sonsbeek20→24 was all about labour. The quadrennial, which was established in Arnhem, The Netherlands, in the post-war period, was organised in 2020 by a curatorial team: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Aude Mgba, Zippora Elders, Amal Alhaag, and Krista Jantowski. For the first time, the project was planned to run over several years, accompanied by a set of publications. This reader contains academic and essayistic contributions, interviews and poems, carefully compiled and edited by editor Ibrahim Cissé. During my time at Werkplaats Typografie, which was entrusted with the design of sonsbeek20→24, I was asked to design the publication.

The lines printed and embossed on the cover show the paths leading through Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem, which gave the quadrennial its name. Based on the physical definition of work – force times distance – I have matched these walking paths with corresponding reading paths. Depending on the number of possible branches, the lines on the upper edges of the inner pages are being amplified, resembling the volume control on a stereo system. This is a reference to the “sonic ecologies” that were at the heart of sonsbeek20→24.

The reader can be ordered from Archive Books.

The catalogue “Force Times Distance. On Labour and its Sonic Ecologies”, designed by Marcus Wachter, is its companion publication.

sonsbeek20→24 came to a premature end when the curatorial team announced its collective resignation in 2021. According to their resignation statement, this was in response to untenable working conditions “shaped by the structural disregard, neglect, disrespect, mismanagement, sexism and institutional racism”.