Ted Muehling.
