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
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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.
1989/1991, English
Softcover (spiral bound, hand collaged acetate cover), 212 pages, 22 x 18.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Apathy Press / Baltimore
$140.00 - In stock -
Exceptionally rare copy of How to Write a Resumé Volume II: Making a Good First Impression by Baltimore guerrilla cultist conceptualist tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE aka Michael Tolson aka Tim Ore aka Monty Cantsin aka tENT, published by poet Tom DiVenti's Apathy Press around 1989. Self-described as a mad scientist/d composer/sound thinker/thought collector, Tolson's work has involved body art, installation, film and video, performances, artist books, mail art, and graffiti. He is also a member of the Church of the Sub-genius and co-publisher of Widemouth Tapes with the Merzaum (Schwitters' "Merz" / Kruchenykh's "zaum") Collective. With a first edition of little more than 100 copies, this second expanded edition of 200 copies was hand-copied by the anarcho dadaist, neoist author himself in 1991 whilst working at Kinkos in Baltimore, featuring hand-collaged acetate covers and an additional 72 pages of content, it is an impressive document where even language itself is under interrogation. How to Write a Resumé Volume II: Making a Good First Impression (naturally there was no Volume 1) functions as a sort of evidence file of Tolson's life/agit-career as a self-made objet d'art. The incidents, subversive actions, broadcasts, exhibitions, rituals, arrests and general provocation; collating documentation, texts, reflections and press clippings of legitimate news coverage of his various activities throughout the 1980's, from the subtle to the catastrophic, the petty to the galvanising — drug trips, urban rituals, fights at parties, body modification, pranks, art strikes. Includes his guerrilla art action at the upmarket Luskin's department store, confronting customers by broadcasting his films across the audio/visual department, and "Three Year Emergency of Fire & Grim" — an illustrated journal from the "working class barracks" of South Baltimore in the early 1980's, depicting the rising violent tensions and mutual vulnerability of a progressively deteriorating neighbourhood poisoned by surrounding gentrification and inhabited by squatters and drunks.
Safe to say there is no account like it because there is no other life like it, yet it simultaneously embodies a certain tragicomedy provocateur death-drive that permeated the underground arts (or anti-arts) in the 1980's—1990's, that can seldom be found in culture today. As one reviewer commented, How to Write a Resumé Volume II: Making a Good First Impression could have made an entire issue of RE/SEARCH at that time.
Very Good with general light wear/tanning to extremities.
2014, Japanese
Softcover (in card slipcase w. obi), 260 pages, 25.4 x 18.2 cm
Signed.,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Town to House / Japan
$280.00 - In stock -
Signed first edition of "Shinjuku 1968" by acclaimed Japanese photographer and representative of the Provoke movement, Hitomi Watanabe, published in 2014 and now out of print.
"The core of the collection is formed by photographs from the year 1969, the year in which the Shinjuku West Exit square became a passage and a meeting penned by the media as “Folk Guerilla” was obliterated by the riot police, a greater part of the collected photos were taken in 1968. At that time, the first place editors would take me to was a bar called Unicon, near Shinjuku Gyoen. After that, we would go barhopping to places like DUG (which is still going strong even today),Trevi, DIG, Mokuba, Pit In, Bizarre, places where modern jazz was playing. The time of the Red Tents of Juro Kara near Hanazono shrine, of the avant-garde films of ATG, the performance art happenings on the streets, before they became pedestrian zones… It was a time when hippies stoned off their mind would cross your path, and “underground” was the word you’d hear in the streets of Shinjuku. When it was not Shibuya or Shimokitazawa, not Kichijoji but Shinjuku where culture was taking place. Days like these continued, until one night, a huge riot took place in the Shinjuku area. The 10.21 International Anti-War Day. While being jostled with the crowd, the once abstract Vietnam War and its consequences became a tangible reality which I experienced with my own body.
In the Shinjuku of 1968, you can see an entire era reflected." — Excerpt from the afterword
"These may be photographs of the past, but they show the present." — Nobuyoshi Araki
Shinjuku 1968 consists entirely of Watanabe's photographs of the Tokyo neighbourhood Shinjuku at the end of the 1960s, which can be said to be the beginning of her photographic career. It was here that she first encountered the Japanese counter culture and became involved in the student movement and anti-war protests. Her candid photographs of the everyday lives of the protesters, the state violence, and the aftermath of rioting from her insider’s vantage on this tumultuous moment afforded her work an undeniable, enduring power. Here, in "Shinjuku 1968", Watanabe presents her documents of the protests and rallies beside her images of the underground scene, the theatre, clubs, the Shinjuku streets, shopfronts, and the everyday folk that inhabited the neighbourhood at that time, with some of the images republished for the first time since her iconic "Shinjuku Contemporary 1968" and "Kaihoku '68 / Liberated Area '68" photo books of the 1960s.
Very Good copy, almost As New, with original slipcase and publisher's obi-strip (featuring Nobuyoshi Araki testimonial). Signed and dated by Hitomi Watanabe in 2015 to the colophon page in black pen.
1971, Japanese
Hardcover (w. slip-case) 192 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shinsensha / Tokyo
$450.00 - In stock -
Gorgeous first (boxed) hardcover edition of Tadao Mitome's "protest-book masterpiece" published in 1971, documenting the Sanrizuka resistance to the building of Tokyo's Narita Airport. Photographs follow the thousands of protestors into battle against riot police and record their construction of fortresses and underground tunnels.
“A superb document about the medieval fighting that took place over a period of some five years around Narita airport. Fuelled by the spirit of protest in the late 60s this constituted the first of many often violent anti-airport protests in the region.”
“Sanrizuka documents the intense civil unrest between residents of Sanrizuka, an agricultural area located on the east side of Narita airport, and government authorities, in the run up to the construction and later expansion of the airport. Under a 1966 plan, the airport would have been completed in 1971, but due to the ongoing resettlement disputes, not all of the land for the airport was available by then. Finally, in 1971, the Japanese government began forcibly expropriating land. 291 protesters were arrested and more than 1,000 police, villagers and student militants were injured in a series of riots.“
Editing and art direction by the legendary activist designer Kiyoshi Awazu (1929–2009) with stunning deep gravure printing. Included in “The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1990” by Kaneko Ryuichi and Manfred Heiting and "The Photobook: A History, Volume III" by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, p. 57.
Very Good copy with some age/wear/light scratching to box.
1980, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. acetate jacket and obi-strip), 190 pages, 30 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo
$1000.00 - In stock -
First edition. A seminal Japanese photo book and instant classic upon release, Flash up is one of the most remarkable photographic excursions into the seedy underbelly of 1970s Tokyo. Kurata (b. 1945—2020), one Japan’s formidable contemporary photographers who’s work is often referenced in the same circles as his "Provoke" teachers Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, won the fifth Kimura Ihei Award in 1980 for this, his first book, his acclaimed collection of photographs of creatures of the night — gangsters showing off their full-length tattoos, youth styling themselves after the Hells Angels, self-professed ultra-nationalists from the notorious Black Dragon Society, transvestites drawing in crowds of men, cabaret girls...
"The photographs of Seiji Kurata are striking for their violence. The viewer must be prepared to be hit by his flashgun along with the subjects. ‘Violence’, in this case, is not necessarily invoked by the scenes of blood-shed; rather, it is Kurata’s sharp-shooting ability to stop the flow of time, capture the moment, draw of details we would otherwise never see, then proffer them up before our eyes. Sometimes our response is to avert our eyes for fear of seeing too much. This is not to say that the images are not exaggerated; for after all, people tend only to see what they want to see. If there are those who find Kurata’s photographs ‘ugly’, it can only be said that he has succeeded in paradoxically pointing the finger at them: You who want to avoid ugliness, he says, this is reality and I have cut it out for you. [...] we must admit that the ugliness apparent in these photographs is our ugliness. Our failure to do so simply invites Kurata to deal us an extra-violent blow with his images."—Akira Hasegawa, from the afterword.
Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol. II.
Text in English and Japanese.
Very Good copy, wear and usual shrinkage to publisher's thick acetate dust jacket, VG original metallic obi-strip, Very Good book, light bump to one corner.
1967, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 310 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Haga Bookstore / Japan
$250.00 - In stock -
Rare and iconic book, Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1967) is a collaboration between legendary Japanese underground theater and film director Shuji Terayama, graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo and photographer/cinematographer Yasuhiro Yoshioka. As a precursor to Terayama's first audacious feature-length film of the same title, from 1971, this beautiful softcover book is filled with collages, photographs, graphics, drawings and texts (in Japanese), housed in an elaborate dust-jacket (with amazing Beatles homage lipstick collage on verso) typical of the bold and vibrant pop design style of Yokoo, establishes Terayama as a multi-talented avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, editor and photographer, and one of the central figures of the runaway movement in 1960s Japan. In the same year as this book was published, Terayama (in collaboration with Tadanori Yokoo and others) formed the Tenjo Sajiki, a major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the prolific group was known for their stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. An amazing and rare early example of their published collaborative work, wrapped in one of Yokoo's most iconic graphic works.
Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.
Good copy with Good dust jacket. General tanning and foxing, with edge wear and surface wear to jacket.
1968 / 1969, Japanese / French
4 Vols., softcover, approx. 1000 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$340.00 - Out of stock
Complete 4 issue run of Le Sang Et La Rose — a masterpiece of the Japanese underground! Opening with Kishin Shinoyama's photographic portraits of Yukio Mishima depicted as Saint Sebastian and onward through one thousand pages exploring the outer limits of subversive human potential!
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose was a groundbreaking, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The fourth final issue, and rarest of the four, edited by critic Masaaki Hiraoka and designed by self-taught painter, graphic designer and political activist, Kiyoshi Awazu (!) The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
All Good—VG copies with general wear and age.
1927 / 1994, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 28 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Black Sparrow Press / Santa Rosa
$60.00 - In stock -
Long out-of-print 1994 facsimile reprint by Black Sparrow Press of Wyndham Lewis' radical arts and literature journal of 1927, The Enemy. British writer, artist, critic, Vorticism co-founder and BLAST editor Wyndham Lewis (1882—1957) established The Arthur Press in 1926 specifically for the purpose of publishing The Enemy, outlining in the initial volume's Editorial his intention to use the 'Review of Art and Literature' as a "serious unpartisan criticism" of society, commencing with his essay 'The Revolutionary Simpleton' in which he savages a perceived romanticism in the works of Joyce, Pound, Stein, even Charlie Chaplin. Wyndham Lewis's contributions (many essays and illustrations) dominate this first amazing issue, with contributions also by T. S. Eliot, W. Gibson and J. W. N. Sullivan, and a painting by Giorgio de Chirico. This wonderful and absolutely complete reprint by contemporary editor David Peters Corbett features additional editor's note and biography / portrait of the iconoclastic Lewis.
Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882—1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited BLAST, the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include Tarr (1918) and The Human Age trilogy, composed of The Childermass (1928), Monstre Gai (1955) and Malign Fiesta (1955). A fourth volume, titled The Trial of Man, was unfinished at the time of his death. He also wrote two autobiographical volumes: Blasting and Bombardiering (1937) and Rude Assignment: A Narrative of my Career Up-to-Date (1950).
Very Good copy with tanning and bending to top back cover corner. Otherwise a tight, clean copy throughout.
1994 / 2012, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 21.6 x 14 cm
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$35.00 - In stock -
As our society is stricken with repeated technological disasters, and the apocalyptic problems that go with them, the "neo-primitivist" essays of John Zerzan seem more relevant than ever.
"Future Primitive," (1994) the core innovative essay of Future Primitive Revisited, has been out of print for years. This new edition is updated with never-before-printed essays that speak to a youthful political movement and influential writers such as Derrick Jensen and Paul Theroux.
An active participant in the contemporary anarchist resurgence, John Zerzan has been an invited speaker at both radical and conventional events on several continents. His weekly Anarchy Radio broadcast streams live on KWVA radio.
"Anyone who travels with his eyes open understands the sense of much of what you have written, and the longer I live the greater my contempt for the opportunists who run governments and dictate our lives with technology."—Paul Theroux
"Zerzan's writing is sharp, uncompromising, and tenacious."—Derrick Jensen
"John Zerzan's importance does not only consist in his brilliant intelligence, his absolute clearness of analysis and his unequalled dialectical synthesis that clarifies even the most complicated questions, but also in the humanity that fills his thoughts of resistance. Future Primitive Revisited is one more precious gift for us all."—Enrico Manicardi, author of Liberi dalla Civiltá (Free from Civilization)
"Of course we should go primitive. This doesn't mean abandoning material needs, tools, or skills, but ending our obsession with such concerns. Declaring for community, our true origin: personal autonomy, trust, mutual support in pursuit of all the joys and troubles of life. Society was a trap—massive, demanding, impersonal and debilitating from day one. So hurry back to the community, friends, and welcome all the consequences of such an orientation. The reasons for fear and despair will only multiply if we remain in this brutal and dangerous state of civilization."—Blok 45 publishing, Belgrade
2008, English
Softcover, 100 pages, 14 x 22 cm
Published by
Wingspan Classics / California
$28.00 - In stock -
In 1971 Dr. Theodore Kaczynski rejected modern society and moved to a primitive cabin in the woods of Montana. There, he began building bombs, which he sent to professors and executives to express his disdain for modern society, and to work on his magnum opus, Industrial Society and Its Future, a 1995 anti-technology essay, forever known to the world as the Unabomber Manifesto. The manifesto contends that the Industrial Revolution began a harmful process of natural destruction brought about by technology, while forcing humans to adapt to machinery, creating a sociopolitical order that suppresses human freedom and potential. The 35,000-word manifesto formed the ideological foundation of Kaczynski's 1978–1995 mail bomb campaign, designed to protect wilderness by hastening the collapse of industrial society. Responsible for three deaths and more than twenty casualties over two decades, he was finally identified and apprehended when his brother recognized his writing style while reading the "Unabomber Manifesto." The piece, written under the pseudonym FC (Freedom Club) was published in the New York Times after his promise to cease the bombing if a major publication printed it in its entirety. Kaczynski believed that his violence, as direct action when words were insufficient, would draw others to pay attention to his critique. He wanted his ideas to be taken seriously.
The manifesto argues against accepting individual technological advancements as purely positive without accounting for their overall effect, which includes the fall of small-scale living, and the rise of uninhabitable cities. While originally regarded as a thoughtful critique of modern society, with roots in the work of academic authors such as French philosopher Jacques Ellul, British zoologist Desmond Morris, and American psychologist Martin Seligman, Kaczynski's 1996 trial polarized public opinion around the essay, as his court-appointed lawyers tried to justify their insanity defense around characterizing the manifesto as the work of a madman, and the prosecution lawyers rested their case on it being produced by a lucid mind.
While Kaczynski's actions were generally condemned, his manifesto expressed ideas that continue to be generally shared among the American public. A 2017 Rolling Stone article stated that Kaczynski was an early adopter of the concept that: "We give up a piece of ourselves whenever we adjust to conform to society's standards. That, and we're too plugged in. We're letting technology take over our lives, willingly."
2011, English
Softcover, 520 pages, 28 x 22 cm
Published by
WarCry / US
$65.00 - In stock -
Underground: The Animal Liberation Front in the 1990s compiles the rare first 15 issues of Underground, the magazine of the North American Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group. With over 500 pages of A.L.F. news and action reports, this landmark compilation offers the most comprehensive look available on the Animal Liberation Front at the end of the 20th century.
For most of the 1990s, Underground proudly documented the work of the Animal Liberation Front, a clandestine group that carries out illegal raids to rescue animals and sabotage the businesses that profit from their exploitation. A.L.F. activity peaked in the 1990s, and for that decade Underground was the #1 source for A.L.F. news.
Compiled from rare copies of the legendary magazine, this massive collection serves as a powerful animal rights movement history lesson and in-depth look at the Animal Liberation Front.
Underground: The Animal Liberation Front in the 1990s is a vital read for anyone interested in the animal rights movement, and the misunderstood work of those who risk their freedom to save animals.
Included in Underground:
A.L.F. interviews
A.L.F. action reports
Essays by Rod Coronado, Jonathan Paul, and other convicted A.L.F. members
Anonymous "how it was done" accounts of landmark A.L.F. raids
Detailed info on A.L.F. rescue and sabotage tactics
Over 500 pages of Animal Liberation Front history
2019, English
Softcover, 108 pages, 21.6 x 27.9 cm
Published by
WarCry / US
$25.00 - In stock -
Together in one professionally-bound book, for the first time.
The Militant Vegan was a low-production-value, limited-circulation, photocopied publication that ran from 1993 to 1995, and never enjoyed a wide audience. This is the complete collection of the animal liberation zine covering direct action, animal rights activism, and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
To understand The Militant Vegan is to understand the historical context from which it arose: By 1993, the Animal Liberation Front had carried out its most strategic campaign to date, targeting weak points in the fur industry in a multi-state liberation and arson spree called Operation Bite Back. The media was all but silent. There was no internet, so activists outside the small media markets where these raids happened were unaware this campaign was underway, and many of the raids weren’t reported by the media at all. The Animal Liberation Front (again, pre-internet) had little-to-no platforms to which they could disseminate their communiques, rally the movement to join them in taking action, or let the world know of their victories.
It was from this void The Militant Vegan emerged. To quote issue #1, “The Militant Vegan is being released because there has been a media blackout on direct action on behalf of enslaved animals.” Before the internet, animal liberation news could only be spread through photocopied documents like The Militant Vegan, distributed person-to-person, and seen by few. While dominated by re-purposed material (such as ALF primers and newspaper clippings), there is also notable content, ALF history, and other direct-action themed rarities contained in these pages. Some of it never to be found elsewhere. The Militant Vegan published some of the first publicized fur farm addresses - several of which would go on to be raided by activists. A communiqué for the Malecky Mink Farm arson (also part of Operation Bite Back) is a rare piece of ALF history. And even the grainy newspaper article reprints can’t be downplayed, in a time when to not live in an area where an ALF action had occurred was to never know it happened at all - were it not for The Militant Vegan.
In the mid-1990s, reading The Militant Vegan was like a window to a secret history you watched unfold in its pages.
2023, English
Hardcover, 432 pages, 25 x 16.8 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$89.00 - In stock -
How artists in twentieth-century Germany adapted the idea of the medical or legal case as an artistic strategy to push to the fore sexualities, scandals, and crimes that were otherwise concealed.
In early twentieth-century Germany, the artistic avant-garde borrowed procedures from the medical and juridical realms to expose and debate matters that society preferred remain hidden and unspoken. Frederic J. Schwartz explores how the evocation or creation of a “case” provided artists with a means to engage themes that ranged from blasphemy to Lustmord, or sexual murder. Shedding light on the case as a cultural form, Schwartz shows its profound effect on artists and the ways it dovetailed with methods used by these figures to exploit fundamental changes taking place across the mass media of their time.
As Schwartz shows, the case was a common denominator that connected seemingly disparate works. George Grosz and Rudolf Schlichter drew on it for their violent visual art, as did architect Adolf Loos when he equated ornament with crime. Expressionists, meanwhile, approached the question of whether the so-called “mad” shared a right of public expression with those deemed sane, and examined medical and legal approaches to what society labeled as insanity. The case also took on a personal dimension when artists found themselves confronted with, or chose to engage with, the legal system. German courts prosecuted John Heartfield and others for their provocative works, while Bertolt Brecht created publicity for himself by suing the firm to whom he sold the film rights to The Threepenny Opera. Provocative and insightful, The Culture of the Case offers a privileged view of the spaces of representation in which images—in some instances, as cases—functioned at a key moment of modernity.
Frederic J. Schwartz is Emeritus Professor of History of Art at University College London. His books include The Werkbund- Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War and Blind Spots- Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany.
1982, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 23 x 30.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Pan / Sydney
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1982 softcover edition of Art of The Holocaust, edited by Janet Blatter and Sybil Milton. A powerful collection of over 350 works of art created in ghettos, concentration camps, and in hiding by victims of the Nazis. Jewish, Communist and "degenerate", exiled, enemy-of-the-State avant-garde German artists, whose art was an "insult to German feeling", present here an arresting collective portrait of horror and the indomitable struggle to survive. Paintings and drawings reproduced throughout in colour and b/w with extensive biographies on the artists. Preface by Irving Howe.
Good copy.
2013, Japanese
Softcover, 212 pages, 28.2 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Amana / Japan
$160.00 - In stock -
First edition of this wonderful collection of Japanese photographers that captured 1970s Tokyo, now out-of-print. In the world of fine art photography, post-war Japanese photography is continuing to gather attention. Many Japanese photographers were active specifically during the large cultural and political development of the 70s as the country experienced rapid economic growth. At the time, new styles of expression with a strong focus on the individual viewpoint were beginning to develop, which were distinct to the social documentary photography prior to that. This also coincided with the development of photography within the fashion and advertising field, reflecting a period where the works of many unique photographers and styles began to grow. A careful selection of 160 bodies of works by 9 prominent photographers of the time, each individually portraying the excitement and rapid growth which symbolised the era. Taiji Arita, Eikoh Hosie, Daido Moriyama, Masatoshi Naito, Hajime Sawatari, Issei Suda, Yoshihiro Tatsuki, Shuji Terayama, Katsumi Watanabe.
Very Good copy with good dust jacket.
1983, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 320 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Routledge / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
First 1984 hardcover English edition of this collection of essays documenting a dialogue between phenomenology and Marxism, with the contributors representing a cross-section from the two traditions. The theoretical and historical presuppositions of the phenomenology inaugurated by Husserl are very different from those of the much older Marxist tradition, yet, as these essays show, there are definite points of contact, communication and exchange between the two traditions.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket.
1966, English
Softcover, 570 pages, 20.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Doubleday Anchor / US
$60.00 - In stock -
First English edition of this important 1966 anthology of anarchist texts, edited by Leonard I. Krimerman and Lewis Perry. It is the aim of this book to clarify and analyze the various traditions that together make up the corpus of anarchist thought and inform anarchists' recommendations for the renovation of society. Grouping writings by past and present libertarians, both European and American, around topics of central interest to all of them, the editors have illuminated both the variety and the underlying unity of anarchist traditions. One section brings together criticisms that anarchists of different schools have made of socialism, defining the distance that separates anarchism from a movement with which it has often been mistakenly confounded. Another portion of the book is devoted to critiques and proposals relating to education, a field of great concern to libertarian thinkers and one inwhich their ideas have utomost relevance today. And, to facilitate a just appraisal, the editors have included a number of cogent attacks upon various anarchist positions.
Good copy with general wear and age.
1992, English
Softcover, 302 pages, 15.24 x 22.86 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University Press of New England / New Hampshire
$30.00 - Out of stock
First 1992 edition of Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture, edited by Richard J. Golsan.
"A timely and necessary evaluation of fascism and its ongoing impact on culture and the arts."
"Recent scandals and controversies in the academic world and in politics both in the U.S. and in Europe have made fascism an important contemporary topic. Thirteen essays offer a wide-ranging multidisciplinary reassessment of the impact of fascist ideology on the novels, poetry, criticism, and polemics of such major European and American writers as Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Marinetti, Céline, Montherlant, de Man, and Heidegger; on such artistic movements as 'Triunfalismo in Spain, Futurism in Italy, and Primitivism in Germany; and on film aesthetics and such cultural events as the 1932 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in Rome. The traditional assumption that fascism is an aberration antithetical to culture is no longer tenable. As a whole this volume raises fundamental questions about the relation of modernism and fascism and the attraction of fascism to a broad spectrum of intellectuals, artists, and writers.
Richard J. Golsan is Associate Professor of French at Texas A &M University. He is currently working on a book about Rene Girard's theory of myth and co-editing an issue of L'Esprit Createur on the literature and film of the Nail Occupation period in France.
Very Good copy.
2023, English
Softcover, 566 pages, 25 x 19 cm
Published by
Edition Patrick Frey / Zürich
$119.00 - Out of stock
The youth uprising, now simply called “The Sixties,” was fed by one of the greatest booms in publishing history. The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) began as a loose confederation of five papers in 1966, and within a few years swelled to over 500 across the world, reaching millions of readers. They “spread like weed,” said the UPS director, weed-dealer, and eventual founder of High Times, Tom Forcade. The metaphor was apt: the UPS spurred the legalization movement, and weed became its totem.
Weed was so pervasive it became a helpful means for government agencies to crack down on the UPS. Weed came to emblematize activist groups, and added a touch of flair to the mastheads of UPS titles. Weed permeated UPS pages, with gaps in text crammed with weed-inspired “spot illustratios”.
Heads Together collects these drawings, shining a light on lesser-known names in the stoner-art canon, and many who weren’t names at all, as no signature was attached. It also compiles guides for growing weed from the period that were treated like contraband by the CIA. Activist-oriented, psychedelic rolling papers are showcased too.
As pot now fast-tracks toward legalization in the U.S. and beyond, its once incendiary status is brought into odd relief. Pot’s profiteers of the corporate market today do not reflect those who fought for legalization, or the Black and Latino populations strategically criminalized for pot well before hippies were targeted, and long after.
The art in this book speaks to a time when pot was smoked with optimism, as something potentially good for society and people, capable of activating profound transformation in the face of corrupt and powerful forces.
With Oral Histories by: Ishmael Reed, John Sinclair, Marjorie Heins, Mariann Wizard-Vasquez, Abe Peck
1984, English
Softcover, 232 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Johns Hopkins University Press / Baltimore
$25.00 - In stock -
First published in 1982. Aside from Jacques Derrida's own references to the "possible articulation" between deconstruction and Marxism, the relationship between the two has remained largely unexplored. In Marxism and Deconstruction, Michael Ryan examines that multifaceted relationship but not through a mere comparison of two distinct and inviolable entities. Instead, he looks at both with an eye to identifying their common elements and reweaving them into a new theory of political practice. To accomplish his task, Ryan undertakes a detailed comparison of deconstruction and Marxism, relating deconstruction to the dialectical tradition in philosophy and demonstrating how deconstruction can be used in the critique of ideology. He is a forceful critic of both the politics of deconstruction and the metaphysical aspect of Marxism (as seen from a deconstructionist perspective). Besides offering the first book-length study of Derrida in this context, Ryan makes the first methodic attempt by an American scholar to apply deconstruction to domains beyond literature. He proposes a deconstructive Marxism, one lacking the metaphysical underpinnings of conservative "scientific" Marxist theory and employing deconstructive analysis both for Marxist political criticism and to further current anti-metaphysical developments within Marxism. Marxism and Deconstruction is an innovative and controversial contribution to the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, and political science.
"A powerful riposte, both to Marxists who revile deconstructionism for its supposed liberal-bourgeois quietism, and to those among the current deconstructors who seem to invite that charge."—Christopher Norris, Times Literary Supplement.
G—VG copy.
1972, English
Softcover, 686 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
This first 1972 edition of the leading anthology provides the essential writings of Marx and Engels -- those works necessary for an introduction to Marxist thought and ideology. The volume is arranged to show both the chronological and the thematic development of the two great thinkers. Selections range in coverage from history, society, and economics, to politics, philosophy, and the strategy and tactics of social revolution.
Friedrich Engels was born in 1820, in the German city of Barmen. He died in London in 1895 while editing the fourth volume of Capital.
Karl Marx studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, completing his doctorate in 1841. Expelled from Prussia in 1844, he took up residence first in Paris and then in London where, in 1867, he published his magnum opus Capital. A co-founder of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864, Marx died in London in 1883.
Robert C. Tucker is professor of politics emeritus at Princeton University and past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
G—VG copy. General wear from age, light creases.
2019, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 27 x 19.5 cm
Published by
Nero / Rome
$65.00 - Out of stock
Global Tools 1973–1975 documents and narrates the story of the eponymous experience of Radical Design and its multidisciplinary school program “without students or teachers.” The Global Tools journey began with its foundation in 1973 by groups and figures drawn from Italian Radical Architecture, Arte Povera, and Conceptual Art, and ended in 1975 after three years of intense experimentation. This book is both a commentary and an impressive visual archive that brings together essays by international authors and reproductions of many original documents—including the Global Tools bulletins, entirely republished here for the first time. This unique and definitive book marks a fundamental stage in the rediscovery of one of the most fascinating European cultural experiences of the late twentieth century.
Edited by Valerio Borgonuovo and Silvia Franceschini.
With texts by Manola Antonioli and Alessandro Vicari, Valerio Borgonuovo and Silvia Franceschini, Alison J. Clarke, Beatriz Colomina, Maurizio Lazzarato, Franco Raggi, Simon Sadler.
Published by Nero in collaboration with SALT, Istanbul.
1981, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 48 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Goethe-Institut / Münich
$28.00 - In stock -
Rare English paperback documentary film programme, "From Weimar to Hitler", published by the
Goethe-Institut, Münich, in 1981. An illustrated essay on films that deal with the history of the late phase and crisis of the Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialism electioneering and documentary films and Germany's tradition of agitprop film. Film stills throughout texts by editor Hans Mommsen, translated to English by Peter Green.
Very Good copy.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 25.4 x 19 cm
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$89.00 - Out of stock
How California's counterculture of the 1960s to 1980s profoundly shaped—and was shaped by—West Coast artists.
The 1960s exert a special fascination in modern art. But most accounts miss the defining impact of the period's youth culture, largely incubated in California, on artists who came of age in that decade. As their prime exemplar, Bruce Conner, reminisced, "I did everything that everybody did in 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury. . . . I would take peyote and walk out in the streets." And he vividly channeled those experiences into his art, while making his mark on every facet of the psychedelic movement—from the mountains of Mexico with Timothy Leary to the rock ballrooms of San Francisco to the gilded excesses of the New Hollywood. In The Artist in the Counterculture, Thomas Crow tells the story of California art from the 1960s to the 1980s—some of the strongest being made anywhere at the time—and why it cannot be understood apart from the new possibilities of thinking and feeling unleashed by the rebels of the counterculture.
Crow reevaluates Conner and other key figures—from Catholic activist Corita Kent to Black Panther Emory Douglas to ecological witness Bonnie Ora Sherk—as part of a generational cohort galvanized by resistance to war, racial oppression, and environmental degradation. Younger practitioners of performance and installation carried the mindset of rebellion into the 1970s and 1980s, as previously excluded artists of color moved to the forefront in Los Angeles. Mike Kelley, their contemporary, remained unwaveringly true to the late countercultural flowering he had witnessed at the dawn of his career.
The result is a major new account of the counterculture's enduring influence on modern art.
2021, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Rab-Rab Press / Helsinki
$38.00 - In stock -
Punk Suprematism includes the first English translation of theoretical writings on punk, art, socialism, bureaucracy, and nationalism by Slavoj Žižek, Rastko Močnik, and Zoja Skušek.
Written in the first half of the eighties, these texts are a unique mixture of punk attitude with theoretical concepts borrowed from Althusser, Lacan, and avant-garde art. Written in a turbulent period of Yugoslav socialism, these texts were trying to understand the political importance of punk as a mass movement of impoverished youth. The conclusions of these interventions had a lasting effect on the theoretical formation of Yugoslav post-Marxism, as well to the organizational forms of the socialist alternative. The book also includes a foreword on the historical context of the eighties and the extensive narrative bibliography of punk related publications in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia written by Sezgin Boynik. In addition to this, it also includes translations of the two editorials to Punk Problemi written by renowned Slovenian theoreticians.
The book is the first in an upcoming series on punk research by Rab-Rab press. The series starts from the idea that punk is a break, and focuses on punk as something completely separated from bourgeois culture.