Crossing Map, published by Thames & Hudson Ltd, London and New York, 1983. By arrangement with Edition Hansjorg Mayer, Stuttgart.
Crossing Map is an illustrated prose poem by Liliane Lijn in which a woman artist questions the meaning of time, enters the web of her memory, and transcending the present, discovers a world bearing no trace of man’s presence. There she meets the last man and is witness to the death of her society and the dematerialization of man. In this visionary book, word and image merge to create an organic whole which can be read as a work of fiction or philosophy, consulted as a divinatory text, recited as poetry or sung as an epic song cycle, or simply read through the continually changing flow of imagery.
Crossing Map explores the idea that the human mind is disposed of a vast supply of untapped energy. What would it be like, Lijn posits, to inhabit a world in which humans became light? Crossing is the point where meeting occurs. Meeting leads to exchange and that is the basis of all relationships.
Each book is unique because the artist entered the press, distributing the colours and varying the flow of inks throughout the printing. Crossing Map uses language as a mirror for our culture, avoiding the use of nouns and punctuation, and inventing a new prose structure.
Softback edition of 2000.
23 x 17 cm
160 pp, 150 illustrations.
ISBN 0-500-27291-3
