Die Enzyklopädie des Zarten [The Encyclopaedia of Tenderness]
Book | 2014
Funded by the Women’s Promotion Fund
The »Enzyklopädie des Zarten« [Encyclopaedia of Tenderness] is a compendium of the common and the curious, of phenomena from the humanities and the natural sciences, and of artistic works in pursuit of the concept of tenderness. The journey takes us to places we may at first never have thought to look. The collection is compiled and ordered in an encyclopaedic format, with all its structural characteristics.
The reduction of the individual topics to the literary structure of the articles, the flexible and alluring interweaving of the described objects through the system of cross references and the hierarchy-flattening arrangement of all the research aspects into an alphabetic structure gently draw the reader deeper into the confounding concept that is tenderness, striving to make it more tangible at a leisurely pace. The research project included a call for tenders in which fine artists could submit works with a specific relation to the concept of tenderness, thus creating a comprehensive archive of artistic approaches to the topic. This made it possible to see the relevance of this concept, specifically in the production and reception of works of fine art.