The Book To Come



Wednesday 31 January 2018


‘72/49’, proposed by Lucía Onzain


6pm / Bulegoa z/b, Bilbao / Session seventeen, ‘The Book to Come’ – Reading Group.

A space of seventy-two years separates Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard and Broodthaers’ Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (1897 to 1969, respectively). Broodthaers, a writer, “abandoned” writing to work as an artist on a book by another writer, Mallarmé, who prolifically investigated the concept of the book and forms of reading in search of the Total Work (or Book).

John Berger’s father, Tilda Swinton’s father.

Don Giovanni as an example of what is not spoken but is there; El Burlador de Sevilla (The Trickster of Seville, circa 1612, attributed to Tirso de Molina), where the cashier slips from “d” to “s” in a sort of 17th century “post truth” or alternative fact.

The last session of The Book to Come will use these issues to take a look at the idea of transmission.


Lucia Onzain (Bilbao, 1964) was trained at the Fine Art Faculty, Barcelona, Universidad del País Vasco, EHU/UPV, Accademia de Roma, New York University and Arteleku, Donostia-San Sebastián. She considers art to be not only a way of life, but a form of knowledge in which exegesis is increasingly necessary; and this is why she is a member of The Book To Come reading group.