RZLBD Letters

With a vintage typewriter in hand, Reza Aliabadi (who works under the pseudonym RZLBD) revives the lost craft of letter writing. With his ongoing project RZLBD Letters, he revisits the capacity of the letter as a medium and a manual typewriter as an instrument beyond their utilitarian purpose. For over two years, the Toronto-based artist and architect has submitted himself to typing over 200 imaginary, heartfelt pages to historical artists who have inspired him deeply. Paying homage to figures including Yoko Ono, Donald Judd, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and even Pi, the language on the surface at first glance may seem familiar; yet, looking closer, only each artist can fully decipher the meaning of their particular letter. While some letters only took a couple of hours (writing to figure Pi, for instance), others took 365 days.

Josh Owen is a designer and professor of Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. His work has been featured at the Venice Biennale and is in the permanent design collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Chicago Athenaeum, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Taiwan Design Museum, among others. Significant manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe produce his home/design, furniture, and office products, which are regularly featured in design books, periodicals and in critical design discourse. Owen’s “Build” and “Meta” design academic projects have successfully pioneered integrated practice pedagogy for the field of Industrial Design.

R. Roger Remington is the Vignelli Distinguished Professor of Design Emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He is an experienced teacher, scholar and author with critical interests in graphic design history, research, archiving and interpretation of historical documents.