Artist’s book consisting of approximately 1kg of waste packaging originally used for assorted consumer goods. With a handwritten explanatory postscript and an original cover drawing of a man feeding a duck (“Ente” is German for duck, but can also mean ‘hoax,’ a borrowing from the French ‘canard.’) Epigraph reads: “Was draussen drum ist, wie auch drinnen drin” (What’s on the outside is in the inside). Voss credits himself as editor (“Herausgegeben von Jan Voss & Co.) of this self-published work. As the rear cover text explains, publication began in 1989 as a continuing unlimited edition; date of this copy’s publication is thus necessarily approximate. This copy is numbered 20, a relatively early example, and the discarded packaging constituting the book’s pages all appears decidedly ’80s (e.g. the cardboard reliquary that once held the legendary Sword of Omens from Thundercats.) The back cover also indicates that copies could at one time be ordered through Boekie Woekie, an Amsterdam artists’ bookstore co-founded by Voss in 1986 as an artists’ collective, then specializing exclusively in handmade and self-published or small-press artists’ books. At least 34 copies of Dokumente were produced, each unique. OCLC locates only one holding (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).

$300