Tools #6
210 x 290 mm, 248 pages
Paris, France (French and English-language)
Annual
Editor-in-chief: Clémentine Berry
Art direction: Twice studio
Graphic design: Malou Messien
This year’s edition of Tools is here! Celebrating the act of making—the combination of hand and mind that underlies any act of manufacture—the magazine concerns the meeting of art and science, mixing techniques old and new.
Like MacGuffin, this is a magazine that uses the seemingly prosaic to unlock bigger stories of human endeavour. The method under the microscope this time takes a more abstract approach, ‘To Blow,’ referencing the air we breathe, bouts of momentum and enthusiasm, and also tapping into a myriad of debates where ‘air has become as political as it is personal.’
This issue opens with an energetic series of high–gloss photos featuring quotidian objects fashioned from balloons, including swords, kettles, scissors and lightbulbs, swiftly juxtaposed by Célia Houdart’s account of commonplace breathlessness caused by the hostile air quality we are forecast to experience as a result of the climate crisis. Elsewhere, Lilian Froger delves into the history of inflatable structures touching on both countercultural and corporate constructions, designs inspired by the space race, and the dawn of PVC; and Tristan Piérard discovers the archaic tradition of crystal glassblowing in Saint-Louis on a Tools field trip accompanied by photographer Jean-Marie Binet.