Exit Music Lights

Exit Music Lights (Numbered Editions #2) 

‘Exit Music Lights’ is a publication about theatricality, explored by a range of artists across forms. Art directed and designed by Clare Bell, this publication features contributions by visual artists, writers, and theatre-makers, who explore theatre, performance, and the idea of the ‘black out’ in a variety of ways.

This publication was assembled remotely, (due to the constraints imposed by the pandemic), using Zoom for a set of conversations between the contributing artists, sharing digital files, and collaborating virtually thereafter. This is work which was generated during a period of creative and logistical interruption, disruption, and provisionality; a set of conditions that have informed and shaped the design of the resulting publication.

It follows a cross-form discursive initiative, Studio Interruptions, a collaboration between IMMA and Project Arts Centre, organised by Nathan O’Donnell and Lívia Páldi in 2020, during which contributing artists came together to discuss practice, process, and collaboration.

Contributing artists: Sarah Browne, Suza Husse, Phillip Connaughton, Ronan Phelan, Katie Davenport, Aoibheann Greenan, Niamh McCann, Richard Walsh, and Christodoulos Makris.

‘Exit Music Lights’ is the second in a series of Numbered Editions, an experimental imprint for artists’ writing, co-edited by Nathan O’Donnell and Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll. It was supported by a Literature Project Award from the Arts Council of Ireland.

This publication follows the format of the first Numbered Editions, inspired by Archigram Nine (1970), stapled along its cover’s right-hand edge, allowing for the viewing of multi-pages and page spreads simultaneously, in a variety of folded configurations. In this instance, the format allowed for a sense of provisionality and theatricality, each contributor’s work appearing on its own stage, with its own orientation, yet allowing for a ‘theatre in the round’ perspective of each artist’s response. A set of punctuating ‘black outs’ (design interventions printed in white on black backdrops) marked the intervals between the acts. The flexibility of the fold accentuated the performativity of this arrangement.

The colour palette (Pantone Black U, Pantone Black 5 U, and silver metallic Pantone 10262) again drew on the theme of ‘black outs’ and the presence, or absence, of the materiality of theatricality: darkness, brightness and shades between the two. (Artist Katie Davenport also provided a bookmark made from mirrored iridescent material which reflects this underlying concept.)

— Nathan O'Donnell

Printed by Print Media Services

Size: 155 x 247 mm

The paper specified is Munken Bookwove at 80gsm.

Cover: G.F Smith Colourplan Ebony 270 gsm

Printing: Print Media Services