Me, Le Corbusier, and a friend

A book taking 43 minutes and 240 pages. A printed book activated by a sound space and your hands. The audio leads you through a printed archive of photographs while we follow a staged story and dialogue of two young people encountering themselves during a seven-month trip to “the Orient” in 1911.

The audio component of the book is a ‘dialogue’ between the two protagonists—a playful mise-en-scène by artist David Bergé—in which August (the friend), and Charles-Édouard (who will later become the architect Le Corbusier) build formative experiences with the tools they share: a camera and a guidebook for Westerners.

The visual cargo of Me, Le Corbusier, and a friend consists of the photographs they took on this trip using a single, shared camera and glass plates—a physical effort that is hard to imagine today. The plates’ imperfections create a sense of primitive authenticity, of an archaic world emerging through layers of time.

This book offers two unique ways to experience it: privately, through your own phone and headphones, or collectively, as part of a live, participatory performance. In the group setting, 20–30 people engage with the book simultaneously over speakers—a shared choreography of page turning, fingers tracing lines, or voices softly echoing printed words. In this collective rhythm, attention shifts—from images and representation to your hands and ears going through the book. Sensing the weight of a page, comparing two images, an embodied connection between looking, listening, your hands, and the book object. 

Me, Le Corbusier, and a friend (2025) is the third iteration in the Time Based Editions series, directed by David Bergé and Ant Hampton. Series supported by KANAL Centre Pompidou (Brussels) and Platform 0090 (executive financial management). Time Based Editions is an imprint of PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPANDED PUBLISHING ATHENS.

credits
Me, Le Corbusier, and a friend
240 pp, 43 min
ISBN 9789464772678

Concept, writing, sequence: David Bergé
Photography: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret and August Klipstein
used with permission of the Fondation Le Corbusier

Book design: Roland Brauchli
Sound design: Martina Ruggeri
Voices: Sam Porritt, David Bergé
Sound engineering: Filippo Brancadoro

photo-enhancement: David Bergé
photo-retouching: Flavio Milano
cover photo: Tülay Atak
indexing: Aslı Özdoyuran
copy-editing spoken text: Daniel Lacasta Fitzsimmons
proofreading printed text: Sara Yaoska Herrera Dixon

advice: Ant Hampton, Karen Marta, Aemilia Papaphilippou, Liwaa Yazji
executive production: Claudia Pastori, David Bergé
executive financial management: Valerie De Visscher / Platform 0090

Published in 2025 by Time Based Editions
Format: 16,7×24 cm
ISBN: 9789464772678
Images: 121

distribution: Time Based Editions (world) and ARTBOOK / D.A.P. (North-America)
Book info
Performance info

Thanks to Furkan Ark, Mesut Arslan, Tülay Atak, Todd Bradway, Hans Bryssinck, Federico De Matteis, Dimitris & Anestis, Menelaos Karamaghiolis, Sofia Kouloukouri, Alysée Le Druillenec, Musikarama Athens, George Papamattheakis, Iva Radivojević, Marcelo Rezende, Urok Shirhan. Continued from a project conceived with Elke Krasny (2011)

With support from
KANAL Centre Pompidou,
Platform 0090 and C-Takt, Antwerp, Neerpelt
Spring and Ammodo Foundation, Utrecht,
Flanders State of the Art and Flemish Community Commission, Brussels.
Research support: Winternights, Maastricht