Indoor Copenhagen

  • Wen Chen

Indoor Copenhagen is an Artists' Book project that explores the tangible memory in visual forms to document the experience in Copenhagen during the pandemic. It is a self-initiated project started during the Erasmus exchange programme at Royal Danish Academy (KADK) in Copenhagen, Denmark, in Spring 2020. I finalised the design and produced it at my home university, London College of Communication (LCC, UAL) in London, UK, in Spring 2021. During the production, I had immense support from the Print Finishing and Book Arts Workshop at LCC to experiment with a wide variety of printing techniques, such as Lithography, Risography, Thermography, Duplex and many more. The content consists of 4 elements for the book which are portraiture photographs, sketches, the text of the stories, and a map of Copenhagen, which are highly relevant to my experience in Copenhagen. The portrait is about people in their 'hygge' mood at home. The sketch is an alternative way of describing space, learnt from KADK's workshop. The written story is meant to create a conversation between participants and myself, in various languages. The map is to summarise the experience visually and structurally to tell the story in data. This is a personal project that aims to deliver a better scenario for those who want to know the stories. With different elements, the stories can be read in various ways and interpreted in your way based on your personal experience. I hope the book can resonate with the feeling of the good old days in every reader's heart.

↑ Flat cover with spine on the sketch poster. The map on the cover is printed with Lithography in silver ink. The routes on the map are printed with Risography in yellow ink. The cover is duplex with Munken off-white and GF Smith Colorplan Factory Yellow paper.
↑ Spread opened on the map poster. The book block is printed with reprography in full colour. The poster is printed with inkjet.
↑ Skimming animation of the whole book. Hand model: María Gómez-Acebo.
↑ Binding and printing details of the book.
↑ The folded poster with Copenhagen map and spatial sketches.