FAS Publishing SE

In a world saturated by impressions and (mis)information, more or less interesting; we do not wish to add any more of that kind. Instead we ask questions that relate to visual, existential and conceptual issues. Observation and amplification of minimal or not so obvious course of events is often the starting point for the publisher's artists' books.

FAS Publishing SE is a small independent book publisher run by the artists Carl Johan Erikson and Karl Johan Stigmark, it was founded in 2000. At the beginning the main focus was on audio works, from 2017 the publisher started publishing artists´ books. Recurring media in FAS Publishing SE are photography, text, sound, artists´ books and performance.

Carl Johan Erikson, The Fence, FAS Publishing SE, 2022 © Carl Johan Erikson

THE FENCE confronts both physical and mental boundaries. Through Erikson's black-and-white topographical panoramic photographs of a 72 km long fence, we follow the border of Denmark and Germany, from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea. The purpose of the fence, built by the Danish state in 2019, is to exterminate the wild boar in Denmark and to stop the aggressive African swine fever. Today wild boars are extinct in Denmark. In its strictly documentary form, Erikson's photographs allure the viewer with subtle visual qualities that is beyond and in front of the fence's physical presence. This, in combination with the graphic form of the book, also portrays the fence very idea of separation.

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Karl-Johan Stigmark, Eight Paper Events, FAS Publishing SE, 2020 © Karl-Johan Stigmark

Eight Paper Events is an artist book where the material is produced primarily to be shown in the format of a book.The book consists of eight parts, which in different ways shape events that emanate from the ontology of paper or its being. Here, in the introductory photographic series one can see visually beautiful excesses meet the documentation of the score On Paper - where the acoustics of specifically paper is portrayed. Performances from the rivers of Paris are then followed by a dissection of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Different paper qualities are also experimented with, where multi-paged fold-outs and statements are embedded into the cover page and the end sheet.

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In the book Jerusalemmodellen, skala 1:800 by Carl Johan Erikson portrays a model depicting Jerusalem AD 33. The model was built by Ingmar Eklöv, 75, in Hålland, Jämtland, 1989. In the book Ingmar describes how to build the foundation of the model.

” It’s of fiberglass-reinforced plastic made in two sections, which we then put together. We started with relief maps of Jerusalem today, adapted to the landscape of the day – meaning AD 33. Among other things, the Kidron Valley was 30 meters deeper than it is today and where Via Dolorosa passes the Valley of the Cheesemakers we had to make an adjustment of 20 meters based on the scale we were working with.”

The book creates displacements between different scales and perspectives – from snapshots to macro images – which create the conditions for different readings of the city as construction and conception. The photographs of the Jerusalem model – and the model in itself – give a sense of control and overview. A fiction in a complex unmanageable reality.

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