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:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
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.
2018, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$20.00 - Out of stock
Issue 10 (Feb 2018) of Mikko Aspa's Special Interests fanzine dedicated to Power Electronics, Noise, and Industrial musics, packed with interviews, reviews, articles, photographs and artwork. This issue featuring Wince, Le Syndicat Faction Vivante, New Forces label, Storm Bugs, Dead Tech, Hal Hutchinson, Human Larvae, Richard Stevenson, Kristian Olsson... contributions by Mikko A, Stephen Petrus, Cyril Adam, Manuel Pereira, Frank Cordry, Arvo Zylo, Takahiko Yokoyama, J. Peterson, Cooper Bowman, Frank Cordry... cover art and additional artwork by Paul Kerin.
Very Good copy.
2018, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Quodlibet / Italy
$62.00 $20.00 - In stock -
This catalogue is published on the occasion of the second part of the exhibition curated by Benedetta Carpi de Resmini and Laima Kreivytė at the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome, expanded with a selection of more than 60 works. The first show took place at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius. The exhibition presents works by Italian and Lithuanian women artists that explore the interplay between language and body. The exhibition foregrounds artistic tactics that transform the language of the body, practices of writing and reading, embodied or dispersed words and letters. At the same time, it is an articulation of women's creativity and manifold experiences which can be compared to magna bursting from a volcano with a (per)formative power to transform the environment.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by the international exhibition of women artists "Magma," held in Verona in 1977 and curated by Romana Loda, in which the image of magma symbolized the quiet, dynamic, and scorching power that was energizing the women's and feminist movement. The separated letters of the 2017 "M/A\G/M\A" exhibition reinforce the importance of word play and deconstruction. This word is written and pronounced the same way in Lithuanian, Italian, English, and other languages. In no particular chronological order, "M/A\G/M\A" exhibition reveal how, in Italian and Lithuanian art of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the female body and linguistic (de)constructions became conceptual critical means for encouraging a re-evaluation of woman's relationship with herself and society.
Italian women artists' works from the 1960s resonate with Lithuanian women artists' efforts from the 1990s until today to transform vocabulary, language, and text, to find their voices. The exhibition highlights connections between artists of different generations and geopolitical contexts: expressions of pre-verbal existence; new vocabulary and writing the body; the identity and consciousness of the woman artist; disruption of the symbolic order; language as a political tool; reading the body. Visual and sound works - from journal-like video to vocal performance, from alphabets written with bodies to unreadable handwritings and performances - are supplemented with artists' books, posters, and texts.
Artists: Jurga Barilaitė, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Eglė Ganda Bogdanienė, Violeta Bubelytė, Cooltūristės, Coro Collective, Amelia Etlinger, Chiara Fumai, Laura Garbštienė, Nicole Gravier, Karla Gruodis, Kristina Inčiūraitė, Justė Janulytė, Eglė Kuckaitė, Lina Lapelytė, Ketty La Rocca, Maria Lai, Aurelija Maknytė, Lucia Marcucci, Verita Monselles, Paulina Eglė Pukytė, Eglė Rakauskaitė, Cloti Ricciardi, Eglė Ridikaitė, Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė, Suzanne Santoro, Laisvydė Šalčiūtė, Eglė Vertelkaitė.
2018, English
Softcover, 92 pages, 21 cm x 30 cm
Ed. of 1000,
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$44.00 $15.00 - In stock -
This publication is an unedited reprint of the catalogue originally published by De Appel in 1980 as a follow-up to the international art manifestation ‘Works and Words’. The event sought to break with the one-way traffic of Western artists traveling to the East by inviting artists from Eastern Bloc countries to Amsterdam. The invited artists, theoreticians, film-makers, and art historians represented a broad spectrum of practices, theoretical approaches, and developments. The manifestation resulted in an active exchange of ideas, new insights, and collaborations. Indicative of the early days of De Appel, the project reflects the groundbreaking forms of artistic practice it represented.
Artists: Franklin Aalders, Jaroslav Anděl, Gábor Attalai, Zoran Belic, Jerzy Bereś, Gábor Bódy, Branko Bubenik, Michel Cardena, Nuša and Srečo Dragan, Ľubomír Ďurček, Miklós Erdély, Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Tomislav Gotovac, Frank Gribling, Buky Grinberg, Vladimir Gudac, Tibor Hajas, Zlatko Hajdler, Janusz Haka, Károly Halasz, Ágnes Háy, Vladimír Havrilla, Nan Hoover, Sanja Iveković, Servie Janssen, Zoltan Jeney, Gyorgy Jovanovic, Cezary Jaworski, Jacek Jozwiak, Szigmond Károlyi, Karoly Kelemen, Michal Kern, Milan Knížák, Tomislav Kobija, Július Koller, Mirko Komosar, Tomasz Konart, Jiří Kovanda, Harrie de Kroon, Zofia Kulik, Romuald Kutera, Paweł Kwiek, Przemyslaw Kwiek, KwieKulik, Natalia LL, Andrzej Lachowicz, Dušan Makavejev, Ivan Martinac, Dalibor Martinis, Raùl Marroquin, Dóra Maurer, Antoni Mikolajczyk, Karel Miler, Jan Mlčoch, Teresa Murak, Vjekoslav Nakić, Mihovil Pansini, Aldo Paquola, Andrzej Paruzel, Sef Peeters, Vladimir Petek, Sandor Pinczehelyi, Reindeer Werk (Dirk Larsen & Tom Puckey), Jaroslav Richtr, Józef Robakowski, Vinco Rozman, Tomasz Sikorski, Petr Štembera, Mladen Stilinović, Peter Timar, Teresa Tyszkiewicz and Zdzislaw Sosnowski, Goran Svob, Janusz Szczerek, István Sziranyi, Raša Todosijević, Endre Tot, Janos Toth, Sava Trifkovic, Ulay, Jiri Valoch, Ante Verzotti, Janos Veto, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Ryszard Waśko, Albert van der Weide, Dobroslav Zborník.
2021, English
Softcover, 140 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Edition of 185,
Published by
Sonntag Press / Narrm—Melbourne
$40.00 $20.00 - In stock -
First edition, limited to 185 copies, and now out-of-print.
This limited first print run of David Rosetzky: Composite Acts also contains a unique cover design and time stamp corresponding to the film component of the work.
David Rosetzky’s Composite Acts is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project that traverses the fields of video, speech, choreography, performance, set design, and photography. Through the artistic and personal contributions of diverse artists and practitioners, these composite parts are brought together in an intimate exploration of memory, identity, and the relative and fragmentary nature of the self.
This publication draws together critical reflections, visual material, and artist insights to form a catalogue, an archive, a composite picture of this major project.
Contributors: Sophie Knezic, David Rosetzky, Jo Lloyd, Shelley Lasica, Sean Meilak and Brigid Moriarty
Design: Alex Ward
Publication coordinator: Brigid Moriarty
Copy editor: Jessie Henley
Out of print. Very Good copy with some marking to covers. No. 163/185
2023, English
Softcover, 154 pages, 10.2 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Filthy Loot / Ames
$20.00 - Out of stock
This is a story about an imaginary city. an imaginary city called Los Angeles.
I am a science fiction novel with no science fiction references.
"One of the most ecstatic, deranged, and propulsive books I've read, Meth-DTF careens wildly through the fucked dreamscape of Los Angeles. The love child of Gasper Noé and Édouard Levé, Shane Jesse Christmass is one of our great cult novelists."—Kate Durbin (author, Hoarders)
"METH-DTF is a hypnotic, lunatic thrill ride. With the antic, paranoiac stutter of William S. Burroughs's cut-ups and fold-ins and Rudolph Wurlitzer's altered apocalyptic '70s novels, Shane Jesse Christmass creates a hothouse mindspace meltdown where sex, booze, and drugs build and dismantle worlds. Our narrator guides us through a jangling, porous Los Angeles. Where we're going, we don't know, but it's all velocity and addled noticing. The details jump and rattle. We are absolutely flying, and it's gritty, funny, and scary."— Nate Lippens (author, My Dead Book)
"METH-DTF is a schizophrenic landfill of corpses, pill bottles, crop circles, Burger King, horny billionaires, flip flops, tobacco, aliens, orgasms, crying infants, designer aphrodisiacs - and it's all on fire. Shane Jesse Christmass writes with the discordant rhythm of an erratic heartbeat, rendering the reader restless. Enter at your own risk."—Danielle Chelosky (author, Cheat & founder of The Waiting Room)
"Entering Shane Jesse Christmass' world is always a thrill, and Meth-DTF confirms this but somehow this time it is with an even wilder abandon that feels new.
VHS tracking blurs through our imagination as we try and keep up with the latest literary death-trip that SJXSJX has strapped us to. We're going through American suburbs and cities with a nihilistic pace, trying to get rest in damp and sweaty motels where nothing stands still and the paranoia practically drips from the paragraphs - the radio is constantly changing, so are the clothes, the era and faces of those around you. The narrator and his sidekick Samuel - who maybe died a little while back but who maybe didn't - not that it even matters because there's some new fresh hell coming already - try to offer some guidance along their hallucinatory mission as the pages continually cause my pulse to increase and my imagination to rattle.
Christmass' has a knack of writing sentences that have a way of connecting with you in a real, physical way. You feel it in your chest. They raise your stomach acid to your throat. If you're holding this book and your hands aren't shaking, then you're doing it wrong."—Thomas Moore (author, In Your Dreams, Alone)
2015, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 9.5 x 14.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Moderna Museet / Stockholm
$27.00 - In stock -
In October 1963 I met Gil J., and we schlepped to the scrap-metal market. [...] It was there that I came up with the following definition of Lettrism:
Lettrism: 1) technical definition: smithy, arsenal, place where unused weapons are stored; 2) volcanology: rumbling that announces certain volcanic eruptions. Examples: 1) “Thanks to L., insurgent groups were armed” – 2) “The people of Herculaneum did not pay heed to L.” [Acad.]
—Jean-Louis Brau, 1972
The Lettrist movement is unique in the history of avant-garde formations. Founded by Isidore Isou in Paris immediately after World War II, it remains active to this day, having lost none of its radicalism, either aesthetic or ethical. In this book, Nicole Brenez presents the key figures and the basic concepts of Lettrist cinema, the art form within which their formal innovations proved the most far-reaching, prefiguring the breakthroughs of the nouvelle vague and the experiments of expanded cinema.
All the King’s Horses series, edited by Daniel Birnbaum and Kim West
Copublished with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, with support from Allianz Kulturstiftung
Translated from the French by Clodagh Kinsella
Design by Studio Christopher West
2015, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 9.5 x 14.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Moderna Museet / Stockholm
$27.00 - Out of stock
Considering these facts the Central Committee of the Situationist International:
– proclaims that all followers of Nash, the falsifier, and Elde, his agent, will be considered enemies of the SI.
– confers on J. V. Martin the supreme authority to represent the Situationist International in the area covered by the former Scandinavian section (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) together with the task and the responsibility to reorganize the true Situationist elements in these countries before the opening of the 6th SI congress in Antwerp.
For the C. C. of the SI.
23 March, 1962
Debord, A. Kotanyi, U. Lausen, R. Vaneigem
—Proclamation from the Internationale Situationniste, 1962
After the infamous split in the Situationist International in 1962, the Danish artist J. V. Martin was unexpectedly put in charge of the group’s Scandinavian section. This book is the first presentation of Martin’s strange trajectory within the SI, in which he would remain a member until the group’s dissolution in 1972.
All the King’s Horses series, edited by Daniel Birnbaum and Kim West
Copublished with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, with support from Allianz Kulturstiftung
Design by Studio Christopher West
1995, English
Softcover, 158 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Verso / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1995 edition.
Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative as Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle". From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late 20th century. Now available in English translation, Debord's text remains as crucial for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.
Very Good copy.
1998, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Verso / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
First English 1998 edition of Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, published by Verso.
First published in 1967, Guy Debord's stinging revolutionary critique of contemporary society, The Society of the Spectacle, has since acquired a cult status. Credited by many as being the inspiration for the ideas generated by the events of May 1968 in France, Debord's pitiless attack on commodity fetishism and its incrustation in the practices of everyday life continues to burn brightly in today's age of satellite television and the soundbite
In Comments on the Society of the Spectacle published twenty years later, Debord returned to the themes of his previous analysis and demonstrated how they were all the more relevant in a period when the 'integrated spectacle' was dominant. Resolutely refusing to be reconciled to the system, Debord trenchantly slices through the doxa and mystification offered tip by journalists and pundits to show how aspects of reality as diverse as terrorism and the environment, the Mafia and the media, were caught in the logic of the spectacular society. Pointing the finger clearly at those who benefit from the logic of domination, Debord's Comments convey the revolutionary impulse at the heart of situationism.
Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931 and committed suicide in 1994. A Marxist theorist, French writer, poet, filmmaker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Letterist International and Situationist International, Debord is best known as the leading theoretician of the situationist movement. His works translated into English include The Society of the Spectacle, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, and Panegyric.
Very Good copy.
1981, English
Softcover, 406 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bureau of Public Secrets / Berkeley
$85.00 - In stock -
First 1981 edition of the essential Situationist International source book. A vast compendium of writings from all their major works, books, journals, leaflets etc. with all the major contributors translated to English (many for the first time), including Debord, Jorn, Vaneigem... Edited and translated by Ken Knabb and published by the Bureau of Public Secrets, Berkeley.
In 1957 a few experimental European groups stemming from the radical tradition of dadaism and surrealism, but seeking to avoid the cooption to which those movements succumbed, came together to form the Situationist International. The name came from their aim of liberating everyday life through the creation of open-ended, participatory "situations" (as opposed to fixed works of art) — an aim which naturally ran up against the whole range of material and mental obstacles produced by the present social order. Over the next decade the situationists developed an increasingly incisive critique of the global "spectacle-commodity system" and of its bureaucratic leftist pseudo-opposition, and their new methods of agitation helped trigger the May 1968 revolt in France. Since then — although the SI itself was dissolved in 1972 — situationist theories and tactics have continued to inspire radical currents in dozens of countries all over the world. The SI Anthology, generally recognized as the most comprehensive and accurately translated collection of situationist writings in English, presents a chronological survey of the group's activities and development as reflected in articles from its French journal and in a variety of leaflets, pamphlets, filmscripts and internal documents, ranging from their early experiments in urban "psychogeography" and cultural subversion to their lucid analyses of the Watts riot, the Vietnam war, the Prague Spring, the Chinese "Cultural Revolution" and other crises and upheavals of the sixties.
"Rejecting all morality and legal restraint, making sweeping denunciations of their fellow students, their professors, God, religion, the clergy, and the governments and political and social systems of the entire world, these cynics do not hesitate to advocate theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work, total subversion, and a permanent worldwide proletarian revolution with 'unrestrained pleasure' as its only goal." -- Judge Llabador, Strasbourg District Court 1966
Very Good copy of the rare first 1981 edition. Some wear to covers and spine edge, previous owner's name to front flyleaf.
2010, English
Softcover, 336 pages, 22 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ridinghouse / London
$55.00 - In stock -
First edition of this anthology published by Ridinghouse in 2010, bringing together more than 30 writings by, and interviews with, the German painter Georg Baselitz (born 1938), spanning from 1961 to today. Known for his rebellious approach to Abstract Expressionism, here Baselitz discusses the impression his paintings convey, the act of painting, his biography and much more. The texts shift between these personal pieces—some of which have never been published before in English—to interviews with Baselitz and a variety of critics and art historians. These conversations present a different voice as he responds to careful and critical questions about his work. Heavily illustrated throughout in colour and b/w.
Very Good—Near Fine.
2021, English
Cloth bound, resin coated silver gelatin paper, silver gelatin emulsion, ink on paper, and 12 pages, saddle stitched, ink on paper, 25.2 x 20 cm
Ed of 15 + 5APs,
Published by
Self-Published / Melbourne
$660.00 - In stock -
unfixed: σκιά σκιά σκιά ombra ombra ombra shadow shadow shadow is a self published artist book that was released to coincide with Rudi Williams' eponymous solo exhibition at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; 10 July — 10 September, 2021. The work is informed by Williams' view that each image is an artefact of experience, translated through photographic processes. This recent iteration of an ongoing work combines photographs from her archive with unfixed silver gelatin paper to create a book that responds to the environment it is viewed in as well as being a record of the works included in her 2021 exhibition.
unfixed: σκιά σκιά σκιά ombra ombra ombra shadow shadow shadow is a constantly changing object. The light sensitive cover and internal light sensitive pages will darken and absorb touch when viewed. After multiple viewings the pages will separate from the delicate cloth binding.
Signed edition
8/15
2016, English
Leporello folding postcard set
Edition of 100,
Published by
Self-Published / Melbourne
$20.00 - Out of stock
Rudi Williams’ work investigates liminal reflections and anomalies that challenge the viewer’s logic of memory and space through the installation of photographic objects, projections and analogue photographic techniques. Returning to negatives taken in cultural institutions at various stages during her life, she manipulates traditional processes to reveal the abnormalities, scars, and mysteries that unite incongruent interpretations of experience. — Michelle Mountain
On the 15th of November 2012, Rudi Williams visited the Vatican Museum in Rome for the first time where she encountered a room that contained a series of display cabinets. The objects in the cabinet had been removed but the traces of the objects remained, burned into the backing velvet of the display cabinet, like a liminal photograph.
Edition of 100.
This concertina postcard depicts the documents Williams made of the Vatican Museum display cabinets in 2012, with photographs taken in 2016 at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. The publication was made to accompany her solo exhibition Echo held at Caves Gallery in 2016.
2018, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$30.00 - Out of stock
First published in German in 1902, Hashish is a collection of decadent, interwoven tales of Satanism, eroticism, sadism, cannibalism, necrophilia and death. Encountering the enigmatic dandy Count Vittorio Alta-Carrara in a Parisian eatery, the narrator finds himself invited to a “Hashish Club", where in the dim light of red-filtered candles, a roomful of “recumbent wanderers” explores the abyss of the unconscious. The narrator and the count don a variety of identities as they in turn enter the narratives, sometimes participating in them, other times merely observing them from the vantage point of a shifting divan. Engaging in romantic liaisons with masks and cadavers, taking part in Satanic orgies and carnivals, plotting blasphemy and riding carriages through cityscapes where time loses its bearings, the protagonists draw the reader into their narrative and psychological unmooring.
A forgotten yet important chapter in the lineage of German fantastic and decadent literature, this translation of Hashish is illustrated throughout with drawings by the author's brother-in-law, Alfred Kubin, from the book's second, 1913 German edition.
Oscar A.H. Schmitz (1873-1931) lived the life of a literary dandy. Although best remembered in Germany for his second book, Hashish, and the decadent lineage it helped inaugurate in German letters, his output was wide-ranging, from Romantic verse to plays and travel books, to a series of popular non-fiction works on politics, yoga, astrology, etiquette and Jungian psychology.
2022, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 11.5 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$25.00 - Out of stock
Translated, with an introduction, by W. C. Bamberger.
Black–White–Red, first published in German in 1916, collects six bizarre tales by the “laughing philosopher,” Salomo Friedlaender, who wrote his literary work under the pseudonym Mynona (the reversed German word for “anonymous”). Mynona’s self-styled “grotesques” inhabited an uncertain ground between fairy tale, fetishism, and philosophy: a peculiar form of slapstick that satirized anything from nationalism to philanthropy. In this collection, we encounter a tongue-in-cheek showdown between Goethe and Newton, whose theories of color clash in the form of a nationalistic flag, as well as a striking invention that captures the residual sound waves of Goethe’s voice. In “The Magic Egg,” one of Mynona’s most emblematic and curious tales, a man encounters an enormous bisecting mechanical egg in the middle of the desert that houses a mummy and a possible pathway to utopia on Earth. Other stories see dead lovers arise from their graves to drive off in casket cars and a would-be philanthropist seeking the good life through an offering of tissue to strangers on the street.
“Mynona created a new kind of literary genre, which not only went beyond the inventions of Scheerbart but which also anticipated Dada, surrealism, and above all, contemporary literature of the absurd.”—Kurt Tucholsky
Mynona, a.k.a Salomo Friedlaender (1871–1946), was a perfectly functioning split personality: a serious philosopher by day (author of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Intellectual Biography and Kant for Kids) and a literary absurdist by night, who composed black-humored tales he called Grotesken. His friends and fans included Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and Karl Kraus. He died in Paris, ill and in poverty, after Thomas Mann refused to help him emigrate to the United States.s
“Charming, inventive, and indeed droll.”—Tom Bowden, The Book Beat
2014, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 11.5 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$34.00 - Out of stock
A philosophical fable from a great forgotten German fabulistA philosophical fable from a great forgotten German fabulist.
Illustrations by Alfred Kubin
Translated, with an introduction, by Peter Wortsman
Afterword by Detlef Thiel
Billed by its author—the pseudonymous Mynona (German for “anonymous” backward)—as “the most profound magical experiment since Nostradamus,” The Creator tells the tale of Gumprecht Weiss, an intellectual who has withdrawn from a life of libertinage to pursue his solitary philosophical ruminations. At first dreaming and then actually encountering an enticing young woman named Elvira, Weiss discovers that she has escaped the clutches of her uncle, the Baron, who has been using her as a guinea pig in his metaphysical experiments. But the Baron catches up with them and persuades Gumprecht and Elvira to come to his laboratory, to engage in an experiment to bridge the divide between waking consciousness and dream by entering a mirror engineered to bend and blend realities. Mynona’s philosophical fable was described by the legendary German publisher Kurt Wolff as “a station farther on the imaginative train of thought of Hoffmann, Villiers, Poe, etc.,” when it appeared in 1920, with illustrations by Alfred Kubin (included here). With this first English-language edition, Wakefield Press introduces the work of a great forgotten German fabulist.
Mentioned in his day in the same breath as Kafka, Mynona, a.k.a Salomo Friedlaender (1871–1946), was a perfectly functioning split personality: a serious philosopher by day (author of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Intellectual Biography and Kant for Kids) and a literary absurdist by night, who composed black humored tales he called Grotesken. His friends and fans included Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and Karl Kraus.
2017, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 11.5 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$25.00 - In stock -
Translated, with an introduction, by W. C. Bamberger.
Originally published in 1921, The Unruly Bridal Bed brings together ten grotesques from the alter-ego of the founder of “Creative Indifference,” and includes such indefinable tales as “Tobias and the Prune,” “Plant Paternity,” “The Dissolute Nose,” “Fried Sphinx Meat,” and “The Great Gold-Plated Flea.” Under his literary pseudonym Mynona (a palindrome for the German “Anonym,” or “Anonymous”), Salomo Friedlaender here displays his unique brand of philosophical slapstick that blends fairy-tale technology with proto-metafiction and at times unsettling meditations on fornicating plants, aristocratic eugenics, spiritual and physical hermaphroditism, and our excremental sun. With its companion volume of grotesques, My Papa and the Maid of Orléans, this collection offers a perfect introduction to the great German humorist’s work.
“Mynona created a new kind of literary genre, which not only went beyond the inventions of Scheerbart but which also anticipated Dada, surrealism, and above all, contemporary literature of the absurd.”—Kurt Tucholsky
Mentioned in his day in the same breath as Kafka, Mynona, a.k.a Salomo Friedlaender (1871–1946), was a perfectly functioning split personality: a serious philosopher by day (author of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Intellectual Biography and Kant for Kids) and a literary absurdist by night, who composed black humored tales he called Grotesken. His friends and fans included Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and Karl Kraus. He died in Paris, ill and in poverty, after Thomas Mann refused to help him emigrate to the United States.
“These are disposable formal scraps, best indigested (and Mynona was obsessed with the stomach, bowels, with consuming) on the train or bus, composed for speed and glued onto life in the megalopolis.”—Martin Billheimer, Counterpunch
2023, English
Softcover, 526 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
Sequence Press / New York
$59.00 - In stock -
"This is an epoch-making book; a major intellectual event, as bold as it is brilliant. Gabriel Catren, in a break with the ‘claustrophobic interpretation’ of Kantian critique, opens up to a hypertranscendental perspectivism that affirms a multiplicity of categorial structures correlated to objective nature-cultures (Umwelten), a multiplicity that is accessible to a nomadic speculative subject, capable of exhibiting a ‘trans-umweltic’ mobility.
The rupture with Kantian enclosure implies the possibility that the human ‘species’ does not constitute a single transcendental type; categorial multiplicity points to the possibility of inhabiting those other ‘transcendental lands’ that emerge from the impersonal field of experience. Achieving such speculative mobility is the task of the philosophy to come, a philosophy on a par with the widespread collapse of the post-Copernican episteme."
—Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
The great poets and thinkers of modernity described a situation we still inhabit today: the catastrophic undermining of all foundations, the disorienting relativisation of all reference points, the prospect of abandonment to chance and contingency alone—the shipwreck of Mallarmé’s Coup de dés.
In this precise and poetic work of philosophy, Gabriel Catren sketches out a new ‘phenoumenodelic’ solution to this momentous ungrounding, defiiantly refusing both unrestrained contingency and aribitrary refoundation. Mobilising a formidable knowledge of all the major currents of modern thought, deftly articulating Kantian transcendentalism and Spinozan immanentism, phenomenological reduction and scientific realism, Pleromatica argues that the projects oriented by the infinite ideas of reason (Truth, Beauty, Justice, Love) need not be abandoned in the face of the ‘exquisite crisis’ of modernity. Instead, the ‘shipwreck’ is to be understood as a suspension of finite subjectivity in the fullness of a ‘phenoumenodelic pleroma’, an atonal milieu ringing with unheard-of possibilities.
Announcing an ambitious programme for the renewal of transcendental philosophy, in Pleromatica Catren recomposes the primary elements of modern thought into a startling new configuration, introducing a vivid constellation of new concepts with which to map out and navigate the vast space of this ‘worldless daydream’.
Translated by Thomas Murphy.
2022, English
Softcover, 378 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
Talos Press / New York
$34.00 - Out of stock
Before an untimely mental breakdown cut short his two-decade career, Giorgio De Maria distinguished himself as one of Italy's most unique and eccentric weird fiction masters. With a background in the post-war literary culture of Turin — Italy's urbane but eerie "city of black magic" — De Maria drew inspiration from the Turinese underbelly of occultism, secret societies and radical politics. His writing coincided with the decade of terrorist violence known to Italians as the Years of Lead; the outcome was a weird fiction suffused with panic, rage, trauma, paranoia and meditations on antisocial hubris. In 1978, he told an interviewer: "... I think that the dimension of the fantastic, as much as this may seem paradoxical, is the most fitting one to express a reality as complex as ours today."
De Maria's debut novel, The Transgressionists (1968) portrays a cell of malicious telepaths who meet in the cafes and jazz clubs of 1960s Turin to plot world domination. After experiencing the worst of their power, an embittered office clerk resolves to join them and prove himself worthy to share in their villainy. He cultivates twisted mindfulness techniques to awaken his inner sociopath. He fights off predatory phantoms that seem maddeningly drawn to him. He prepares for the dangerous "Great Leap" which will make him into a fully-fledged Transgressionist. But could his megalomania strain relations with his fiancee? Will he sacrifice love in his quest for omnipotence?
The other works in this volume are no less surreal and startling. The Secret Death of Joseph Dzhugashvili (1976) gives us a nightmarish fantasy Soviet Union, where a dissident poet finds himself trapped in a psychological experiment conducted by Stalin himself. In The End of Everydayism, a group of futuristic artists begin using corpses as a medium -- with violent, unforeseen results. The antihero of General Trebisonda is a possibly insane commander who prepares for a war crime in an eerily deserted fortress.
Available in English for the first time, this collection contains two novellas, two short stories and a dystopian teleplay, The Appeal, which the post-cyberpunk novelist Andrea Vaccaro has lauded as "worthy of the best episodes of Black Mirror." Meanwhile, an introduction by translator Ramon Glazov offers a detailed account of De Maria's background, creative context and thoroughly unusual life.
'A disturbing, unsettling novel . . . if it had been published in English soon after its first appearance in Italian (1968), the name of Giorgio De Maria would be well-known, his novels and stories mentioned in the context of J.G. Ballard, Anna Kavan, Shirley Jackson or Robert Aickman.' - Lisa Tuttle, Nebula Award winner and author of Gabriel, Windhaven, and The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross.
Ramon Glazov is a translator, reviewer, fiction author and doctoral student in Melbourne, Australia. Ha also translated Giorgio De Maria's The Twenty Days of Turin.
2017, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 21.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$48.00 - Out of stock
In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another's personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library's users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the city's occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: what's shared can never be unshared.
An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a fervent cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of "lone-wolf" terrorism fueled by social media, we can find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Maria's vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internet—and the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharing—this bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever.
Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Maria's place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Hauntingly imaginative, with visceral prose that chills to the marrow, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus, long overdue but ever timely.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, unpaginated, 24.6 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Little More / Tokyo
$160.00 - In stock -
First edition of this classic artist's book from Yamantaka Eye (Boredoms) published in 1996! First major book by EYƎ, packed to the brim with his incredible cosmic noise collage, issued only in Japan. Like Pedro Bell (Funkadelic), Corky McCoy (Electric Miles), Sun Ra, punk bootleg 7s, and Rammellzee in a blender. Includes flyer of the 1996 Nanoo launch exhibition inserted!
EYƎ is a Japanese vocalist and visual artist, best known as co-founder of the influential rock music band Boredoms and Naked City. He has changed his stage name several times, from Yamatsuka Eye, to Yamantaka Eye, to Yamataka Eye and now simply calls himself EYƎ.
EYƎ is a member of the bands Hanatarash, UFO or Die, Puzzle Punks, Noise Ramones and Destroy 2. He is notorious for his vast, confusing discography and countless guest appearances. Notable collaborations include his work with Nam June Paik, Sonic Youth, Yamamoto Seiichi & Yamazaki Maso, Bill Laswell's Praxis and John Zorn's groups Naked City and Painkiller.
As well as his music, EYƎ is famous for his mixed-media style of art that utilises airbrush, marker pen and collage, amongst other materials. His artworks have adorned a number of records, including the majority of Boredom’s releases and, perhaps more famously, Beck's Midnite Vultures. Drawing as much from Japanese mythology as from his musical influences, his work aims to complement the music as well as to provide another dimension to the sound.
Very Good (this copy without obi-strip).
2006, Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Little More / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this spectacular artist's book from Yamantaka Eye (Boredoms) published in 2006. Ongaloo could be seen as the follow-up to his first major book Nanoo, packed to the brim with his incredible cosmic noise collage, issued only in Japan, produced to accompany a major exhibition. Ten years after Nanoo, Ongaloo brings EYƎ's psychedelic acid imagery into the 21st century, with explosive digital collage colliding with his incredible drawings and mixed media — full of pure energy and a feeling of total artistic freedom, like his music. Like Pedro Bell (Funkadelic), Corky McCoy (electric Miles), Sun Ra, Sigmar Polke, punk bootleg 7s, and Rammellzee in a blender, EYƎ is a true original of contemporary psychedelia.
EYƎ is a Japanese vocalist and visual artist, best known as co-founder of the influential rock music band Boredoms. He has changed his stage name several times, from Yamatsuka Eye, to Yamantaka Eye, to Yamataka Eye and now simply calls himself EYƎ.
EYƎ is a member of the bands Hanatarash, UFO or Die, Puzzle Punks, Noise Ramones and Destroy 2. He is notorious for his vast, confusing discography and countless guest appearances. Notable collaborations include his work with Nam June Paik, Sonic Youth, Yamamoto Seiichi & Yamazaki Maso, Bill Laswell's Praxis and John Zorn's groups Naked City and Painkiller.
As well as his music, EYƎ is famous for his mixed-media style of art that utilises airbrush, marker pen and collage, amongst other materials. His artworks have adorned a number of records, including the majority of Boredom’s releases and, perhaps more famously, Beck's Midnite Vultures. Drawing as much from Japanese mythology as from his musical influences, his work aims to complement the music as well as to provide another dimension to the sound.
Very Good copy.
2007, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 15.5 x 23 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$35.00 - In stock -
Translated with introduction by Bruce Benderson
A scathing view of sex manuals for children and society's hypocrisy of over sex that argues for the rights of children to their own bodies and their own sexuality.
Why is pleasure "doubled" when it's "shared"?... Do you really have to cut pleasure in two so that it'll exist? I mean, if it's doubled when there are two of you, then it must be tripled when there are three, quadrupled when there are four, centupled when there are a hundred, right? Is it O.K. for a hundred to share? And if I get used to trying it all alone, why is it that I'll never love anyone again? Is it that good alone and that awful with others? ; from Good Sex Illustrated First published in France in 1973, Good Sex Illustrated gleefully deciphers the subtext of a popular sex education manual for children produced during that period. In so doing, Duvert mounts a scabrous and scathing critique of how deftly the "sex-positive" ethos was harnessed to promote the ideal of the nuclear family. Like Michel Houllebecq, Duvert is highly attuned to all the hypocrisies of late twentieth century western "sexual liberation" mass movements. As Bruce Benderson notes in his introduction, Good Sex Illustrated shows that, "in our sexual order, orgasm follows the patterns of any other kind of capital... 'good sex' is a voracious profit machine." But unlike Houllebecq, Duvert writes from a passionate belief in the integrity of unpoliced sex and of pleasure. Even more controversially now than when the book was first published, Duvert asserts the child's right to his or her own playful, unproductive sexuality. Bruce Benderson's translation will belatedly introduce English-speaking audiences to the most infamous gay French writer since Jean Gênet.
Tony Duvert (1945–2008) earned a reputation as the “enfant terrible” of the generation of French authors known for defining the postwar Nouveau Roman. Expelled from school at the age of 12 for homosexuality (and then put through a psychoanalytic “cure” for his condition), Duvert declared war on family life and societal norms through a controversial series of novels and essays (whose frequent controversial depictions of child sexuality and pedophilia often lead his publisher to sell his works by subscription only). He won the Prix Medicis in 1973 for his novel Strange Landscape. His reputation faded in the 1980s, however, and he withdrew from society. He died in isolation in July 2008 in the commune of Thoré-la-Rochette in central France.
2017, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$26.00 - Out of stock
District describes, in ten vignettes, the sad, sordid and sinister aspects of a section of an unnamed French city, and the manners in which the ghostlike human entities that live and wither within it are molded, moved and absorbed by its spaces. A noisy metro station, old tenements, buildings going up, along with the fixtures of French communal life: the open-air market, the public garden; the little shops and bars, the lively town square--the ugly and mundane, the coarse and unmentionable sit side by side with the occasionally burgeoning bit of beauty. With a sense of voyeuristic tension and queasy complicity, the reader is taken on an outcast's tour of city life—from construction site to metro, from bar to brothel—an analysis of communal living in the conditional tense from the perspective of the absolute exile. One of Duvert's last books, it is also one of his shortest: an unexpected return to the roving, fractured eye of the Nouveau Roman that had informed his earliest work.
Translated by S. C. Delaney and Agnès Potier, with an introduction, by S. C. Delaney.
Tony Duvert (1945–2008) earned a reputation as the “enfant terrible” of the generation of French authors known for defining the postwar Nouveau Roman. Expelled from school at the age of 12 for homosexuality (and then put through a psychoanalytic “cure” for his condition), Duvert declared war on family life and societal norms through a controversial series of novels and essays (whose frequent controversial depictions of child sexuality and pedophilia often lead his publisher to sell his works by subscription only). He won the Prix Medicis in 1973 for his novel Strange Landscape. His reputation faded in the 1980s, however, and he withdrew from society. He died in isolation in July 2008 in the commune of Thoré-la-Rochette in central France.