World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Australian Art
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2024, Englidh
Softcover, 532 pages, 20.5 x 13 cm
Published by
Contra Mundum Press / New York
$62.00 - In stock -
On 10 January 1936, the poet, actor, and dramatic theorist, Antonin Artaud departed Europe on a journey to Mexico that would take him from the streets, cafés, and lecture halls of Mexico City to the remote mountains of the Sierra Tarahumara. The journey would last only ten months, culminating in some six to eight weeks spent among the Tarahumara (Rarámuri), but it was a profound turning point in his life.
Artaud didn’t just leave Europe. He fled it. “I came to Mexico to escape European civilization … I hoped to find a vital form of culture.” The vital form of culture that he sought was one wherein individual and communal behaviors were rooted in the soil of a place, wherein the rituals of religion reinforced a connection in human lives between the earth and the sun.
But Artaud’s search for a vital form of culture would not be a simple one. His appeal to indigenous culture would first require an intense and intricate effort at aesthetic, religious, political, and philosophical decolonization. And this intellectual work would not be without a psychological cost.
Journey to Mexico collects very nearly all of Artaud’s writings related to his voyage to the land of the Tarahumara: the writings he prepared prior to this journey; the pieces he published in Mexico and the lectures he delivered there; the essays, letters, and poems that he wrote in the years after his journey, reflecting on and reframing his experiences. A selection of letters written before, during, and after the trip conveys the very personal — the physical, emotional, and financial — challenges of the journey.
Artaud’s Journey to Mexico takes us far from home to the limits of art and anthropology, myth and religion, to confront the legacies of colonial conquest and the possibility of decolonization in a desperate search for a “vital form of culture.”
1990 re-print, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 20.3 x 28 cm
Published by
RE/SEARCH / San Francisco
$50.00 - In stock -
Revised, Expanded, Illustrated, and Annotated Edition of the author’s classic, published by RE/Search in 1990. Original text supplemented with Annotations, Commentary, and Four Additional Stories by J.G. Ballard.
Contains beautifully shocking Illustrations by Phoebe Gloeckner and Ana Barrado; design was conceived by V. Vale and executed at his typesetting shop. J.G. Ballard wrote the explanatory annotations for this RE/Search edition at Vale’s request.
Foreword by William S Burroughs, Introduction by V. Vale. First published in 1970 and widely regarded as a prophetic masterpiece, this is a groundbreaking experimental novel by the acclaimed author of “Crash” and “Super-Cannes”.
The 1970 First American Edition was banned by court order, forcing Doubleday to shred the entire print run. An experimental (rather than a conventional) novel, it has lost none of its awesome power to shock. Atrocity Exhibition is widely regarded as Ballard’s finest, most complex work…
The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this extraordinary tour de force. The central character’s dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, dead astronauts and car-crash victims as he traverses the screaming wastes of nervous breakdown. Seeking his sanity, he casts himself in a number of roles: H-bomber pilot, presidential assassin, crash victim, psychopath. Finally, through the black, perverse magic of violence he transcends his psychic turmoils to find the key to a bizarre new sexuality.
A “must-have” edition for J. G. Ballard collectors.
1992, English
Softcover (+ fold-out catalogue insert), 57 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Signed by Henri Chopin,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Griffith University / Brisbane
$160.00 - In stock -
Rare catalogue published on the occasion of the first major Australian exhibition of Henri Chopin's work, curated by Nicholas Zurbrugg and Marlene Hall, Queensland College of The Art Gallery, Griffith University, August 24 — September 11, 1992. This special copy signed by Chopin, dedicated "For Warren", Warren Burt, Baltimore-born (1949) Australia-based composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music, sound art installations, and text-based music. Surveying the posters, prints, typewriter poems, publications and soundworks of Henri Chopin (and Editions OU), this wonderful catalogue reproduces many artworks in colour and b/w, along with many rare photographs, contributions/testimonies from over 50 leading avant-garde poets, artists, curators, critics and academics from around the world, an interview by Nicholas Zurbrugg with Henri Chopin in Paris, 1992, biography, plus an inserted fold-out catalogue/work list of the over 100 works exhibited. One of 1000 copies printed.
Contributors include: Pierre-André Arcand, Charles Amirkhanian, Vincent Barras, David Briers, William Burroughs, John Cage, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, Bob Cobbing, Francesco Conz, Cozette de Charmoy, Wystan and Susan Curnow, Hugh Davies, Jean Dupuy, Paul Dutton, Michael Eather, Brad Faine, Giovanni Fontana, Ken Friedman, John Furnival, Kenneth Gaburo, Pierre Garnier, Jochen Gerz, Michael Gibbs, John Giorno, Rodney Grey, Bernard Heidsieck, Dick Higgins, Leigh Hobba, Armin Hundertmark, Alice Hutchins, Françoise Janicot, Jaroslav Kovaricek, François Lagarde, Rosemary Laing, Robert Lax, Jackson MacLow, Steve McCaffery, Andrew McLennan, Chris Mann, Enzo Minarelli, Edwin Morgan, David Moss, Lutfi Özkök, Tom Phillips, Jasia Reichardt, Gerhard Rühm, Marvin Sackner, Klaus Schöning, Guy Schraenen, Amanda Stewart, Larry Wallrich, Ania Walwicz, Nick Waterlow, Larry Wendt, Paul Zumthor, Ellen Zweig, edited by Nicholas Zurbrugg and Marlene Hall.
Henri Chopin (1922—2008) Sound artist, painter, typographer and concrete poet; born in Paris, he was deported to Germany in 1943, where he was in forced labour camps; subsequently served in the French army in Vietnam 1948-9; from the 1950s became a key figure in Paris mixing with André Breton, the critic Michel Seuphor and the French Lettriste movement; interested in the interdisciplinary roles of sound and art, he founded the review 'Cinquième saison' in 1958, which later became 'Ou' from 1964 to 1974, which included recordings of sound poetry; from the 1960s, as well as working in radio and television, he produced typewriter poems which played on sound and concrete poetry; after the failure of the May 1968 revolts in Paris, he lived in self-imposed exile in England in Ingatestone, Essex, where he continued with his activities as a sound artist and concrete poet; he returned to Paris in 1985 and died in 2008
2014, English / French
Softcover (staple-bound, in glassine envelope), 26 pages, 21 x 29.5 cm
Edition of 1000
Published by
Supportico Lopez / Berlin
$30.00 - In stock -
English and French facsimile edition of this important Henri Chopin text first published in 1984, staple-bound and issued in a glassine envelope in an edition of 1000 by Supportico Lopez, Berlin.
Henri Chopin (1922—2008) was an avant-garde artist, poet and musician, other than a painter, graphic artist and designer, teacher, typographer, independent publisher, film-maker, broadcaster and arts promoter. He is widely considered to be a pioneer in the recognition and distribution of sound-poetry.
Henri Chopin was a little-known but key figure of the French avant-garde during the second half of the 20th century. Known primarily as a concrete and sound poet, he created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos.
2009, French / English
Hardcover (w. audio CD), 90 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Ed. of 350, hand-numbered,
Published by
Alga Marghen / Milan
$85.00 - In stock -
Limited edition book and CD presentation of Bernard Heidsieck's Poème-Partition "X", bound in hardcover in a hand-numbered edition of 350 copies. Recorded 1960, this publication of the work plus CD of the original 1960 recording and later 1962 performance (accompanied by saxophone improvisation by American painter Larry Rivers) were issued in this deluxe volume in 2009 by Alga Marghen, Milan. Heidsieck (1928—2014) was one of the greatest French poets of the 20th century and an originator of the sound poetry movement.
Bernard Heidseick (1928-2014) was a French sound poet, associated with various movements throughout a long career: including Beat, Fluxus, and minimalism. Heidseick decided in the mid-1950s to break off from written poetry, and to bring it outside of books. He opposed passive poetry to active poetry, to an “on its feet” poetry, in his own words. Starting in 1955 he was one of the founders of Sound Poetry, and in 1962 of Action Poetry. As early as 1959 he used a tape recorder as an additional means for writing and retransmitting, opening his research to new experimental fields. While remaining concerned with semantics, Bernard Heidseick became increasingly independent from the constraints of language. He explored all its formal aspects, either by spatializing the text in his written scores, or by the presence of his body in space. He gave sound a formal dimension, notably through an exceptional diction based as much on breathing as on articulating perfectly or on constantly renewing the inflections of his voice. As the years went by he reinvented his writing in order to render our daily life more accurately. Our social, political or economical universe, through its main events, as well as through its extreme ordinariness. In 1955 he developed his first Score-Poems. He then worked continuously on series, with the 13 Biopsies between 1966 and 1969. From 1969 to 1980, he created the 29 Passe-Partout (Catch-alls). From 1978 to 1986, he wrote Derviche/Le Robert (Dervish/Le Robert) composed of 26 sound poems. Then, beginning in 1988, Respirations et brèves rencontres ( Respiration and Brief Encounters) (60 poems created from the archives of recordings of artists' breathing). He organised the first international festival of sound poetry in 1976 and the event Rencontres Internationales 1980 de poésie sonore which took place in Rennes, in Le Havre and at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
As New.
2001, French
Softcover (w. audio CD + print insert), 64 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Le Corridor Bleu / Nîmes
$60.00 - In stock -
Limited edition book and CD presentation of Bernard Heidsieck's Poème-Partition "F" with print insert. Written 1957 and recorded 1960, this publication was issued in an edition of 500 in 2001 by Le Corridor Bleu, Nîmes. Includes an additional introduction by Heidsieck (1928—2014) himself, one of the greatest French poets of the 20th century, and an originator of the sound poetry movement.
Bernard Heidseick (1928-2014) was a French sound poet, associated with various movements throughout a long career: including Beat, Fluxus, and minimalism. Heidseick decided in the mid-1950s to break off from written poetry, and to bring it outside of books. He opposed passive poetry to active poetry, to an “on its feet” poetry, in his own words. Starting in 1955 he was one of the founders of Sound Poetry, and in 1962 of Action Poetry. As early as 1959 he used a tape recorder as an additional means for writing and retransmitting, opening his research to new experimental fields. While remaining concerned with semantics, Bernard Heidseick became increasingly independent from the constraints of language. He explored all its formal aspects, either by spatializing the text in his written scores, or by the presence of his body in space. He gave sound a formal dimension, notably through an exceptional diction based as much on breathing as on articulating perfectly or on constantly renewing the inflections of his voice. As the years went by he reinvented his writing in order to render our daily life more accurately. Our social, political or economical universe, through its main events, as well as through its extreme ordinariness. In 1955 he developed his first Score-Poems. He then worked continuously on series, with the 13 Biopsies between 1966 and 1969. From 1969 to 1980, he created the 29 Passe-Partout (Catch-alls). From 1978 to 1986, he wrote Derviche/Le Robert (Dervish/Le Robert) composed of 26 sound poems. Then, beginning in 1988, Respirations et brèves rencontres ( Respiration and Brief Encounters) (60 poems created from the archives of recordings of artists' breathing). He organised the first international festival of sound poetry in 1976 and the event Rencontres Internationales 1980 de poésie sonore which took place in Rennes, in Le Havre and at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
As New with tiny little coffee drip mark to cover.
2005, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 17.78 x 13.21 cm
Published by
RE/SEARCH / San Francisco
$44.00 - In stock -
A collection of never-before-published interviews, by the author of "Cocaine Nights" (Flamingo), "Crash" (Vintage), and "Millennium People" (Flamingo). It presents thoughts on the Internet and virtual reality, the impact of 9-11, extremism, the media industries, the meaning of Las Vegas and gated communities, and the infantilization of America and the world.
This new volume of interviews from RE/Search shows Ballard whole — a moralist, standing at the intersection between Jonathan Swift and Salvador Dali. Over four decades Ballard has exerted a deep influence over diverse writers like Angela Carter, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Houellebecq and Don DeLillo. His Booker Prize-nominated "Empire of the Sun" was filmed by Steven Spielberg. Never has Ballard sounded so concerned, fatherly, or political. (In an earlier, 1984 RE/Search interview, Ballard impishly exclaims, "I want more nuclear weapons!") The interviews make it abundantly clear that while Ballard has always proclaimed the death of reason and the visceral origins of technology, he now sees these developments as almost wholly negative. "What bothers me," the author says of that notorious techno-pornographic novel "Crash," "is that something is happening that you could almost call the 'Normalizing of the Psychopathic' — the greater and greater areas of what used to be regarded as the psychopathic by, say, my parents." It doesn't seem to occur to Ballard that anyone might have read his violently sexual stories literally.
1959 / 1972 / 2021, English
Ed. of 1000,
Published by
Corbett vs. Dempsey / Chicago
$90.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful new edition set of four poetry books by Sun Ra, issued Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago. Two of these were pamphlets that accompanied early Sun Ra albums issued in the late 1950s; the other two were published more than a decade later by Infinity Inc./Saturn Research. CvsD's reprints are fastidiously designed facsimiles of the original publications, marking the first time they have been available in their Ra-ordained form since they were published.
An architect of Afrofuturism and one of the great musical thinkers of the 20th century, Ra's work extended far beyond jazz and even music to the realms of pageantry, performance, theater, philosophy, visual art, and literature. In the mid 1950s, he handed out leaflets and gave street corner lectures – revisionist interpretations of the Bible and bold meditations on the status of African Americans in American society. A few years later, Ra began disseminating his poems in – and sometimes on – his albums. His debut, Jazz By Sun Ra, was issued in 1957 by the Boston-based Transition label, a short-lived company that sold records by subscription; this record contained a beautiful booklet, now as prized as the LP itself, with rare photographs and a selection of poems and proclamations, as well as the personnel and recording credits. Ra's Jazz In Silhouette was released two years hence on Saturn Records, the label he started with Alton Abraham, and it came with a mimeographed liner booklet – now exceedingly rare – that was folded, unstapled, as an ultra-economical accompaniment to the vinyl. The CvsD version folds this slim pamphlet of poetry into a slipcover with a classic photo portrait of Ra by Thomas "Bugs" Hunter on the back. Perhaps Ra's best known book of poetry, reprinted in many alternative versions with different contents over the years, is The Immeasurable Equation; this incarnation restores the original Infinity Inc./Saturn Research version, published in Chicago in 1972 and distributed widely by the Arkestra, often from the bandstand. It features more than 60 of Ra's poems. Finally, perhaps the rarest of Ra's poetry books is Extensions Out: Immeasurable Equation Vol. II, which was also published by Infinity Inc./Saturn Research. This 8 1/2 x 11 inch book is a massive compendium of more than 130 poems, very much in step with the mimeo poetry publications of its era – simple staple binding, one-sided pages – featuring three photographs of artwork by Ayé Aton, a close ally of Ra's in this, the period of the Arkestra classic Space Is The Place, on which Aton plays percussion. Great care was taken to reproduce the special textured cover of this highly sought after book.
These four books are exclusively sold as a set. The first edition is limited to 1000 copies. Corbett vs. Dempsey is proud to represent the non-musical side of the Sun Ra Estate. We gratefully acknowledge Irwin Chusid and Sun Ra LLC for the permission to release this historically rich chronicle of Ra's poetry, presented as he originally conceived it.
2024, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 17.8 x 11.4 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$32.00 - In stock -
An indefinable polymath of fin de siècle Paris, Charles Cros made work that was simultaneously grounded in literature and science. This collection brings together for the first time in English all of his literary prose. The collection includes proto-science-fiction stories; prose poems; an essay on methods of communication with other planets; and the patent application written with his brother for a (never-built) notating keyboard.
The literary imagination Cros was able to bring into the field of science was matched by the humorous scientific sobriety he introduced into his literature, which he did nowhere so effectively as in the title piece, “The Science of Love”: depicting a young scientist’s painstakingly executed seduction of a woman for the sake of scientific analysis. Also included are stories such as “The Newspaper of the Future” (which presents a 19th-century imagining of artificial intelligence) and “The Stone Who Died of Love.”
Charles Cros (1842–88) was a French writer and inventor. He is credited with submitting the earliest method for recording sound, but his idea for the “Paleophone” was obscured by Thomas Edison’s patent for the phonograph less than a year later.
1984, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 25.5 x 17.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$70.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of one of the remarkable special book issues of the original Semiotext(e) journal — Semiotext(e) Oasis, published in 1984, edited by Timothy Simone, Peter Caravetta, Frank Mecklenberg, Brigitte Ouvry-Vial and Gregory Whitehead. This issue from 1984, titled Oasis: Fourth World, was secretly produced and handed to Lotringer with an ultimatum: “Take it or leave it.”. Features texts by Joseph Saruva, Leslie Dick, Mustafa Isrui, Franco Beraldi, Theo Kneubuehler, Dambudzo Marechera, Chris Marker, Nuruddin Farrah, Gregory Whitehead, Unica Zürn, Françoise Gründ, Ariel Dorfman, Maurizio Torrealta, Paul Foss, Michel Serres, Wole Soyinka, Serge Galam. Marco J. Jacquemet, Ninotchka Rosca, Henri Pierre Jeudy. Timothy Simone, Lynne Tillman, Cornel West, Arnold Barkus, Peter Wortsman, Damona Wolff, Marylene Delbourg-Delphis, Frank Ungemut, Alphonso Lingis, Bahadur Tejani, Bernhard Mueller and Karel Dudesek, Sun Ra.
"Human bodies consist primarily of water. Body chemistries perform best at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Human skin provides both vessel and thermometer for body water. If exposed to extended periods of heat or exertion, bodies dehydrate; skins dry out. Hard science tells us this is true for all skins, from the First through the Fourth world."
Founded in 1974, Semiotext(e) began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylvère Lotringer at the Columbia University philosophy department. Initially, the magazine was devoted to readings of thinkers like Nietzsche and Saussure. In 1978, Lotringer and his collaborators published a special issue, Schizo-Culture, in the wake of a conference of the same name he had organized two years before at Columbia University. The magazine brought together artists and thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, Martine Barrat and Lee Breuer. Schizo-Culture brought out connections between high theory and underground culture that had not yet been made, and forged the "high/low" aesthetic that remains central to the Semiotext(e) project.
Good copy with some wear and creasing to the covers, tanning and tape repair to top of spine.
1987, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
Autonomedia / New York
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of one of the remarkable special book issues of the original Semiotext(e) journal — the notorious Semiotext(e) U.S.A., published in 1987, edited by Jim Fleming and Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey), and designed by Sue Ann Harkley. Complete with the unprintable 4-pages, in still-sealed plastic pocket. ("Calling it "subversive" and "obscene," five book printers in the spring of 1987 refused to print Semiotext(e) USA. A sixth printer agreed to do all but four pages, which we have printed separately and included here.") Semiotext(e) U.S.A. is an absolute treasure and time-capsule of subcultural publishing in the 1980s—1990s, centering around Autonomedia and Semiotext(e). The original publisher's blurb says it all:
"THE JOURNAL DENOUNCED IN THE U.S. SENATE FOR ITS ADVOCACY OF "ANIMAL SEX" PRESENTS..."
"A huge compendium of works in AMERICAN PSYCHOTOPOGRAPHY Areas not found on the official map of consensus perception — Maps of energies, secret maps of the USA in the form of words and images.
We are amazed. We are NOT BORED. We have discarded the outworn charm of post-modern incommunicadismo. Passion and involvement, self-abandoned craziness, funny, sexy, dangerous, unabashedly precious, punk, loud and direct. SF, speculative fiction, weird fantasy — Pornography — Other mutated genres — Sermons, rants, broadsheets, crackpot pamphlets, manifestoes — Xerox and mimeo zines — Punkzines — Mail art — Kids' poetry — Subverted advertisements — American samizdat — Astounding rhetoric, elegant propaganda — Underground comix — Geographical documentation (maps, monuments, guides to weird places, photographs) — Stolen top secret documents — And a special feature: scores of personal and classified ads. each one with a box-number or address, to connect YOU with the edges of the USA — Anarchists, unidentified flying leftists, neo-pagans, secessionists, the lunatic fringe of survivalism, cults, foreign agents, mad bombers, ban-the-bombers, nudists, monarchists, children's liberation, tax resisters, zero-workers, mimeo poets, vampires, feuilletonistes, xerox pirates, prisoners, pataphysicians, unrepentant faggots, witches, hardcore youth, poetic terrorists...
For the realization of almost-unheard of desires"
Founded in 1974, Semiotext(e) began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylvère Lotringer at the Columbia University philosophy department. Initially, the magazine was devoted to readings of thinkers like Nietzsche and Saussure. In 1978, Lotringer and his collaborators published a special issue, Schizo-Culture, in the wake of a conference of the same name he had organized two years before at Columbia University. The magazine brought together artists and thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, Martine Barrat and Lee Breuer. Schizo-Culture brought out connections between high theory and underground culture that had not yet been made, and forged the "high/low" aesthetic that remains central to the Semiotext(e) project.
Good—VG copy with some wear and creasing to the covers and a couple of loose pages at the end. Complete with still-sealed additional censored pages.
1978, English
Softcover, 158 pages, 21 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Dragon's Dream / Paris
$250.00 - In stock -
First printing of this cult classic of magmatic erotic collage from 1978 by artist Penny Slinger and poet Nik Douglas, published by Dragon's Dream of Paris. Seized and burnt by British customs, Mountain Ecstasy is an explicit, kaleidoscopic work that melds the sacred with the profane — an ecstatic and cosmic journey to tantric utopia by way of Penny’s wild collages created from found images – many from Slinger’s own collection of erotica, saturated in colour and volcanic sensuality.
"'Mountain Ecstasy' was my celebration of Tantric alchemy, freed from any restrictions, out of the confines of the house ('An Exorcism') and into the wide-open Technicolor landscapes of the high Himalayas. I never really thought of the collages as being material for a book - as they were rather outrageous - but Dragon's Dream wanted to publish. Whereas 'An Exorcism' had been mostly my own photographs, the images for 'Mountain Ecstasy' were nearly all 'objects trouves'. I had traveled for the first time in exotic parts (India, Nepal, Thailand) and the work reflects this input. Thousands of copies of 'Mountain Ecstasy' were subsequently seized and burnt by British customs, my comment at the time was, "They thought it was pornography, they didn't realize it was its antidote"—Penny Slinger
"Magnificant erotic assemblages of nudes, flowers, masks and rocks against landscapes, they tease, they excite and they dazzle the eye and in the end the sheer voluptuous beauty of these erotic montages finally exist in their own right as works of art and nary a bullet or a bomb in them."—Arthur Moyse, Freedom Anarchist Review
Very Good copy, beautifully preserved with light cover wear/crease, tightly bound/unsunned — rare for this title.
2024, English
Softcover, 666 pages, 22.61 x 15.19 cm
Published by
Blackstone / US
$42.00 - In stock -
Dubbed "the most significant and controversial SF book" of its generation, Harlan Ellison's groundbreaking collection launched an entire subgenre: New Wave science fiction. With contributions from legendary authors and multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Dangerous Visions returns to print in a stunning new edition perfect for new and returning fans alike.
A landmark short story collection that put the more character-based New Wave science fiction on the map, Dangerous Visions won several prestigious awards and was nominated for many others. This now-classic anthology includes thirty-three stories by thirty-two award-winning authors, over half of whom have won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Contributing authors include: Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Brian W. Aldiss, Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, J.G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany, and Ellison himself.
As relevant now as it was when first published, Dangerous Visions is a phenomenal collection that deserves a place on every bookshelf.
2024, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia
$29.00 - In stock -
"Creation is a stunning new collection by one of the most exciting living writers. Reading a Christopher Zeischegg book is like stepping into a dream in which anything can happen—his particular combination of sex, death, beauty, and horror often feels downright transcendent."—Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else
“A phantasmagoria of the violences comprising an artist’s life. The pursuit of clout a violence of hemorrhage, of taint, of rotting from chest outward. The pursuit of intimacy a violence of sculpting, of repair, of transforming one toward divinity. How the 'art world' violates the divinity of creation. You can let art kill you, let it skin you and sell your hide to the highest bidder (like you have a choice). Or you can take your flayed muscle and pile it into cathedral. Here, you may find another—a surrogate twin, skinned as you’ve been—and press your blood into theirs, intermingle your capillaries, and claim, 'Oh yes, I know you now. I always have. The rhythm of your true heart.' It may not be truth (in fact, you know deep down for certain it cannot be), but it’s enough of a lullaby to soothe your aches; a siren's call to rouse you to wake, to push you to your feet and move you about the world for at least another day."—B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space
"Creation asks the bold questions that force us to understand the why and the how of what we create and that which we connect with. It is also a tremendously tender work showcasing Zeischegg's masterful command over his craft. Whether it's combing the depths of personal experience or charting the complexities of the true and false self, plunging into edifices of fiction and storytelling or examining the power and propulsiveness of friendship, Christopher Zeischegg writes from between realms, and his latest is a must-experience tome as vast as the entire spectrum of creativity itself."—Michael J. Seidlinger, author of The Body Harvest and Anybody Home?
"Christopher Zeischegg’s new book is a fascinating combination of essay, memoir and fiction. It opens with a new novella, which starts at the logical point to pick up from Zeischegg’s previous book, the blank and raw LA noir that was The Magician. Dark, transactional affairs are informed by selfishness and self-survival.
From then on, we are given a masterclass in dissection as the writer examines and pulls apart relationships of all kinds in all kinds of ways. We are shown the relationship between an artist and their work. We are made to think about the relationship between art and the viewer--we are all pulled in.
One of the main focuses seems to be on the body. The bodies that we all have. How do we use these bodies? How are our bodies used? What happens when there is no pleasure left in the body that we have and what if there never was?
Ultimately though, Creation casts its view on friendship. Using the artist Luka Fisher as a muse, a character, a subject of documentary, Zeischegg can consider the notion of platonic friendship—what it means to have a friendship without transaction, and how do you really know someone? It’s a powerful thing to be witness to, and it’s a moving thing.
Creation is an excitingly original book made by one of our sharpest contemporary writers. It is a book with so much going on inside it that it is still with me now, after multiple reads. And each time the reader rethinks it, they can’t help but rethink themselves."—Thomas Moore, author of Forever
Christopher Zeischegg is a writer and filmmaker who spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer, Danny Wylde. He is the author of Creation: On Art and Unbecoming, The Magician, Body to Job, The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space, and Come to My Brother. Zeischegg lives in Los Angeles.
2023, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia
$26.00 - In stock -
"Gary J. Shipley's So Beautiful and Elastic entwines elegant prose, blistering suspense, and art criticism, all shot through with a dark secret. Exploring creators as diverse as René Magritte, Clarice Lispector, David Lynch, Dennis Cooper, Bruno Dumont, and Gary Indiana, Shipley claims his spot as a singular disciple of this genealogy of experimental art. Ann's voice will stay with you long after you exit her mind's haunted house. You won't even realize its cursed magic until it has already swallowed you whole."—Claire Donato, author of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts
"Recalling Barnes' Book of Repulsive Women and Hadean in its academic waste, this miserabilist's trance of "fed-on thinas" dons a destructive getup. Cogitating on the "ignominy of actually having to exist." toxicity is king and identity gets tricked-up, looted from philosophy, film, art, plus porn. The metamuck of the erudite sex worker. The punk muck of the abused stray. The gothic muck of the terrible secret from the terrible past. Shipley's anti-heroine thinks, thinks, thinks her way into and outta existence. So Beautiful and Elastic is a visceral and psychological portrait of disguise. If Wuornos were on a spree with Cioran; if their stops were mapped by Magritte; if the map was an appointment for Die Familie Schneider."—Kim Gek Lin Short, author of China Cowboy
"This brutal book is one of the best-worst nightmares l've ever had—as if Kathy Acker had written a movie novelization of a grimy true crime documentary and then studded it with exactly the kind of art-historical and countercultural references I love. Or as if Katherine Faw's Ultraluminous had an evil twin."—Philippa Snow, author of Which As You Know Means Violence
2023, English
Softcover, 132 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia
$24.00 - In stock -
"One of my favorite contemporary writers. Each of these vicious little stories is a perfect articulation of the madness of being a conscious entity. Elsby’s voice winds its way into your head and smashes about like a trapped heron."—B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space
"Elsby's easy tone and accessible prose conceals a complex malignant design. The naked mind speaks from an isolated place inside the cruelty of everyday power structures with flat affect, leaving the reader to sort out the relentless inequity, outrage, and pain. Bedlam is exactly the kind of brilliant and unapologetic trauma I crave."—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and Convulsive
"In a series of scathing monologues, Bedlam is searching for an exit, craving for escape while stuck detailing the minutiae that keep us in place (the hairdos, the joggers, the dick pics, the doors, the death, the men...), as our new lives wait indefinitely—aging badly, somewhere in the near distance, before they’ve even begun." —Gary J. Shipley, author of Terminal Park
"Elsby taps into the worst parts of ourselves and presents them as mundane grotesquery. The cruel things people do to one another daily are presented in a chilling, matter of fact way alongside passages of interiority that terrify because one might see them as a mirror. That's the true, wicked power of Bedlam."—Anthony Dragonetti, author of Confidence Man
Charlene Elsby wrote Hexis, Psychros, Affect and Musos. Her essays have appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Bustle Books, and the LA Review of Books Philosophical Salon.
2022, English
Softcover (two-book set), 200 pages, 15 x 23 cm
Published by
Fireflies Press / Berlin—Melbourne
$75.00 - In stock -
Published on the centenary year of Pasolini’s birth, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Writing on Burning Paper is a dual edition that stages a dialogue between cinema today and Pasolini’s timeless films and words.
The two complementary volumes slide into one another, forming a unique set that evokes and celebrates Pasolini’s enduring influence. The smaller book features his epic autobiographical poem ‘Poet of the Ashes’, in a revised translation by esteemed poet Stephen Sartarelli; the larger book comprises original tributes by vital filmmakers from across the contemporary cinema landscape.
Twenty filmmakers shared personal reflections in the form of essays, poems, photographs, drawings and more: Catherine Breillat, Luise Donschen & Helena Wittmann, Jia Zhangke, Radu Jude, Payal Kapadia, Alexandre Koberidze, Dane Komljen, Mike Leigh, Mariano Llinás, Roberto Minervini, Valérie Massadian, Luc Moullet, Ben Rivers, Angela Schanelec, Ulrich Seidl, Basma al-Sharif, Deborah Stratman, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Gustavo Vinagre.
To coincide with the NYC launch of the book on November 4, Fireflies Press has curated Love Meetings: Pasolini & Contemporary Cinema, a program of screenings at Metrograph, running through November.
1966, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 214 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Something Else Press / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover English edition, published in 1966 by Something Else Press, New York, of "An Anecdoted Topography of Chance", arguably the most important and entertaining "Artist's Book" of the post-war period. A unique collaborative work by four artists associated with the FLUXUS and Nouveau Realisme movements, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Filliou, Emmett Williams, and Roland Topor.
What is the Topography? Hard to explain an idea so simple yet so brilliantly executed. Following a rambling conversation with his dear friend Robert Filliou, Daniel Spoerri one day mapped the objects lying at random on the table in his room, adding a rigorously scientific description of each. These objects subsequently evoked associations, memories, anecdotes; not only from the original author, but from his friends as well: a beguiling creation was born. Many of the principal participants of FLUXUS make an appearance (and texts by Higgins, Jouffroy, Kaprow, Restany, and Tinguely are included, among others). It is a novel of digressions in the manner of Tristram Shandy or Robbe-Grillet; it's a game, a poem, an encyclopaedia, a cabinet of wonders: a celebration of friendship and creativity.
The Topography personifies (and pre-dates) the whole FLUXUS spirit and constitutes one of the strangest and most compelling insights into the artist's life. From out of the banal detritus of the everyday a virtual autobiography emerges: of four perceptive, witty and eloquent members of the human species.
Translated from the French and further anecdoted by poet Emmett Williams.
First 1966 hardcover edition in Very Good condition, with Good dust jacket, some wear and tear to edges, light fading to spine, preserved in mylar wrap.
Couldn't be more highly recommended.
2024, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 17.8 x 11.4 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$32.00 - In stock -
Foreword by René Daumal
Translated by Terry Bradford
When published in 1928, Vulturnus represented a new direction in Léon-Paul Fargue’s writing: a shift from the lyrical post-Symbolist melancholy of his early poetry to something more grandiose, dynamic, and cosmic. A long prose poem, for lack of a better term, but one that weaves together philosophical dialogue, metaphysical meditation, and mournful reminiscence delivered in a language that spirals into scientific terminology and Rabelaisian neologism.
Jolted into a nightmare aboard a long-distance train journey, the author finds himself alone yet not alone, his mind pinned like an insect, as he sets off on a journey that takes him from his hometown to other existences, accompanied by the fanfare of the planets and two companions—Pierre Pellegrin and Joseph Aussudre—who guide him as Virgil did Dante, though not through hell, but to a sketched-out terrestrial paradise in quest of a moment of eternity: a syphilis of the ether, “one foot godward, two steps brute.”
This first English translation finally introduces an essential yet underrecognized twentieth-century voice and includes an essay on the text by René Daumal, who declares that “Vulturnus suffocates me with its obviousness … I see behind Fargue the great frame of Doctor Faustroll.”
“Vulturnus is an astonishing book.”—Paul Valéry
“A rollicking interplanetary poem.”—Eugene Jolas
Léon-Paul Fargue (1876–1947) was the archetypal poet of Paris, with ties to everyone from Alfred Jarry and Erik Satie to Colette and Maurice Ravel. His work was admired by Rilke, Joyce, and Walter Benjamin. Though his work spanned and was sometimes associated with various literary movements, a bridge of sorts from symbolism to surrealism (though he was opposed to the latter), he kept to his own path throughout his life: a night wanderer who turned his perambulations through Paris into a unique poetry and prose.
“The greatest living poet in France.”—Walter Benjamin
“One of our greatest poets.”—Rainer Maria Rilke
“Fargue taught us to sublimate the life of everyday and make the highest poetry out of it.”—Max Jacob
1970, German / French
Softcover, 118 pages, 21 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Helmhaus Zürich / Zürich
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare, important exhibition catalogue designed by Walter Diethelm, published on the occasion of the exceptional exhibition Text Buchstabe Bild (Text, Letter, Image), held at the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Helmhaus Zürich, July 11—August 23, 1970. Preface by Felix Andreas Baumann. "The point is to present this literature, which is located between writing and images, text and graphics and around the tertium comparationis of typography, to an audience that is probably not too familiar with the techniques and variants of “concrete literature”—from the preface. An incredible and varied anthology of the experimental, poetic, graphic interplay of text and image, profusely illustrated in b/w, accompanied by texts in German and French by Stéphane Mallarmé, F.T. Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Oyvind Fahlström, El Lissitzky, André Breton, Eugen Gomringer, Augusto de Campos, Decio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos, Jan Hamilton Finlay, Pierre Garnier, Max Bense, Reinhard Döhl, Carlfriedrich Claus, Seiichi Niikuni, Henri Chopin, Franz Mon, Jiri Kolár, and Bob Cobbing.
Artists included: Stéphane Mallarmé, Arno Holz, Christian Morgenstern, F.T. Marinetti, Carlo Carrà, Lacerba, Ardengo Soffici, Hugo Ball, Georges Braque, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Amédée Ozenfant, Guillaume Apollinaire, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, Raoul Hausmann, Fernand Léger, Richard Hülsenbeck, Vincente Huidobro, Francis Picabia, Jean Pougny, Kurt Schwitters, Paul Klee, Bruno Adler, Jean Epstein, Theo Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, Jozef Peeters, Sonja Delaunay-Terk, Iliazd, Friedrich Kiesler, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Käthe Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Henryk Berlewi, Farkas Molnár, Zenit, Hendrik Nicolaas Werkmann, Walter Gropius, John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Le Corbusier, and Georges Hugnet.
Very Good ex-NGV library copy, well preserved with only light wear and "National Gallery of Victoria" light stamp to block edge and lower back-cover. No internal stamping/marking.
1967, English
Hardcover, 342 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
edition hansjörg meyer / Düsseldorf
$220.00 - Out of stock
Rare first 1967 European hardcover edition of An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, published by the legendary edition hansjörg meyer. The book's editor, Emmett Williams, "as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance." An Anthology of Concrete Poetry was the first anthology on the international movement of Concrete poetry, published subsequently by the legendary Something Else Press in 1967 in America. The movement itself began in the early 1950s, in Germany–through Eugen Gomringer, who borrowed the term “concrete” from the art of his mentor, Max Bill–and in Brazil, through the Noigandres group, which included the de Campos brothers and Decio Pignatari. Over the course of the 1960s it exploded across Europe, America and Japan, as other protagonists of the movement emerged, such as Dieter Roth, Öyvind Fahlström, Ernst Jandl, bpNichol, Mary Ellen Solt, Jackson Mac Low, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Pierre Garnier, Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin and Kitasono Katue. By the late 1960s, poet Jonathan Williams could proclaim: “If there is such a thing as a worldwide movement in the art of poetry, Concrete is it.” The work of the 77 writers collected in this anthology varies greatly in its aims and forms, but all can be said to emphasize the visual dimension of language, manipulating individual letters and minimal semantic units to produce poems that are for contemplating as much as for reading. Emmett Williams, the book’s editor, added explanatory commentary for the poems and biographies of their authors, making this volume–long out of print–the definitive anthology of this movement, which has so influenced artists and writers of subsequent generations.
Writers and artists included: Friedrich Achleitner, Alain Arias-Misson, H. C. Artmann, Ronaldo Azeredo, Stephen Bann, Carlo Belloli, Max Bense, Edgard Braga, Claus Bremer, Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Henri Chopin, Carl Friedrich Claus, Bob Cobbing, Paul de Vree, Reinhard Döhl, Torsten Ekbom, Öyvind Fahlström, Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Larry Freifeld, John Furnival, Heinz Gappmayr, Ilse and Pierre Garnier, Matthias Goeritz, Eugen Gomringer, Ludwig Gosewitz, Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal, José Lino Grünewald, Brion Gysin, Al Hansen, Václav Havel, Helmut Heissenbüttel, Åke Hodell, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Ernst Jandl, Bengt Emil Johnson, Ronald Johnson, Hiro Kamimura, Kitasono Katue, Jiri Kolar, Ferdinand Kriwet, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Jackson Mac Low, Hansjörg Mayer, Cavan McCarthy, Franz Mon, Edwin Morgan, Maurizio Nannucci, bp Nichol, Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Seiichi Niikuni, Ladislav Novák, Yuksel Pazarkaya, Décio Pignatari, Vlademir Dias Pino, Luiz Angelo Pinto, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Diter Rot, Gerhard Rühm, Aram Saroyan, John J. Sharkey, Edward Lucie Smith, Mary Ellen Solt, Adriano Spatola, Daniel Spoerri, Vagn Steen, Andre Thomkins, Enrique Uribe Valdivielso, Franz Van Der Linde, Franco Verdi, Emmett Williams, Jonathan Williams, Pedro Xisto and Fujitomi Yasuo.
"Emmett Williams, as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance. However it is far too soon to regard any anthology of Concrete Poetry as being definitive since the movement is extremely active and major new works have yet to appear in this most interesting of current poetry movements." -- from interior flap. Printed in black-and-white.
Very Good copy with some light edge wear to thick covers, general light age/tanning.
2024, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 20 x 14 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$34.00 - In stock -
Wild new adventures in word-infatuated flânerie from a celebrated literary provocateur.
This book of thirty-six poetic bulletins by the humiliation-advice-giver Wayne Koestenbaum will teach you how to cruise, how to dream, how to decode a crowded consciousness, how to find nuggets of satisfaction in unaccustomed corners, and how to sew a language glove roomy enough to contain materials gathered while meandering. Koestenbaum wrote many of these poems while walking around New York City. He'd jot down phrases in a notebook or dictate them into his phone. At home, he'd incorporate these fragmented gleanings into overflowing quasi sonnets. Therefore each poem functions as a coded diary entry, including specific references to sidewalk events and peripatetic perceptions. Flirting, remembering, eavesdropping, gazing, squeezing, sequestering: Koestenbaum invents a novel way to cram dirty liberty into the tight yet commodious space of the sonnet, a fourteen-lined cruise ship that contains ample suites for behavior modification, libidinal experiment, aura-filled memory orgies, psychedelic Bildungsromane, lap dissolves, archival plunges, and other mental saunterings that conjure the unlikely marriage of Kenneth Anger and Marianne Moore. Carnal pudding, anyone? These engorged lyrics don't rhyme; and though each builds on a carapace of fourteen lines, many of the lines spawn additional, indented tributaries, like hoop earrings dangling from the stanzas' lobes. Koestenbaum's poems are comic, ribald, compressed, symphonic. They take liberties with ordinary language, and open up new pockets for sensation in the sorrowing overcoat of the “now.” Imagine: the training wheels have been removed from poetry's bicycle, and the wheeling flâneur is finally allowed a word pie equal to fantasy's appetite. Stubble—a libidinal detail—matters when you're stranded on the archipelago of your most unsanctioned yet tenaciously harbored impulses.
2024, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$38.00 - Out of stock
A lively and spontaneous interview with Etel Adnan about her absolute belief in the beauty of the world and the beauty of art.
In these interviews with journalist and editor Laure Adler, conducted in the months before her death in November 2021, Etel Adnan traces with depth and emotion the founding experiences of her artistic approach, between poetry and painting. From her youth in Lebanon, her American years in New York and California, to her late recognition at Documenta in 2012 and her life in France, the conversation covers philosophy, painting, poetry and aesthetics, as well Adnan's views on history and politics in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. These transcripts usher the experiences and observations of Adnan's long and rich life into an intimate and spontaneous conversation with a dear friend―a window on the “universe” of her imagination.
2000, English
Softcover, 458 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$80.00 - Out of stock
First 2000 edition of the second coming of America’s darkest shadow side, Apocalypse Culture II, the completely cult classic sequel edition to what was called by J.G. Ballard “the terminal documents of the twentieth century.” The original Apocalypse Culture, an underground bestseller since its emergence in 1987, has remained a huge influence on popular culture. The sequel delineates further regions of the Forbidden Zone, the psychic maelstrom that everyone knows exists but fearfully avoids.
Subject matter includes:
The biological resurrection of Jesus Christ via modern cloning technology
Interviews with a convicted murderer and cannibal turned celebrity
Recipes for cooking babies
Homunculi
Pedophilia
A re-enactment of the 914 deaths that occurred at Jonestown in 1978
A report on Bobby Beausoleil, his art, and his prison sex life
The farthest-out conspiracy of all with reasons to take it absolutely seriously
Letters sent to Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan
A sample necrocard for those who wish to donate their body to necrophilia
Steps to overcome masturbation
The replacement of human mates with expensive masturbatory devices
Fecal black magic
Mind control via advertising
And dozens of other compelling examples of our own Apocalypse Culture. Observing that society has been infantilized by being told at every opportunity how to think and what to believe, editor Adam Parfrey refuses to provide easy moral lessons in Apocalypse Culture II, though he supplies pertinent information before and after many articles to assist the interpretation of thoughtful readers. Some will find the contents quite shocking, but that, according to Parfrey, is not his primary purpose. This is an examination of sociological truths that speak of the culture that both created and ignore them.
Contributors include Colin Wilson, Ted Kaczynski, Pentti Linkola, Jim Goad, Peter Sotos, Michael Moynihan, Sondra London, Jonathan Vankin, Irv Rubin, George Petros, Chris Campion, Robert Sterling, David Woodard, Dan Kelly, Wes Thomas, Crispin Hellion Glover, Boyd Rice, Kadmon, Chad Hensley, James Shelby Downard, Rod Dickinson, Steve Speer, Sarita Vendetta, Ghazi Barakat, Kristan Lawson, Issei Sagawa, Rosemary Malign, Danny Rolling, Larry Wayne Harris, Nicolas Claux, Stu Mead, Trevor Brown, George LaMort, and Beth Love.
“This is a black box of a book, spuming to the brim with the overly articulate paranoias of our age. It is impossible to either put it down or keep yourself from throwing it against the wall. There is no denying its dense psychic substance, though. The dark angels sit crowded on every page.”—Andrei Codrescu, National Public Radio
“I write books, I read books, and Apocalypse Culture II is the best book I have ever read. Pardon me now if I go out on a limb, but if there is no Pulitzer for this man, this work, I will eat my own Nobel. Adam Parfrey is equal parts H.L. Mencken and P.T. Barnum.”—Richard Meltzer
“Apocalypse Culture II is an instant classic, blasting through the last frontiers of taboo.”—Rachel Resnick, author of Go West Young Fucked-Up Chick
“Salacious. Visceral. Great. With Apocalypse Culture II, Adam Parfrey immerses the reader in the deep dark sanguinary sanctums of the subconscious.”—Robert Williams
“Apocalypse Culture II is the New Testament, redefining and satirically exposing the mutations of consensus hypocrisy. Psychoses duel in the hilarious, absurd, provocative and incestuously urban litanies of deformed martyrs. An unexpectedly sacred alchemical tincture.”—Genesis P-Orridge
“Adam Parfrey’s astonishing, un-put-downable and absolutely brilliant compilation, Apocalypse Culture II, will blow a hole through your mind the size of JonBenet’s fist. This book should be in hotel rooms.”—Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight
“Adam Parfrey shows himself to be unique among investigative journalists: one unafraid to go where barkers fear to tread.”—Nick Tosches
“Apocalypse Culture II is a chaos bible of delightful forbidden information that falls somewhere between The Cat in the Hat and Mein Kampf. It’s also thick enough to leave a good-sized bruise on someone’s face after you get pissed-off by reading it.”—Marilyn Manson
Good copy with general wear/laminate wripples/"kinkiness".