What is an Apparatus?
“What is an Apparatus?” is a Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts 2024 Master of Arts student showcase catalogue, but it borrows its title from another, much more famous text by Giorgio Agamben. "I will call an apparatus", he writes, "literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviours, opinions, or discourses of living beings." Seen from this perspective, Agamben's work, like Foucault's, may be described as the identification and investigation of apparatuses, together with incessant attempts to find new ways to dismantle them.
Art, in its essence, I believe, is a rebellion against an apparatus – it can even be one of your own making.
the story
This 100-something-page catalogue had the tightest deadline I have ever had to work with. When one of my classmates, who was supposed to be putting the catalogue together, decided to disappear off the face of the earth the night before the deadline, I had to step up and create it from scratch in one night.
My wonderful classmate Magdalena posing for her “mugshot”
the concept
Art is a rebellion against the apparatus. An elegant battle against an institution, be it one created by society or by the innermost workings of your own brain.
With this in mind, I came up with a criminal-themed concept where I envisioned all of my classmates as criminals who have created their final major projects as rebellious acts against the system. We took pictures in the style of mug shots, and the layout design of the catalogue was heavily inspired by vintage case files, accompanied with typewriter fonts and redacted text blacked out in dark marker.
the result
Introduction & table of contents
Introduction page of the Tara Magazine project by Magdalena Jaroslavska
Contents – Tara Magazine by Magdalena Jaroslavska
Project Surreal Sentiments by Anna Timofeeva
QR code page for Nikhita Awal’s project
Final spread & acknowledgements
the process
The cover
Creating the cover of the catalogue was my favourite part of the project. I began by researching vintage criminal case files and their contents and then created a case file that would describe my classmates, the assignments, the university and the catalogue itself. I then printed this file, used a black marker to blackout some of the “redacted” text and scanned it again. I repeated this process until the scans looked distressed and old enough to feel like they had been found at the back of a forgotten filing cabinet. I then hand-drew the title, vectorised it and placed it on top of the scan.
The layout
The layout of the catalogue itself was inspired by case files as well. I used a combination of Helvetica and a slightly distressed typewriter font to achieve the desired effect. I also used royalty-free industrial drawings for the endpapers to visualise “the apparatus”. I was not allowed to edit most of the photographs, but on the ones that I could change, I used a halftone effect. In contrast with the black-and-white type, a bright pink colour is present throughout the catalogue, conveying the vivid, bright ideas of my classmates that rebel against the status quo.
See the full thing
Read through “What is an Apparatus?” below.
