Born to be Alive by Peter Malutzki
"’Born to Be Alive’ could be described as a collage novel. It is assembled from the opening passages of the following 18 novels: Julian Barnes, ‘Talking It Over’; Daniel Defoe, ‘The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders’ and ‘The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’; Charles Dickens, ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘Great Expectations’; Jeffrey Eugenides, ‘Middlesex’; Jonathan Safran Foer, ‘Everything is Illuminated’; Max Frisch, ‘Stiller’; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Dichtung’ und ‘Wahrheit’; Robert Graves,’ I, Claudius’; Nicole Krauss, ‘The History of Love’; Frank McCourt, ‘Angela’s Ashes’; Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’, ‘The Spectacles’ and ‘William Wilson’; J. D. Salinger, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’; Muriel Spark, ‘Robinson’; Mark Twain, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’.
"I joined the beginnings of the novels in such a way that they created a cohesive text, in which the passages of differing lengths refer to one another and keep spinning out a narrative thread. I used the text passages in their original language; two are in German, the rest are in English. All 18 novels are written in the first person and their protagonists introduce themselves at the beginning, telling us their names and usually also where and when they were born. Inspired by this, I illustrated the novels’ figures with photographs of myself at different ages. For three female characters, I used a photograph of my mother at age 15.” - Peter Malutzki:
Processes, Dimensions, and Edition Information
Flörsheim, Main, Germany: Peter Malutzki, 2021. Edition of 30.
24.6/17.5 cm; 48 pages. Photos edited in Photoshop. Printed on Bamboo Awagami Paper with archival pigments (Epson SureColor P7500). Text letterpress in Unger Fraktur type. Cloth-over-board with front title label. In slipcase. Numbered and signed by the artist.