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

MENU メニュー - Wataru Tominaga
Il est si difficile de trouver le commencement - Helen Thorington
Tanière de lune - Maria-Mercé Marçal
La grande surface de réparation - Gilles Pourtier
Dédale - Laurent Chardon
Pénurie - Zivo, Jérôme Meizoz
Critique d'art n°56
Manuel pour formes et constructions nomades - Julien Rodriguez
À partir de n°1 - Coll.
Artzines #12 Provo Special
Génération dakou - Yann Jun + CD
Comic Book (Untitled) - Stéphanie Leinhos
Retour d'y voir - n° 3 & 4 - Mamco
Cruiser l'utopie – L'après et ailleurs de l'advenir queer - José Esteban Muñoz
Débris N°2 - Théo Garnier Greuez
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 3 - Claire Pedot
il y avait une ville - Laeticia L'Heureux
Tchat - Gary Colin
Gruppen n°13 - Collectif
Jean-Jacques a dit - Angèle Douche
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
Der Erste Rotkehlchen - Le livre
La mémoire en acte - Quarente ans de création musicale
16 x 421 - Lorraine Druon
Bruits - Emmanuel Madec
Optical Sound 2
Objets Minces - Collectif
Eurob0ys Crysis - Massimiliano Bomba, Leon Sadler, Yannick Val Gesto
Spécimen Typographique : No Ko - Loris Pernoux
Inframince et hyperlié - Philippe Lipcare
Dada à Zurich – Le mot et l’image (1915-1916)Hugo Ball
Morph - Camilo García A.
Les glaciers - Lorraine Druon
Du Fennec au Sahara - Guillaume Pinard
Hobo Nickel - Damien Sauvage
Il était deux fois - Gary Colin
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Un essai sur la typographie - Eric Gill
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Rue Englelab, La révolution par les livres - Iran 1979 - 1983 - Hannah Darabi
Flynn zine # 1 - Flynn Maria Bergmann
Soleil, eau, vent : vers l'autonomie énergétique - Delphine Bauer
Radio-Art - Tetsuo Kogawa
Le Choix du peuple - Nicolas Savary, Tilo Steireif 































