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.
1996, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 22.5 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art Days / Tokyo
$200.00 - Out of stock
Special Summer 1996 10th issue of DUNE, featuring the iconic Chloë Sevigny cover styled by Andrew Richardson and shot by Terry Richardson. Rare and most sought-after issue of this Japanese fashion and culture magazine, edited by the legendary Fumihiro Hayashi, with the theme of "REALITY", encapsulating the "realism" of 1990's new fashion photography and anti-fashion aesthetic, including a huge photo feature of Chloë by Richardson, Hysteric Glamor shot by David Sorrenti, Prada does Palm Springs by Takashi Homma, Baby Generation by Takashi Homma, featuring Sofia Coppola, Kim Gordon, Ione Skye, Tamra Davis and Karen Klimnik, Walter Van Beirendonck, photography by Sofia Coppola, Shingo Wakagi, Katsumi Omori, Masashi Sanai, Fujio Saimon, Gregory Crewdson, Masashi Ohashi, plus Visionaire, Hiroshi Tanabe, Hunter S. Thompson, ads for X-Girl, Milk Fed, Paul Smith... a rare (even in Japan) time capsule and distant memory of the Genki days of the bookshop building.
Very Good copy.
1974, German
Softcover, 128 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bündner Kunsthaus / Chur
$200.00 - Out of stock
Very rarely seen, first and only edition of Giger's Passagen: Werkkatalog 1971-1974, designed entirely by Giger himself and published in a limited edition in 1974 as the continuation of the first oeuvre catalog, 'A Rh +' published in 1971. Packed with amazing content, much not documented elsewhere), this book first and foremost features a fully illustrated catalogue of Giger's iconic Passagen works in colour and b/w. Alongside texts by various critics, writers, and colleagues, including Sandro Fischli, H. Hartmann, Fritz Billeter, and Sergius Golowin, the book traverses many different projects, exhibits, happenings and social gatherings, mostly photographed by Giger himself, including the work of (and/or his collaborations with) Walter Wegmüller, Li Tobler, Claude Sandoz, Timothy Leary, Friedrich Kahn, Wolfgang Hausamann, and more. Also catalogued in colour and b/w are Giger's magnificent landscape works dating from 1972-1974. Includes a biography, bibliography, full work listings and photo credits, closing with a lovely portrait of Swiss stage actress, gallerist, partner and model for many of Giger's paintings, Li Tobler (30 November 1947 – 19 May 1975).
Good copy.
1989, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 42.5 x 30.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$180.00 - Out of stock
Rare first 1989 Japanese edition of H. R. Giger's Biomechanics. In his classic series of oversized and visually overwhelming early art volumes, this book comprises a retrospective showcase, from 1964—88, of Giger's work, designed by and with running commentary by Giger himself, with over 200 drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and including concept art for the film Poltergeist II, and design paintings for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer albums. With a foreword by legendary Science Fiction author and longtime Giger fan Harlan Ellison, who dubs him "out latter-day Hieronymus Bosch."
Note: the Japanese editions of these books often had better reproductions from the original plates than the German and English language editions.
Very Good copy some light wear.
1987, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 21 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Het Apollohuis / Eindhoven
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare 1987 exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held November 22—January 6, 1985. Illustrated throughout with texts by Paul Panhuysen, Ellen Fullman, Godfried-Willem Raes, Anton van Gemert, Bart Lootsma, Arnold Dreyblatt, Leon van Noorden, George Smits, and Hugh Davies. Artists include Max Eastly, Takeisha Kosugi, Walter Marchetti, Ellen Fullman, Godfried-Willem Raes, Horst Rickels, Rik van Lersel, Giancarlo Cardini, Juan Hidalgo, Jon Rose, and others. Includes selected bibliography, discography, and index.
blurb: "From November 1984 until January 1985 a group was held in Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven of works that combined image and sound. Installations, concerts and a symposium were organised around the exhibition, featuring artists who use sound in their work and composers who use visual aspects. In addition to a photographic report of this festival 'ECHO. The images of Sound I', this book contains a general survey of the development of sound arts and cassettes that have been published in the field of sound art. This section is written by Hugh Davies. Photographs, scores, drawings of articles describing the development of their own work are supplied by Julius, Ellen Fullman, HUM, Max Eastley, Takehisa Kosugi, Hugh Davies, Godfried-Willem Reas, STEIM, The Simulated Wood, VANDALIA, Arnold Dreyblatt, Richard Lerman, Leon van Noorden, Paul Panhuysen, Johan Goedhart, Hans-Karsten Raecke, Jon Rose and George Smits.[...]"
Very Good—Near Fine copy
2016, English
Softcover, 600 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$85.00 - Out of stock
Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013) is best known for his decisive role in the emergence and establishment of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s.
This extensively researched publication documents the first exhibition about his life and work, which reassess his role as one of the distinctive characters in twentieth-century exhibition-making, while recognizing his atypical, inquisitive, and free-spirited genius.
Siegelaub was also a gallerist, independent curator, publisher, researcher, archivist, collector, and bibliographer. Often credited as the ‘Father of Conceptual Art’, he was (and remains) a seminal influence on curators, artists, and cultural thinkers, internationally and in Amsterdam, where he settled in the 1990s.
With revolutionary projects such as the Xerox Book, he set the blueprint for the presentation and dissemination of conceptual practices. In the process, he redefined the exhibition space, which could now be a book, a poster, an announcement, or reality at large.
Siegelaub’s radical reassessment of the conditions of art resonated deeply with the iconoclastic views of his contemporaries Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, among others, with whom he developed close working relationships.
Texts by Beatrix Ruf, Leontine Coelewij , Sara Martinetti and more.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 12 December 2015 – 17 April 2016.
2019, English
Softcover, 248 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Rough Trade Books / London
$68.00 - In stock -
'Madge Gill by Myrninerest' a stunning new monograph and personal journey through the extraordinary archives of Madge Gill, one of Britain’s most creative and visionary self-taught artists. Consisting of conversations, exclusive interviews, essays from outsider art specialists, family photographs and hand-written correspondence—plus rare and unseen works, including her revelatory large-scale embroideries—this book takes us ever closer to the enigmatic, troubled, and inspirational artist, Madge Gill.
Heavily illustrated throughout with concertina pages to fully display large-scale works, this monograph includes an exclusive interview with Sir Peter Blake; responses from collectors and outsider art specialists including Henry Boxer and Sara Ayad, fashion designer Jenny Kee and artist Wilfrid Wood; rare archive imagery and documents revealing her connection with ardent spiritualist and creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; specially commissioned essays exploring the impact on Gill of ‘Dr’ Thomas Barnardo’s indefensible child emigration scheme, pioneering mental health doctor, Helen Boyle, the buoyant spiritualist world and Jean Dubuffet’s Art Brut collection.
Available in three 3 alternate covers (chosen randomly).
2015, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 21.6 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$45.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
Hamlet, mise-en-scène
EXTRA TROUBLE—Jack Smith in Frankfurt
Texts by Sylvère Lotringer, Birte Löschenkohl, Sophie von Olfers, Laura Preston, Juliane Rebentisch, Mark von Schlegell, et al.
The publication brings together extensive material from Hamlet, mise-en-scène presented at Portikus, along with recently restored as well as never-published stills, drawings, and writings by American filmmaker and artist Jack Smith, related to his filmHamlet in the Rented World (A Fragment) (1970–73).
Hamlet, mise-en-scène, directed by Mark von Schlegell, was an adaptation that retold Shakespeare’s most abused tragedy while channeling the ghost of Jack Smith. The two-night rendition of Hamlet was performed by members of Städelschule’s Pure Fiction seminar, presented here alongside a rare selection of works by Smith, both from private collections and from the Jack Smith Archive.
Design by Pacific Design Solutions
1986, German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 22 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Fred Jahn / Münich
$200.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful, scarce catalogue published on the occasion of the solo exhibition Isa Genzken, held January 31 - March 31, 1986, at Galerie Fred Jahn, Münich. Illustrated throughout with Genzken's painted plaster and wood sculptures, alongside essay (in German) by Paul Groot, biography, bibliography, and exhibition history. Highly recommended.
Very Good copy.
1993, German
Softcover, 68 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthalle Bremen / Bremen
$200.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, collectable artist's book / catalogue published on the occasion of a major solo exhibition of Isa Genzken, "Skizzen für einen Spielfilm", held at Kunsthalle Bremen, July - August 1993. Wonderful design with extensive text section in (mostly) German/(some) English, comprising of scenes/script excerpts/discussions between Genzken and Gerhard Richter, Dan Graham, Michael Hengsberg (gallerist Daniel Buchholz's then assistant), amongst others, followed by an image section of Genzken's previous exhibition installations, and closing with a text by art historian and exhibition curator Katerina Vatsella. Highly recommended.
Very Good copy with light wear.
2003, English / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 192 pages, 32 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Kunsthalle Zürich / Zürich
Museum Abteiberg / Mönchengladbach
$600.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the mighty collectible catalogue raisonné of Isa Genzken, published by Walther Koenig in 2003 and very quickly out-of-print. Edited by Veit Loers and Beatrix Ruf, this over-sized hardcover volume is richly illustrated with Genzken's wide-ranging, multi-faceted body of work created over a ten year period, including large reproductions of her installations and a comprehensive chronological catalogue raisonné of work from 1992-2003. Includes texts by Diedrich Diederichsen, Vanessa Joan Müller and Josef Strau, and an interview between Genzken and artist Wolfgang Tillmans. An invaluable and rare resource on one of the greatest contemporary European artists. All texts in English and German.
Since the late 1970s, the Berlin-based contemporary artist Isa Genzken (b. 1948) has produced a body of work that is remarkable for its formal and material inventiveness. In her sculptural practice, Genzken has developed an expanded material repertoire that includes plaster, concrete, epoxy resin, and mass-produced objects that range from action figures to discarded pizza boxes. Her heterogeneous assemblages, a New York Times critic observes, are “brash, improvisational, full of searing color and attitude.” Genzken offers a highly original interpretation of modernist, avant-garde, and post minimalist practices even as she engages pressing sociopolitics and economic issues of the present.
Very Good - Fine copy in VG-Fine dust jacket.
1987, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$90.00 - Out of stock
Scarce original 1987 hardcover edition of Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, published by Thames & Hudson, London. Joscelyn Godwin explores music's effects on matter, living things, and human behavior. Turning to metaphysical accounts of the higher worlds and theories of celestial harmony, the author follows the path of musical inspiration on its descent to Earth, illuminating the archetypal currents that lie beneath Western musical history.
The power of music is spiritual. It is, for many people, the principal point of access to a consciousness beyond that of ordinary life. Musicians and listeners alike can read analyses of the physics or the psychology, the technique or the history of music; but there is a contemporary need, as Joscelyn Godwin reveals in this challenging book, for informed discussion of the almost too obvious fact that there is something supernatural in musical experience. This is that universal dimension of which Plato, Kepler, Rameau and Novalis wrote, and of which Wagner said: 'I feel that I am one with this vibrating Force, that it is omniscient, and that I can draw upon it to an extent that is limited only by my own capacity." The spiritual power of music surfaces in folklore, myth and mystical experience, refusing as music always does- to be bound by narrow rationalism. It embraces Heaven as well as Earth, the music of the spheres as well as the music that is played and sung.
Joscelyn Godwin begins his closely argued study with music's perceived effects on matter, on plants, on animals and on human behaviour. He then turns inward, to the absorbing accounts that have been given of the higher worlds that are the birthplace of Harmony, and of the realm of pure Intelligence which lies both within and beyond. To hear music, however, we need composers and performers, and the argument then follows Harmony on its descent from Heaven to Earth. This descent takes place in the musician's inspiration, in the listener's experience, and in the world at large; for archetypal currents run beneath the surface of musical history, in the centuries that encompass the polyphony of Perotin or J.S. Bach and the psychic impact of Webern, Stockhausen and rock'n'roll. A self-contained final section embodies the fullest account ever given of ancient and modern theoretical systems of celestial harmony, from Pythagoras to Marius Schneider, Rudolf Steiner and Gurdjieff.
Joscelyn Godwin was born in Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England on January 16, 1945. He was educated as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, then at Radley College (Music Scholar), and Magdalene College, Cambridge (Music Scholar; B.A., 1965, Mus. B., 1966, M.A. 1969). Coming to the USA in 1966, he did graduate work in Musicology at Cornell University (Ph. D., 1969; dissertation: "The Music of Henry Cowell") and taught at Cleveland State University for two years before joining the Colgate University Music Department in 1971. He has taught at Colgate ever since.
Near Fine in VG—NF dust jacket. Beautifully preserved, unread.
2006/2017, English
Softcover, 312 pages, 23 x 15.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
University of Illinois Press / Baltimore
$40.00 - Out of stock
First paperback edition of this masterful investigation of the close interrelationships between music and intellectual history.
During the great upheavals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europe was divided over ideas about religion, science, education, economy, and government. The Church fought the Reformation, scholars formed into competing universities, and trade became increasingly internationalized. Musicians and musicologists of the time could not ignore the contending factions, and the general ferment of ideas ran parallel to thinking about music, as well as strongly affecting its practical composition and performance. As a result, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries present a special opportunity to study the relationship between music and ideas.
Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries shows Claude V. Palisca—one of the preeminent musicologists of our time—at the height of his powers, discussing the relationships between musical style and intellectual history, the influence of humanism on the revival of music theory, the competing notions of style, and the intermingled effects of rhetoric, poetics, religion, and science. Palisca's discussions demonstrate how this period's musical thought was penetrated by many aspects of culture, including religious reform, secularization, the emergence of vernacular literature, documentary historiography, the rise and decline of neo-Platonism, Aristotelian poetics, the scientific movement, the revival of rhetoric, and openness to emotional experience. This summation of Palisca's life work was nearly finished in 2001, when Palisca died. It was brought to completion by Thomas J. Mathiesen.
Claude V. Palisca (1921-2001) was Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Music at Yale University.
Thomas J. Mathiesen is the director of the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature at Indiana University.
1985, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 13.97 x 21.59 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Verso / London
$30.00 - In stock -
Written in exile from Germany, this potent study of Europe’s most controversial composer explodes the frontiers of musical and cultural analysis.
Richard Wagner's works are among the most controversial in the history of European music — aesthetically, for their ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk, which inspired such productions as the Ring cycle; and in wider terms, because of their ultimate assimilation into the official culture of the Third Reich. The aesthetic and the ideological and political are subtly interwoven throughout In Search of Wagner.
Adorno, who studied under Alban Berg in Vienna and went on to become the most brilliant exponent of the Frankfurt School of German Marxism, was in many ways the cultural antitype of his subject. In his concise synoptic account, he provides deft musicological analyses of Wagner's scores, of his compositional techniques, orchestration and staging methods, quoting copiously from the music dramas themselves. At the same time, he sets down incisive reflections on Wagner's social character, and on the ideological impulses of his artistic activity.
"Adorno's In Search of Wagner is an astonishing book, comparable only... to the later Wagner tracts by Nietzsche... It is essential reading for anyone seriously involved with the composer, and now we can read it thanks to a superior translation by Rodney Livingstone"—New York Review of Books
"Every chapter of this excellent little book has some penetrating insight"—Classical Music Weekly
VG copy.
1982, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Melbourne / Parkville
$20.00 - In stock -
Scripsi No. 1 / Vol. 2 (November 1982), special commemorative edition dedicated to James Joyce, who passed away that year, featuring the contributions of Kenneth Cox, Vivian Mercier, D.J. O'Hearn, Richard Ellmann, Leslie Fiedler, William Empson, Peter Craven, David Hayman, Arnold Goldman, Simon During, Fritz Senn, Simon Evans... Editors: Peter Craven and Michael Heyward; Associate Editor: Colin McDowell; Editorial Assistant: Rosemary Hunter.
Scripsi was an Australian literary periodical published from 1981 to 1994 in Melbourne, first from the English Department and subsequently from Ormond College of the University of Melbourne. Its name comes from Pontius Pilate's assertion "Quod scripsi, scripsi" (What I have written, I have written). Scripsi was founded in 1981 by Michael Heyward and Peter Craven, who met while studying at the University of Melbourne. Craven and Heyward co-edited the journal until 1989, when Heyward left. For many years, the poetry editor was John Forbes and the graphics editor was Bill Henson. Associate Editors included Penny Hueston, Philippa Hawker, Owen Richardson and Andrew Rutherford. The latter two were briefly co-editors, in 1993–4. Editorial assistants included Rosemary Hunter and Rosemary Sorensen. The magazine was widely regarded at the time as one of the world's finest literary magazines.[3][citation needed] It published a wide variety of Australian writers, in fiction, poetry and non-fiction, and attracted contributions from world-famous literary figures such as Susan Sontag, Salman Rushdie, Georges Perec, John Ashbery, August Kleinzahler and others.
Very Good copy. light cover wear.
1985, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 264 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Melbourne / Parkville
$40.00 - In stock -
Scripsi No. 4 / Vol. 3 (December 1985), Special French Issue, featuring Francis Steegmuller: Flaubert's letters; Gérard Genette on Proust; Hélène Cixous: The Meadow; John Sturrock on Sartre; Philippe Jaccottet: The Cormorants; Vivian Mercier: Gael and Gaul; J.M. Cocking: Lacan; Colin Nettelbeck on Truffaut; Emmanuel Hocquard translated by John A. Scott; Richard Sieburth: Versions of Guillevic; Poetry by Edmond Jabès, Claude Royet-Journoud, Jean Daive, Anne-Marie Albiach, Bernard Noël, plus more. Editors: Peter Craven and Michael Heyward; Associate Editor: Penny Hueston, Colin McDowell; Editorial Assistant: Rosemary Hunter.
Scripsi was an Australian literary periodical published from 1981 to 1994 in Melbourne, first from the English Department and subsequently from Ormond College of the University of Melbourne. Its name comes from Pontius Pilate's assertion "Quod scripsi, scripsi" (What I have written, I have written). Scripsi was founded in 1981 by Michael Heyward and Peter Craven, who met while studying at the University of Melbourne. Craven and Heyward co-edited the journal until 1989, when Heyward left. For many years, the poetry editor was John Forbes and the graphics editor was Bill Henson. Associate Editors included Penny Hueston, Philippa Hawker, Owen Richardson and Andrew Rutherford. The latter two were briefly co-editors, in 1993–4. Editorial assistants included Rosemary Hunter and Rosemary Sorensen. The magazine was widely regarded at the time as one of the world's finest literary magazines.[3][citation needed] It published a wide variety of Australian writers, in fiction, poetry and non-fiction, and attracted contributions from world-famous literary figures such as Susan Sontag, Salman Rushdie, Georges Perec, John Ashbery, August Kleinzahler and others.
Very Good copy. Moisture ripple to back dust jacket edge, not affecting any interior.
2022, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
$99.00 - Out of stock
New major publication published to accompany the first extensive European exhibition of the work of the US-Chinese artist Martin Wong (b. 1946, Portland, US, d. 1999, San Francisco), ‘Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief’, initiated by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, and produced in collaboration with Camden Art Centre, Stedelijk Museum and Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Malicious Mischief is the result of exhaustive research into the life’s work of Wong from his early creations on the US East Coast to his work in the late-1990s before he died due to an VIH/AIDS-related illness.
Martin Wong is recognized for his depictions of social, sexual, and political scenographies from the US in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Poetically weaving together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification, Wong stands out as an important countercultural voice at odds with the art establishment’s reactionary discourse at the time. Heavily influenced by his immediate surroundings, the artist’s practice merges the visual languages of Chinese iconography, urban poetry, graffiti, carceral aesthetics, and sign language. His work offers rare insight into decisive periods of recent US American history as told through its changing urban landscapes, unfolding hidden desires, and complexities.
Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief presents a vast survey of Wong’s works, encompassing early paintings and sculptures made in the euphoric environments of San Francisco and Eureka, California, in the late 1960s and early 1970s; Wong’s iconic 1980s and 1990s paintings from his time as a citizen of a dilapidated New York City; lastly, his reminiscences on the imagery of Chinatowns on the East and West Coast, made prior to his premature death from an HIV/AIDS-related illness.
Edited by curators Krist Gruijthuijsen and Agustín Pérez Rubío.
Contributions by Julie Ault, Sofie Krogh Christensen, David J. Getsy, Heinz Peter Knes, Marci Kwon, Agustín Pérez Rubio, Danh Vo.
Co-published by Walther Koenig with KW Berlin.
2022, English
Softcover, 198 pages, 16 x 23 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$58.00 - In stock -
This publication assembles a selection of texts produced between the years 2005 and 2020, starting with The Non- Productive Attitude (2005), his prominent reflections on the anti-productive attitude in the Cologne art scene of the time. The experience of having to write the essay overnight within a few hours, and without any time for revision, triggered his interest in exploring forms of unintentional writing, and consequently the replacement of the intentional author by an unconscious writer / producer. This mode of automatic writing has manifested itself until today, and has become the core of Strau’s artistic practice.
2023, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 cm
Published by
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
Walther König / Köln
$54.00 - Out of stock
The first publication on American artist Win McCarthy.
In his work, McCarthy explores the dialectical relationships between subjects like city and citizen, friend and the stranger, and present and past. McCarthy’s work often testifies to the paradoxical emptiness experienced in a metropolis. Taking the city’s map as a metaphysical topography, the confluence of real estate, architecture, and urban planning become vocabulary for the construction of a self. Besides working with photography and text, McCarthy makes associative installations. His works appear to be images from memories, meeting viewers with a torrent of different emotions, ranging from amusement and admiration to aversion and fear. The exhibition ‘Win McCarthy: Innenportrait’ at KW Berlin focuses on a collision between opticality and intellect and is the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition. If subjectivity has been pivotal in McCarthy’s previous work, its main juncture has been at how the self struggles to find reconciliation with the phenomenological and ontological: where the ‘I’ ends, is where the world begins.
Contributions by Pamela McCarthy and Julia Mullié.
Co-published by Walther Koenig and KW Berlin.
Accompanies the exhibition ‘Win McCarthy: Innenportrait’, 25 Feb – 14 May 2023, KW Institue for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
Win McCarthy was born in 1986, USA. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, represented by Galerie Neu, Berlin.
2014, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 23.1 x 15.2 cm
Published by
University of Hawaii Press / Honolulu
$120.00 - Out of stock
How can we qualify slowness in cinema? What is the relationship between a cinema of slowness and a wider socio-cultural "slow movement"? A body of films that shares a propensity toward slowness has emerged in many parts of the world over the past two decades. This is the first book to examine the concept of cinematic slowness and address this fascinating phenomenon in contemporary film culture.
Providing a critical investigation into questions of temporality, materiality, and aesthetics, and examining concepts of authorship, cinephilia, and nostalgia, Song Hwee Lim offers insight into cinematic slowness through the films of the Malaysian-born, Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-liang. Through detailed analysis of aspects of stillness and silence in cinema, Lim delineates the strategies by which slowness in film can be constructed. By drawing on writings on cinephilia and the films of directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, he makes a passionate case for a slow cinema that calls for renewed attention to the image and to the experience of time in film.
Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness will speak to readers with an interest in art cinema, queer studies, East Asian culture, and the question of time. In an age of unrelenting acceleration of pace both in film and in life, this book invites us to pause and listen, to linger and look, and, above all, to take things slowly.
"Lim's study examines the director as a prime example of slow cinema, both in terms of his film aesthetics and underlying political motivations. Lim's approach is to contextualize Tsai's filmmaking practice within an extensive evaluation of slow cinema . . . Considering the noteworthy contribution it provides to the development of "slow cinema studies" as an academic subfield, Lim's work should be considered among the the earliest, if not the first, scholarly studies of slow cinema."—Film Quarterly
1981, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 24 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Quick Fox / New York
$240.00 - In stock -
The now extremely rare, first, only edition of one of the greatest interior design books ever published by one of the greatest interior design photographers ever. Tim Street-Porter (Domus, Underground Interiors, et al), compiled this, his first and most iconic book, in 1981. A wild book of his personal interior photographs with a fantastic design to match the fantastic interiors within. Capturing a multitude of architectural and interior styles, Interiors really is one of the rarest looks inside the homes you'd not usually see in glossy magazines nor coffee table books. From London, Los Angeles, New York, even Australia, from pop artists, stage designers, architects, animators, art dealers, stylists, textile designers, actresses... including the homes of Frank Gehry, Allen Jones, Zsa Zsa Gábor, Ward Bannett, Thea Porter, Duggie Fields, Harry Nilsson, James Coburn, Rudi Stern, Moira Lister, Luciana Martínez, Sally Sirkin Lewis, Lloyd Ziff, Philip Castle, Max Clendinning, Ralph Adron, and many more, including the photographer himself. A very rare, interior classic.
Very Good copy with light wear.
2023, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 16 x 23 cm
Published by
Luxembourg + Co. / London
$62.00 - Out of stock
The publication features Balthus' engagement with surface as both a material and a psychological quality, and offering new perspectives on the artist's use of vibrant layers of colour underneath his compositions, and the sexual politics implied by his art.
2023, English
Hardcover, 112 pages, 22 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$66.00 - In stock -
One of the great experimental composers of our time, Phill Niblock has during his sixty-year career produced minimalist music, structural cinema, dance performance, improvised theatre, systematic art, and ethnographic photography. Since 1985, Niblock has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. In 2014 the artist received the John Cage Award.
This hardbound catalogue is devoted to Niblock’s wide intermedia art, including his masterpieces the Six Films (1966-69), the Environments (1968-72) and The Movement of People Working (1973-91). A thorough publication that includes Charles Mingus, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington, Elaine Summers, Yoko Ono, Sun Ra, The Open Theatre, Muna Tseng and Arthur Russell. Co-published with Copeland. Published on occasion of the exhibition ‘Nothin’ But Working, Phill Niblock, A Retrospective’, 30 Jan – 12 May 2013, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, in partnership with Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne).
2023, English / German
Softcover, 176 pages, 27.2 x 19 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
$66.00 - In stock -
The first comprehensive publication on his work focuses on Conrad Schnitzler "intermedia" work between Düsseldorf, West Berlin and New York in the late 1960s to 1980s. During this period, the Joseph Beuys student and sculptor Konrad Schnitzler developed into the Zodiak founder and electronic musician of Kluster and Tangerine Dream, into the busy video and performance artist "Konrad von Berlin" and finally into the internationally connected sound artist and musician Conrad Schnitzler.
Contributions by Alexia Ciosses, Geeta Dayal, Gregor Jansen, David Keenan, Florian Meier, Stefan Schneider and Linnea Semmerling bear witness to Schnitzler's importance at the intersection of visual art and electronic music, cassette culture and mail art, video and performance, action and installation, which transcends borders in every respect.
“I’m a performer, performance artist, intermedia artist—not multimedia, but between the media. I tend to see the word ‘musician’ as a derogatory term.”
For Schnitzler, “intermedia” literally meant working between media with simple technical equipment. He treated his sound and video creations not as finished works, but as intermediate stages, set pieces, or momentary states that would unfold their potential in a continual series of new audiovisual constellations. He highly valued the political, economic, and artistic independence of his work. In the early 1970s, Schnitzler bought his first synthesizer, the affordable and portable EMS Synthi A. With this monophonic, analog device, he was able to create his own electronic sounds, albeit only one at a time. That wasn’t enough for Schnitzler, and so he recorded the individual sounds on different cassette tapes, which he could then play back and mix. While the sparse instrumentation of his early concerts consisted of only the synthesizer and two cassette recorders, over the course of the 1970s he developed a performance practice with up to twelve tape recorders. He also continuously expanded his sound spectrum by recording found sounds from his surroundings and other synthesizers on cassettes and adding them to his sonic universe. This is how the format of the cassette concert, which he invented, came about as a unique combination of composed, improvised, and conceptual music.
Kluster (Konrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Dieter Moebius), Klopfzeichen, 1970 (produced by Conny Plank)- Schnitzler’s ear was shaped by the sound of the bombs during the war and the noise from the factory where he completed his apprenticeship as a machinist. He was determined to transform these industrial soundscapes into art, and to this end he developed his own electroacoustic instruments consisting of modified classical musical instruments and homemade noise makers, whose sounds he electronically amplified and altered. “Back then I wanted to replay what I knew from my time as a machinist—the noise from the factory buildings—with instruments. I didn’t want normal scales, nor could I play them. That was my freedom: not being able to do anything. Sometimes it got out of hand and turned into music.”
Schnitzler released an enormous amount of acoustic material in the 1970s and 1980s, deliberately disregarding the mechanisms of the music market. Whether his tracks were released on vinyl or cassette, on a label with professional distribution, or as a private release usually simply depended on whether he had requests from music labels or galleries. Pieces were often released in multiple editions and different versions—for example, on cassette in the early 1970s, as a video soundtrack in the late 1970s, and finally on vinyl in the 1980s.
2023, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages, 19 x 12 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$44.00 - Out of stock
The most significant critical, theoretical, and art historical texts by the artist, writer, and filmmaker Aria Dean.
Compiled here for the first time, the selected writings of Aria Dean (b. 1993, Los Angeles) mount a trenchant critique of representational systems. A visual artist and filmmaker, Dean has also emerged as one of the leading critical voices of her generation through a body of writing that maps the forces of aesthetic theory, image regimes, and visibility onto questions of race and power. Dean's work across media has long been defined by what she calls a "fixation on the subject and its borders," and the texts collected here filter that inquiry through digital networks, art history, and Black radical thought. Equally at home discussing artists who embrace difficulty-from Robert Morris to David Hammons, Lorna Simpson, and Ulysses Jenkins-and conceptual frameworks such as Afropessimism, Dean often contends with how theoretical positions brush against the grain of lived reality: how the Structuralism handed down from the academy, for instance, can be commingled with critiques of structural racism, or how Georges Bataille's notion of base matter transforms through an encounter with Blackness.
Dean's thinking embraces a definition of "Black art that luxuriates in its outside-the-world-ness," as she writes in this volume, which works to elucidate "Blackness's proclivity for making and unmaking its own rules as it produces objects" of cultural necessity. Originally published in November-of which Dean is a founding editor-as well as in Texte zur Kunst, e-flux journal, and in exhibition contexts, the essays compiled in Bad Infinity were written over a six-year span that charts our rapidly evolving forms of subjectivity and sociality.