Blind Book Market

Planning, Identity, Experience, Environment

Sapporo International Art Festival
2014

Blind Book Market (also known as "Burama") was a book exchange project held at the 2014 Sapporo International Art Festival. People put a cover on a beloved book to hide its contents, and wrote their name and thoughts about the book on said cover. They then donated that book in exchange for another that had been similarly prepared; people picked books based solely on what the donors had chose to express on the new covers.

The venue was made to look like a market by organizing its space with exclusively cardboard boxes: the books were vegetables, and the donors were farmers.

Using the Sapporo Ekimae-dori underground walkway as the venue, many books full of readers' memories went from person to person, repeating the cycle of meetings and partings as they were traded. In the 72 days from July 19th to September 28th, 2800 books were exchanged during the project.

Project: Blind Book Market
Associate Curator: Yukiko Shikata
Planning: COMMUNE
Creative Direction: Ryo Ueda
Project Manager: Asami Hosokawa, Shinobu Kajita [Sapporo International Art Festival Office]
Collaborators: Rie Inuokuma, Tomita Tetsushi, Go Nakamura, Hayato Ogura
Volunteer Operations: Odori University
Art Direction: Ryo Ueda
Design: Ryo Ueda, Airi Takiz
Illustration: Anzu Omukai
Copywriting: Sari Yanase [Aura]
Spatial Design: Mangekyo
Lighting: Iris
Plants: e/d, A. Landscape Design
Printing Direction: Hatamoto Printing, Fukamiya, Fuji Film Global Graphic Systems
Cardboard: Godoyoki Co., Morita
Pre-event Banquet: Ranobe Project
Year: 2014
Client: Sapporo International Art Festival

Awards:
Sapporo ADC 2014 Poster Category Selection / Poster
Sapporo ADC 2014 General Graphics Category Selection / Cardboard Boxes
Sapporo ADC 2014 General Graphics Category Selection / Book Cover Wrap
Sapporo ADC 2014 Environment & Signage Category Selection / Venue Design

Featured in:
Echoes of Urban Form: People and Nature (The Document of Sapporo International Art Festival 2014)
[Heibonsha / Japan] (2014)
MdN Designers File 2015 [MdN Corporation / Japan] (2015)
MdN Designers File 2016 [MdN Corporation / Japan] (2016)