What tools can we adopt when words are no longer sufficient to describe what surrounds us? How can we construct new languages and new imaginaries capable of giving form to the experience, uncertainty, and complexity of our present? How do artists and designers use the tools of their practices to question reality, deconstruct dominant narratives and propose alternative perspectives?

When Words Fail weaves together the works and writings of more than 100 artists, designers, scholars and thinkers who, through different approaches, languages and sensibilities, explore the possibility of generating knowledge through image, gesture, form and action. Each contribution reclaims the value of practice-based research, presenting making as a tool to explore how we live together, teach one another and create meaning in times of uncertainty and urgency.

What does it mean today to produce knowledge through practice, at a historical moment when the boundaries between discipline and action, between theory and project, between art and life are becoming increasingly blurred? 

With texts by Nida Abdullah, Matteo Antoniazzi, Noemi Biasetton, Nitzan Cohen, Silvio Lorusso, Simone C Niquille, Kseniia Obukhova, and Francesca Verga

Edited with introduction by Giulia Cordin

Designed by BIFFIPOL

Published by Set Margins' Publications, 2026

Softcover, 256 pages, full color and 2-color printing, 4.72 × 6.69 inches

ISBN: 978-9-08-357950-4