Paper Passion contains a short text broken down into individual statements. The text deals with the materiality of books, especially their smell and value. According to the opening credits, whose sentences are spread over several pages, the work refers to the perfume of the same name produced by Geza Schoen in collaboration with publisher Gerhard Steidl and designer Karl Lagerfeld. This perfume comes packaged in a book and is sold for €275.

The implied advertising promise, in Jean Keller’s words, is: “With Paper Passion you get the smell of the intellectual world without reading a book.” Jean Keller then makes a point for the intellectual value of content, and for the book as a medium for structuring thoughts. Such a book can even be as cheap as a 40-page print-on-demand paperback—in contrast to its fetishization as a container for a perfume. This ultimately brings him to the final statement: “ART IS ART / AND / A FART IS A FART.”

To underline this stance, Paper Passion has its price of ₤7 – $11.50 – €8.80 printed on the back. However, this is no longer correct due to the constantly changing price calculations on print-on-demand platforms.