Following a rambling conversation with his friend Robert Filliou, Daniel Spoerri one day mapped the objects lying at random on the table in his room, adding a rigorously scientific description of each. These objects subsequently evoked associations, memories and anecdotes from both the original author and his friends …
I recently bought a copy of Spoerri and friend’s artist’s book, An Anecdoted Topography of Chance. The first edition dates from 1966, but that was based on a version that passed as the catalogue for an exhibition by Spoerri in 1962. This 2016 version has a footnote to the title (in the lower right of the cover) that reads,
* Probably definitive re-anecdoted version
The work is essentially a collection of annotations to a map of the dishes and other things that were on Spoerri’s sideboard in his apartment. You start with the map, that looks like an archaeological diagram, and follow anecdotes about the items that are, in turn, commented on by the other authors. Hypertext before hypertext.
While the work seems to have been driven by the chance items on the small table, there is also an autobiographical element where these items give the authors excuses to tell about their intersecting lives.
I wonder if this would be an example of a work of art of information.