Mai-Thu Perret’s oeuvre is based on her on-going fiction project ‘The Crystal Frontier’, consisting of diary entries from a group of women starting a commune in an unspecified desert. ‘The Crystal Frontier’ functions as a vehicle for Perret to investigate activist communities of the past and their utopian credos and designs, and the place of those histories and ideals in current mythology and material culture. Perret uses the histories of radicalism to generate new objects such as banners, ceramics, and papier mache sculptures that are located in the aesthetics and design philosophies of historic utopian groups. Many of these projects are represented in this book, along with 40 pages from ‘The Crystal Frontier’. Perret also created a photo-collage series especially for the book.

The book is designed by Christoph Keller, with essays by Fabrice Stroun and Hamza Walker, and a conversation between Perret, Giovanni Carmine, and Paula van den Bosch.

Co-published with Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen; the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; and JRP/Ringier. — Publisher’s blurb.