Books and Projects
In May 2008, a rewritten selection of 50 end-of-world scenarios was published as a book by AW Bruna in the Netherlands: Exit Mundi, het einde van de wereld. De beste 50 scenario's. The book takes the formula of the website to the extremes: the scenarios are more carefully researched, and written with even more puns than the website. In The Netherlands, the book was quite successful, ending up in the non-fiction bestseller lists of 2008, selling out two editions and receiving a lot of praise in the press.
Meanwhile, Keulemans himself went on tour, talking about the end of the world in his own words, aided only by a powerpoint and a few simple gimmicks. The tour took him to most Dutch universities, several art festivals and other small venues.
At the '3 Oktober' festival in Leiden 2009, a group of artists adapted Exit Mundi into a show of scary tableaux vivants.
In June 2010, publisher dtv released the German edition of Exit Mundi, the book. The book got some good reviews, and even made it to the non-fiction bestseller charts of Der Spiegel. But more was to come, as German singer/artist Bela B took notice of the book. Bela decided to do an Exit Mundi audio book in German, which was released in early 2011 by Random House.
It turned Exit Mundi into a big success in Germany, especially when Bela B started touring Germany, Switzerland and Austria, reading and even singing from the book on stage.
"I was amazed", Keulemans recalled in a radio interview. "Suddenly, there was this nice, crazy German guy I had never heard of myself, reading Exit Mundi in front of all these sold-out theatres. Bela turned out to be the perfect guy to come up with the black humour gothic-punk-science-crossover style Exit Mundi always intended to be."
Read more about this topic: Exit Mundi.nl
Famous quotes containing the words books and, books and/or projects:
“In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“My main wish is to get my books into other people’s rooms, and to keep other people’s books out of mine.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)