Moleskine’s Infinite Writing

Artist Bili Bidjocka and curator Simon Njami are encouraging us to celebrate the 3,500 year-old invention of handwriting by bringing some sentimentality and awareness to the possible disintegration of the written word.

The pair have been traveling the world with their project, Ecriture Infinie (or Infinite Writing), since the project’s inception in Japan in 2006. Sponsored by Moleskine, the project comprises of eight giant, blank-paged notebooks, and people are encouraged to participate in this analogue interactive project by writing in the books as if it were the last words they would write by hand. According to the project’s statement, “the focus is no so much on the words, but on the gesture, the flow of the pen on paper”.

The project aims to make art out of something we may take for granted: our own handwriting. Our society is becoming more and more focussed on technology, and therefore most of our writing is done using word processors and blog websites now. After a book has been filled, it is sealed and hidden in a “secret” location to be discovered in years’ time. Acting as a literary time capsule, the ultimate question that Bidjocka and Njami are posing is: will those who discover the notebooks in the future be able to decipher the content?

Details

• Art by

  Bili Bidjocka, Simon Njami