Paper Altar is a reader-activated publication that transforms reading into a contemporary ritual. Drawing on the ordered structure of liturgical books, the procedural logic of instructional manuals and the participatory strategies of artists’ books, it takes the form of a portable paper altar containing an instruction booklet, object cards, contextual prompts and a fold-out spatial field.

Readers select and arrange ordinary objects, uncover their personal and social associations, and then decide whether to accept, reinterpret or resist the publication’s suggestions. Each activation produces a different, provisional altar.

Rather than simply representing ritual as a subject, Paper Altar uses publication to organise attention, judgement, space and bodily action. In doing so, it explores a negotiated form of authorship: the designer constructs the conditions for participation, while each reader realises the work—and its meaning—through their own decisions.