The project revisits the 1950s magazine feature Asahi Picture News (APN) as a historically significant yet under-examined model of collaborative image-making and media-based exhibition. Focusing on the Japanese postwar art collective Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop), the project explores how assemblages of intermedia imagery and typographic elements were woven across print and design, using the format of a popular magazine to test new relations between authorship, publics, and aesthetic form.
The publication aims to reframe APN not simply as a postwar curiosity, but as a dispersed, transdisciplinary mode of publishing that resonates with contemporary questions of media, access, and authorship. Drawing from earlier ZHdK research phases—including the 2018 DFA-based open-call workshop APN. Thinking Out Loud and the design investigationElements of APN (2024)—the project culminates in an edited volume, co-developed with Andreas Koller (DDE) and published in 2026. The book combines facsimile material, historical essays, and newly commissioned texts to trace the layered visual, conceptual, and cultural strategies embedded in APN.
My interest lies in examining how such transdisciplinary practices—situated at the intersection of print culture, fine arts, architecture, and design—speak to broader dynamics of postwar visual production and circulation. How did APN negotiate the shifting roles of media in shaping public experience? What forms of collaboration and authorship were made visible—or invisible—through its layouts and editorial choices? And how might these historical constellations inform the way we work with image-based media today?
The project integrates a visual research component in collaboration with ETH Zurich’s IVIA Lab, where computational tools assist in the formal analysis of layout and composition. These methods, however, remain secondary to a historiographic approach grounded in material sensitivity and archival ethics. Rather than embracing AI as a solutionist tool, the project tests its limits as a visual aid and reflects critically on the implications of applying machine vision to historical materials.
Underlying the project is a broader commitment to methodological accountability: to how we engage with images, with archives, and with each other across disciplinary and geographic divides. These concerns also shape the publication process, informed by ongoing dialogue with Japanese researchers and contributors versed in art, media and print history. The editorial framework reflects this plurality, with attention to representing the diversity of those engaging with this material today and ensuring balance among contributing authors.
Rather than proposing a single authoritative reading of Jikken Kōbō’s work, APN あぷん UNBOUND opens a shared space of inquiry—attentive to intermedia strategies, to questions of access and voice, and to the politics of visual historiography itself.
Place and dates: January 2025 to November 2025 (mainly in Zurich, with a visit to Tokyo)
Project partner / cooperations: Andreas Koller (guest lecturer/junior researcher DDE, editor/publisher)