Bachelor Thesis project
Politecnico di Milano
Professors: Mario Piazza, Marco Pea, Luca Pitoni
Academic Year: 2013/2014
BRIEF
the design of a visual book based on one of the Beat Generation’s literary masterpieces
KEYWORDS
journey - profundness - inner self
The Yage Letters Redux is a collection of correspondences and other writings written by William S. Burroughs
and Allen Ginsberg from 1953 to 1963 and published in 1963 by City Lights Books. The book talks about a journey
to Colombia that the authors made to research the yage, a liana which produces hallucinogenic effects.
The story shows a continuous research of the inner profundness and the distinctive rough frank language
of the authors.
The aim of the project was starting from this text to design a visual book, a system of integrated elements capable
of heightening the reading experience through all the book parts.
I focused on the journey theme, which is present as a geographic journey and an imaginary/personal one
(caused by the drug), that provokes the psycho-physical destruction of the protagonists. This led me
to the definition of the concept: "the passage from the geographic journey to the inner one until the reaching
of profundness". It is not by chance that the yage is known as the soul vein. I wanted also to emphasise the particular
beat prose of the authors through all the book pieces. The project was going to explore the materiality of the book
as an object in all its shapes.
RESPONSE
I have chosen a woolen yarn, very similar to the yage vein, to express the passage from the geographic journey
through the Colombian cities to a inner one caused by the drug assumption.
The geographic journey is represented through three maps that show the way from Panama, the first step of the trip,
to the Putumayo, the region in which Burroughs experiments the yage.
Starting from the graphic mark of the geographic journey, the inner one is represented by six passages in which
the woolen yarn frays until the complete opening of the fibres, representing the total psychophysical destruction
of the characters. In addition, I represented the visions produced by the liana which would have accompanied
the reading.
the geographic journey representation
the inner journey representation
the visions representation
the coptic binding to show the yarn theme upfront
the choice of a wooden cover to evoke the yage bark
a material paper to evoke the rough language of the authors
chromatic backgrounds to underline the psychedelic aspect
