Born out of a reflection on the nature of images and their nocturnal vocation, Better in the Dark than His Rider is both a fable and a survival guide. The collected work by Francesco Merlini spans different years, possibly quite distant from one other; shot in all four continents, his pictures reveal the unique perspective of someone who, like a sleepwalker guided by ghosts, seeks for something nameless. The title is drawn, almost literally, from a 19th century manual of optics. The original sentence – “[…] much better in the dark than his rider” – refers to a horse’s night vision compared to a human’s.
The selected sequence of pictures unravels around the transitional stage between wakefulness and sleep, engaging with hypnagogia as a sensory yet dreamlike mode of semiconscious representation. Images make up mind’s psychic contents. If in dreams self-consciousness is suspended and images look real to the extent that we are sleeping, when dozing we can consciously guide them because partially aware that we are dreaming. Stated otherwise, in lucid dreams we know we are faced with the contents of our imagination, whose edges appear hallucinatory. Dreaming is a perpetual state we do experience both asleep and awake. Thanks to imagination, the dream matter turns into the mind’s real object again.

23,5×31 cm
Hard cover with embossing
Offset UV
80 pages
Paper:
Munken Lynx Rough 150 g/m²
Fedrigoni Sirio Nero 140 g/m²
Wibalin Natural Petal

Collage - Laura McMorrow
Tomber dans l'escalier - Jasper Sebastian Stürup
Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel
Halogénure #04
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
Flynn zine # 1 - Flynn Maria Bergmann
Bande Annonce - Cinéma & Bande Dessinée - Coll.
Ellipse - Ismail Alaoui-Fdili
Idoine & Antonin Giroud-Delorme
Norovirus - Orgie en mers chaudes - Claude Grétillat
Philonimo - Le Lézard de Heidegger - Alice Brière-Haquet, Sophie Vissière
La peinture c'est comme les pépites - Pierre Yves-Hélou + Tirage
Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms - Katy Deepwell (ed.)
Entretiens – Jérôme Dupeyrat
Soleil, eau, vent : vers l'autonomie énergétique - Delphine Bauer
Donne des racines au loup-garou & fais courir l'arbre la nuit - Pauline Barzilaï
Dada à Zurich – Le mot et l’image (1915-1916)Hugo Ball
Roven n°5
Aurore Colbert - Marie Mons
Darkest Night - Joel Van Audenhaege
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
Poèmes - Yvonne Rainer
Oblikvaj 5 - Vingt-deux plongées profondes - Aude Barrio, Ensemble Batida
Optical Sound 3
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Dessins pour Rugir - Virginie Rochetti
Strates - Else Bedoux
9 octobre 1977 - Roberto Varlez
il y avait une ville - Laeticia L'Heureux
A l'origine - Anne-Émilie-Philippe
Dédale - Laurent Chardon
Promenade au pays de l'écriture - Armando Petrucci
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
Lavalse des tambours - Paul Rey
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi 































