Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda Bad Driver, 2024
49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine and galerie michèle didier are delighted to present a new stage in the Bad Driver editorial project, in French, by artists Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda.
Specifications
Book in one volume
8.27 x 5.12 in
456 pages, 120 gr. Munken Pure Rough paper
French translation by Pierre Testard
Proofreading by Lorane Marois
Graphic design by Raymond Aubry
Print and bound by Snel Graphics sa
Production
Limited to 8 copies and 2 A.P. and 2 copies H.C.
Commissioned by 49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine
Produced and published by mfc-michèle didier in 2024
The English version of Bad Driver was exhibited at Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York, in 2021.
Narrative structures are at the heart of the work of Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda.
Concerned with cultural systems and the links between fiction, truth and the construction of reality, they explore and use new artistic territories with an often destabilising sense of humour.
The anthropological approach is omnipresent in their work, and Bad Driver is no exception. Its main text is constructed in part on the model of William Burroughs' cut-up, bringing together facts, anecdotes and commonplaces based on Chinese texts and culture, but in such a way as to “direct the sinister and absurd stereotypes about Asians circulating in the United States and the Western world back to those who conceived them”. Throughout its pages, Bad Driver summarizes facts, anecdotes, and commonplaces about Chinese and Japanese history and culture, both scholarly and popular.
To mark the occasion, Bad Driver includes new interpretative texts commissioned by the authors. But, like The Tibetan Book of the Dead (The Bardo Thödol), it is ostensibly just a book.