There's a star in my future

3000 Days of Archives i a visual journey through the forgotten corners of the eyewear industry. Some untold stories, brands, objects, and people who shaped its evolving landscape. The collection was started in 2018 by the Bidules team, it is an ongoing project, taking no claim to meaning, blending scanography and photography to explore fragments of a trade shaped by time, chance, and memory.

The publication was developed under the creative direction of Mathys Dos Santos, a 23-year-old Brussels-based photographer with a focus on archival storytelling and small print-run publishing. Published by Bidules, the book is a testament to the richness of forgotten material culture, placing itself at the crossroads of visual culture, industrial design, photography and archival research, documenting a lesser-known sector of the eyewear history through a curated lens.

Creative Direction: Mathys Dos Santos
Graphic Design: Mathieu Teissier, Mathys Dos Santos
Photography: Mathieu Teissier, Mathys Dos Santos
Scanography: Mathias Robert, Mathieu Teissier,
Mathys Dos Santos, Nicolas Musty
Texts: Adriana de Chavagnac, Nicolas Musty
Proofreading: Lilou Angelrath

The book explores how we experience perceptual dissociation and deep immersion when engaging with screen media. Drawing from perspectives such as media criticism, psychological states, and the evolution of visual technology in cinema, it examines how our senses respond to screens. A central theme is the reconsideration of animism—the belief that objects or images possess life—as a fundamental, primitive form of cinema. The work also reflects on the relationship between light and the screen, integrating my own artistic practice in film, light, and interactive media.

A take away cup and a cloud is an essay written alongside the dance performance Seems to be by Denise Lim and Stina Ehn. It plays with a variety of containers–the list form being one. By mixing a personal with a historical gaze it traces the trajectory of mundane commodities and  the replacement of material with imaterial objects brought about to the everyday by technical progress. 

"At the tip of the hand" explores the nail salon as a space of labour and social exchange. The act of two women holding hands, applying polish, and waiting for it to dry is more than a beauty ritual. It is a moment of care, but also a reflection of the social expectations placed upon ‘cultivated’ bodies and the invisible work behind them. Beneath a flawlessly coated nail, unseen bodies persist—serving, tending, remaining out of sight.