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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
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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Fluxus
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
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Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
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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.
2000, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gallery 400 / Chicago
$65.00 $45.00 - In stock -
Scarce copy of this excellent catalogue survey of works by New York-based painter and sculptor B. Wurtz (b. 1948), published on the occasion of the artist's exhibition "70 + 30 = 2000" at Gallery 400, University of Chicago, Illionois , 2000. "I chose a selection of my artworks made from a thirty year period, 1970 until the present". Chaptered "plastic bags", "tin cans", "buildings", "shoelaces", "socks", "food containers", etc., that's exactly what this catalogue represents, all illustrated in colour, alongside philosophical captions and proverbs collected by the artist (Warhol, Goethe, Wittgenstein, et al.), plus full catalogue of works. Published in an edition of 1500 copies.
Very Good copy with light cover wear.
2024, English
Softcover (spiral-bound), 52 pages, 20.5 x 16.5 cm
Ed. of 250,
Published by
Tutto / Naarm—Melbourne
$50.00 - In stock -
Emerging from the 1990s New York fashion scene, Susan Cianciolo (b. 1969) garnered a cult like following for her label RUN. Since exiting the fashion world in the early 2000s, Cianciolo has become renowned for making art that delves into memory and the spiritual. Fusing the language of textiles, painting, drawing and craft with the natural world she simultaneously conjures both the humble and the huge.
In this artist book, Cianciolo documents her love of trees and the land amround Lovewell Lake and other lush areas that are particularly close to her and her family.
Spiral bound w/ green wire, French flaps and gatefolds throughout.
edition of 250
2024, English
Softcover (w. hand painted spine strip, ink on Japanese kozo paper), 470 pages, 27.8 x 20.6 cm
Ed. of 50 signed and numbered by the artist,
Published by
Tutto / Naarm—Melbourne
$180.00 - In stock -
André Piguet (b.1986) is influenced by an ever expanding field of interests; perhaps most simply filed under “WORLD”. He has a long held interest in making books.
For nearly two decades in the late 19th Century, the Swiss filigranologist, Charles-Moïse Briquet systematically visited 235 paper archives and manuscript collections, as well as libraries for about a thousand printed items. He examined 30,840 volumes, as well as 1,432 documents in unbound form, from which he made a total of 44,000 tracings and recorded 65,000 references to the same. This Herculean feat of historical scholarship culminated in the publication of Briquet’s four volume encyclopedia of European paper watermarks, LES FILIGRANES (1907).
A watermark is a small image that appears in paper when held up to light source. In a method dating back to the 12th Century, these designs were bent out of thin strands of copper wire and sewn into a wire paper mould, supported by a wooden frame.
Ranging from the chaos, ferocity and social disruption of the 13th Century to the rise of humanism and clarity of the high renaissance, these images offer a small window into a Europe caught between ancient and modern; of a world where the mundane and mystic still co-existed.
SELECTED WATERMARKS 1282 – 1600 is a condensed 470 page bootleg photocopy edit of Briquet's 1907 publication. Eschewing any formal design or sequencing and stripping the source material to its bare formal elements, Piguet’s book is both an exercise in graphic deconstruction and an exploration into the possibilities and constraints of the photocopier.
Softcover with hand painted spine strip, ink on Japanese kozo paper, cold glue bound. edition of 50 Signed and numbered by the artist. All spine wraps are unique.
These books are entirely made by hand using archival materials.
Founded in 2020, TUTTO is an independent publisher based in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia with a focus on making artist books.
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
$140.00 - 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
1982, English / French / German
Softcover (staple-bound), unpaginated, 20.5 × 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Edition Hundertmarkt / Cologne
$85.00 - In stock -
Published in 1982 in an edition of 500, Typewriters Poems features reproductions of dactylographed concrete poems by Chopin. It was published in this single limited run by Cologne gallerist and publisher Armin Hundertmarkt, a specialist in Fluxus Art, Concrete and Visual Poetry and Vienna Actionism Art.
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
Fine copy with age to staples.
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.
1976, English
Softcover (staple-bound), unpaginated, 22 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tao Productions / Hollywood
$140.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Arrogant Amazon vs. Bondage Burgler, one of legendary American bondage artist Robert Bishop's early illustrated story books of sadomasochism and bondage, published in 1976 by Tao Productions, Inc. in Hollywood. Quite possibly also written by Bishop, Arrogant Amazon vs. Bondage Burgler likely pre-dates his famous Fanni Hall stories, and features wonderful, nicely reproduced full-page examples of his iconic bondage artwork with soft airbrush gradients and exquisite details throughout, exclusive to this story. Includes illustrated advertisements for mail-order bondage films and other publications.
Robert K. Bishop (1945–1991) was a bondage artist and photographer from Michigan whose inventive artworks, rendered in pencil, ink and airbrush, featured heavily in the publications of House of Milan and Centurian Publications during the 1970's—1980s. He produced many cover illustrations for bondage novels by F. E. Campbell, as well as illustrating his own series of stories describing the misadventures of the character "Fanni Hall". His work was very influential to a generation of fetish illustrators and has become collectible within the sub-culture. Bishop died by suicide in 1991, at the age of 46.
Very Good copy. only light wear/age to staples. Former adult bookshop markings to cover (restriction sticker and price).
1975, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 28 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Rosslyn News / Studio City
$45.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of "Patricia in Bondage", a 1975 illustrated story by Jack Owen, featuring 21 b/w female bondage ink illustrations, published by Rosslyn News Studio City. Includes illustrated backcover and (photo) advertisement for Rosslyn feature films (femdom). "This volume is to be regarded as a psychological workbook. A study for the serious student of unusual aspects of psychology".
Good copy with some wear, buckling, some moisture staining to spine, rusted staples.
1991, English
Softcover (staple-bound), approx 60 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Drawing Legion / Iowa City
$35.00 - In stock -
Very rare issue of Retrofuturism, the sporadically appearing hyper-media magazine edited by The Tape-beatles, a multi-media and experimental audio art group that formed in Iowa City in December 1986, informed by musique concrète and heavily involved in the new networked mail art, cassette and ‘zine sub-cultures of the late 1980's. Retrofuturism was one of their many editorial periodical projects.
Retrofuturism no. 14, January 1991 features: STATE OF THE ART FOR TODAY'S ARTIST by the Bureau of Control; THE MAGIC OF BIGAMY by Dr. Al Ackerman; SENSORIA MEDIA-TORS; CODES AND CHAOS by Thomas Wiloch; CASSETTE REVIEWS by Paul Neff; PRINT REVIEWS; TAPE-BEATLE NEWS; REPORT from the IOWA CHAPTER of the AGGRESSIVE SCHOOL of CULTURAL WORKERS; and much more!
Very Good copy, aged staples/edges.
1991, English
Softcover (staple-bound), approx 60 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Drawing Legion / Iowa City
$35.00 - In stock -
Very rare issue of Retrofuturism, the sporadically appearing hyper-media magazine edited by The Tape-beatles, a multi-media and experimental audio art group that formed in Iowa City in December 1986, informed by musique concrète and heavily involved in the new networked mail art, cassette and ‘zine sub-cultures of the late 1980's. Retrofuturism was one of their many editorial periodical projects.
Retrofuturism no. 15, August 1991 features: Plans for an INTERNATIONAL NETWORKING CONGRESS 1992, THE WAR AND THE SPECTACLE by the Bureau of Public Secrets, CODES AND CHAOS by Thomas Wiloch, THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF eSCHATOLOGY by Ben G. Price, CONFESSIONS OF A POSTERIST by Barney Rubble, A NEW YORK EXPERIENCE by Eliza Blackweb, THE NEED FOR PLAGIARISM by Karen Eliot, TAPE-BEATLE NEWS, Reviews and Listings of Audio and Print Productions From Around The World..
Very Good copy, aged staples/edges.
1992, English
Softcover (staple-bound), approx 60 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Drawing Legion / Iowa City
$35.00 - In stock -
Very rare issue of Retrofuturism, the sporadically appearing hyper-media magazine edited by The Tape-beatles, a multi-media and experimental audio art group that formed in Iowa City in December 1986, informed by musique concrète and heavily involved in the new networked mail art, cassette and ‘zine sub-cultures of the late 1980's. Retrofuturism was one of their many editorial periodical projects.
Retrofuturism no. 16, March 1992 features: The group NEGATIVLAND presents THE CASE FROM OUR SIDE in their dispute with Island Records; The IMMEDIAST UNDERGROUND unveils its plans for SEIZING THE MEDIA; Stephen Perkins and Mark Palmer offer new insights concerning the subject of PLAGIARISM: is it a BASTARD CHILD, or is there some TRUTH IN DOUBLING? And, of course, the usual columns, reviews, and listings of other marginalia from around the world. RETROFUTURISM, the sporadic quarterly, uses only the finest ingredients, and encourages your input into the process.
Very Good copy, aged staples/edges.
1993, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 22 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kala Press / London
$70.00 - In stock -
First 1993 edition of Jimmie Durham's long out-of-print writings on art and cultural politics, A Certain Lack of Coherence, published by Kala Press in London.
Jimmie Durham, writer, sculptor, performance artist and poet, is one of the most controversial figures in contemporary culture. This anthology of writings ranges from his appeals to the American Indian nations for strength and unity of purpose in combatting the corrosive effects of colonialism, to his acerbic critiques of Western culture and its redemptive myths of the 'Other'. For Durham, art and its institutions are not separable from political realities; the West's representations of ethnic and cultural authenticity, its constructions of primitivism and aesthetic value are intimately bound to the discourses of colonialism and racism. The author's keen understanding of historical process and witty subversions of Western thought challenge any complacent attitudes we may harbour on 'multiculturalism' and offer a model of how we might think and act differently about the world.
Jimmie Durham was born in 1940 and is a visual arts graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Geneva. During the '70s and early '80s, as a member of the American Indian Movement, he was founding director of the International Indian Treaty Council at the UN, co-editor of Treaty Council News and Director of the Foundation for the Community of Artists and editor of inter-racial books for children. After a period as editor of its New York based paper Art & Artists, he became a freelance contributor to numerous international art journals. Since the mid-Eighties his artwork has been exhibited internationally. His book of poems Columbus Day was published in 1983 'West End Press'. He currently lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
The cover design is based on a detail of Not Lothar Baumgarten's Cherokee by Jimmie Durham, 1990.
2023, England
Softcover, 80 pages, 12 x 17 cm
Published by
Floating Opera Press / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
In Perpetual Slavery, Ciarán Finlayson investigates the relationship of art to freedom in the work of Cameron Rowland and Ralph Lemon, who both utilize imagery of labor haunted and structured by the historical experience of slavery.
Finlayson suggests that these two artists' work overcomes the dichotomy between the recording of history and its interpretation by making both the object of artistic experience, thereby providing a space to grasp the continuing effects of slavery.
Ciarán Finlayson is a writer and editor based in New York City. His essays have appeared in periodicals including Artforum, Bookforum, Papers on Language and Literature, Studio magazine, Kunst und Politik, PARSE, Archives of American Art Journal, and 032C. He is the managing editor of Blank Forms. His primary research is on contemporary art with emphases on Marxism, Black studies, philosophy of history, and conceptual art. He writes with the London-based Black Study Group and is a founding member of the political education collective Hic Rosa.
Graphic design: Daniela Burger.
2023, English
Softcover, 76 pages, 12 x 17 cm
Published by
Floating Opera Press / Berlin
$38.00 - In stock -
How queer theory can wed its critically anti-normative impulses to the empirical need for a state.
Queer theory has often been hesitant to align itself with a politics of the state, approaching it with a negative or pragmatic framework. A Queer Theory of the State offers a more optimistic perspective. Rather than eschew engagement with democratic theorizing, the historian Samuel Clowes Huneke asks how queer theory can wed its critically anti-normative impulses to the empirical need for a state. In answering this question, Huneke shows how the state is an integral component of a politics that seeks to subvert and undo the oppression of queer lives.
Samuel Clowes Huneke is assistant professor of history at George Mason University. His first book, States of Liberation: Gay Men Between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (2022), won the Charles E. Smith Award for best book in European History from the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association. Huneke has written for Boston Review, the Washington Post, The Point, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
2021, English
Hardcover, 88 pages, 12 x 17 cm
Published by
Floating Opera Press / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
Queer Formalism: The Return expands upon William J. Simmons’s original, influential essay Notes on Queer Formalism from 2013, offering novel ways of thinking about queer-feminist art outside of the critical-complicit and abstract-representational binaries that continue to haunt contemporary queer art. It therefore proposes a new kind of queer art writing, one that skirts the limits imposed by normative histories of art and film.
Artists addressed in Queer Formalism: The Return include: Sally Mann, David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Math Bass, Lorna Simpson, Laurie Simmons, Alex Prager, Lana Del Rey, Jessica Lange, and Louise Lawler, among others.
2022, English
Softcover, 116 pages, 12 x 17 cm
Published by
Floating Opera Press / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
Within the history of contemporary visual art, the canon of Institutional Critique has emerged as a response to the institution and how it embeds itself in society. After Institutions expands the definition of Institutional Critique to develop a broader understanding of contemporary art’s sociopolitical entanglements, looking beyond what cultural institutions were to what they are and what they might become.
2022, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 12 x 17 cm
Published by
Floating Opera Press / Berlin
$34.00 - Out of stock
An investigation into the current social architectures that determine the perception of the notion of "evil"... and the production of figures that embody it.
What is evil? How is it categorized, understood, and used as a tool? Surveying recent examples of "evil" which have taken hold in mass culture, Notes on Evil examines the mechanisms by which societies construct new enemies in a collective bid to rid themselves of their problems, usually culminating in largely superficial or aestheticized purges. Do societies necessarily need to create evil villains in order to function? And is the villain's role best understood as that of a court jester, who symbolically appears to mock the sovereign, while actually reinforcing their position of power?
Artist and writer Steven Warwick reflects on the overlapping social architectures which frame our current discourse on good and evil, ultimately charting a path beyond our present climate of reductivism, false binaries, and collective impasse.
Steven Warwick is a British artist, musician and writer residing in Berlin. His practice includes durational performance installations, plays and films using the construction of situations and language. He also makes music under his own name, and previously as Heatsick. His writing has appeared in Texte zur Kunst, Frieze, Urbanomic, Artforum, Spike and Electronic Beats and has co-authored a book released on Primary Information.
Graphic design: Daniela Burger.
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.
2013, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 23 x 15 cm
Hand-numbered ed. of 100,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
REL Records / Edinburgh
$15.00 - Out of stock
Neum is a book of drawings, prints and diagrams by Eli Keszler made in conjunction with the presentation of the Neum installation at the South London Gallery – a large scale piece made up of 16 overlapped and splayed piano wire, activated by a mechanical system featured as part of the group show 'At the Moment of Being Heard'. The book consists of over 65 drawings, sketches and diagrams of various sizes, dimensions and medias as well as three silkscreened inserts. Neum is printed in a limited hand numbered edition of 100 copies.
Eli Keszler is an American percussionist, composer, and visual artist based in New York City. Known for his complex and intricate style of drumming, as well creating sound installations involving piano wire and other mechanisms to accompany his live performances, his shows have involved visual elements such as Keszler's drawings, diagrams, screen prints, and writings. Keszler has also toured or collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jandek, Loren Connors, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Oneohtrix Point Never.
As New.
2002, English
Softcover (staple bound), 52 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edition Peters / New York
$25.00 - Out of stock
2002 artist catalogue of works by American Experimental composer John Cage. This publication features a comprehensive index of Cage's compositions and works, updated to the year of publication. A important resource for Cagians. Published by Edition Peters, New York.
Very Good copy.
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.
2010, English / Italian
Softcover, 300 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Die Schachtel / Milan
$100.00 - Out of stock
First, only edition of the first, most comprehensive book dedicated to the work of Alvin Curran, published in 2010 by Milan's Die Schachtel imprint, now long out-of-print.
Although Alvin Curran is almost universally recognized as one of the leading figure of the late 20th Century musical avant-garde, he has never received the recognition he deserves in the form of a proper publication. This is in fact the first book ever to present a complete and coherent picture of this gigantic figure of experimental music. A radical experimentalism and a kind of innate volatility have, in fact, long kept the person and the work of Alvin Curran, one of the historic founders of the group Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV), at the margins of contemporary musical historiography. His vast and all-inclusive experience refuses to fit into the common schemas and cubbyholes, excluding him from the conceptual straitjackets of current Western musicology.
Lavishly produced and conceived, the book is centered around extensive descriptions of the most important works and compositional techniques, providing a historical account of Curran's musical concerns and changing style: in permanent flux between two distinct cultural geographies (Italy and USA), sensitive to an infinity of pressures, encounters, transformations, and provocations, Curran’s artistic voyage is presented here through a comprehensive historical and critical study that avoids buzz-word definitions and gives great respect to his otherness – an otherness clearly and happily a part of the variegated musical universe of our time.
Gathered for the first time in a single monograph, the contributions of several of the foremost Italian and international scholars – enriched by an astounding “travel log” by Alvin Curran himself and by unpublished images from his private archive – confirm the role of this composer-performer-teacher-writer as a major contributor to the evolution of artistic languages in the late twentieth century and beyond.Gathered for the first time in a single monograph, the contributions of several of the foremost Italian and international scholars – enriched by an astounding “travel log” by Alvin Curran himself and by unpublished images from his private archive – confirm the role of this composer-performer-teacher-writer as a major contributor to the evolution of artistic languages in the late twentieth century and beyond.
Edited by Daniela Margoni Tortora.
Italian and English.
2007, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Die Schachtel / Milan
$45.00 - In stock -
One of the most adventurous composers and performers of the Italian avant garde scene, member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, great performer of the music of John Cage, Bertoncini started in the early ‘70s to design spectacular and visually fascinating “sound sculptures”, based on the aeolian sound principle.
Amongst his more spectacular installations: Vele, a massive aeolian harps (more than 7 metres high); Venti (winds), for 20 aeolian sound generators and 40 performers; and Chanson pour Instruments à Vent, an “assemblage” for aeolian harps, aeolian gongs, and one performer.
His self-built harps and gongs are excited by blows of compressed air, or by the composer's own breath, and the resulting sound is amplified through contact microphones. If at superficial level they may sound like electronic music (long drones and swooshes of otherwordly sounds), at a close listening they reveal the intensity of a the pure and "mercurial" sound of air, far removed from any artificial or measurable principle.
Published in 2007 by Die Schachtel coinciding with a CD boxset charting his sound works from 1973 onwards, and now all long out-of-print, this 196-page book edited by Mario Bertoncini and Fabio Carboni, in English and Italian and rich with photos, is a rather profound dissertation not only on the Aeolian harps, their generation and meaning, but also on experimental sound and music in general. Written by the composer in the form of a Platonic dialogue (between an old and bitter master and his young enthusiastic pupil), the book conveys not only a wealth of information on its subject matter, but also renders perfectly the voice full of wit of one of the most personal and uncompromising composers of the present times.
Near Fine—As New copy.