A corpus of contemporary Roman inscriptions, which testifies the importance of language—institutional as well as popular—in the collective space of the streets (artist's book).
Come vanno le cose? [How are things going?] is a collection of 1,512 inscriptions found on walls in Rome between September 2014 and February 2015, which could be attributed to a single person whose identity remains unknown. This collection displays a variety of signs, which are here deconstructed, transcribed and categorized in types of form and content, revealing a particular use of writing: conscious, obsessive, articulated and wild. Come vanno the cose? is a corpus of contemporary Roman inscriptions, which testifies the importance of language—institutional as well as popular—in the collective space of the streets, where freely scribbled messages can be read on the same walls as carved ones ad vitam æternam in stone.
Published following the residency of Charles Mazé & Coline Sunier at Académie de France à Rome—Villa Medici, on the occasion of the exhibition Teatro delle Esposizioni #6.
Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé are Swiss and French
graphic and type designers. They lived in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy from 2008 to 2018, and are now based in France (Marseille and Paris). They were fellows at the French Academy in Rome—Villa Medici in 2014-2015, and are now graphic designers in residency at CAC Brétigny and CRAC Alsace. Charles is part of the teaching staff of
Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT) in Nancy and Coline of Institut supérieur des arts de Toulouse (isdaT). They cofounded the publishing structures <o> future <o> in 2009 and
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ in 2020.
