The Man Who Wanted to Encompass the Entire World. A Lexicon

EXPECTED JANUARY 2027!
Pre-order will follow

This publication is an example of the 'artists' writing' genre that takes the form of a lexicon but aiming to subvert its conventional boundaries and dismantle its rules through unapologetic artiness, designiness and creative writing. Guided by the titular Man Who Wants to Encompass the Entire World, Zamojski embarks on an audacious quest: to map everything that falls within the reach of human sight, touch, and intellect—from the intricate anatomy of a single letter to the grand, shared architecture of our cosmos. Each entry is paired with a drawing: a minimalist, witty gesture that hovers on the verge of a sign. Composed of precise lines and spare geometric shapes, these illustrations pay homage to the pioneer avant-garde—especially its Eastern European figures, for whom word and image weighed equally in both poetic manifestos and rigorous theory.

One day, the Man set out to encompass the World. A perilous, daunting task—how does one encompass such a World? How, through a mere line, a circle, or a patch of black, can you portray a view of the cosmos of things? How to convey the weight of a word and the horizon of its semantic depth? How to reveal and name time?—so pondered the Man, stretching his arms wider and wider, patiently crouched over an earwig and a spider, while casting his gaze up toward the sun. Yet he held this quiet awareness: "The world is only comprehensible at a point in time. Never before, never after.”

Edited by Honza Zamojski and Magdalena Ziółkowska