Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard ('A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance') is an 1897 poem by the French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. The poem combines free verse with unusual typographic layout which many observers have argued anticipates the interest in graphic design and concrete poetry in the 20th century. Coup de Dés (Collection) is an attempt to curate and contextualise the numerous iterations, editions and re-editions of the poem (first published in book form in 1914), including those attributed to Mallarmé as well as those appropriated by artists as new works in their own right.
The collection comprises publications from various genres which feature the word-constellation 'Coup de Dés' on their cover. Constellations of words on a spread and the interplay between the text fragments and the surrounding white of the page – similar to the way a constellation of stars interacts with the sky – was a metaphor explicitly used and introduced into literature by Mallarmé. This richly illustrated book contextualises the perception and appropriations of his masterpiece through critical essays written by the editor, Michalis Pichler, and leading scholars such as Annette Gilbert, Craig Dworkin, Luc Boltanski/Arnaud Esquerre and Ryoko Sekiguchi.
Michalis Pichler is a Berlin-based artist, primarily operating independently of the commercial gallery system, and one of the founders and organisers of Miss Read and Conceptual Poetics Day. Pichler’s works often make use of found and pre-used material. He treats pages as canvases and canvases as pages for works of art.
