World Food Books

Semiotext(e) The German Issue
Edited by Sylvère Lotringer

1982, English
Softcover, 336 pages, 255.5 x 17.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$150.00 - In stock -

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Rare copy of one of the remarkable special book issues of the original Semiotext(e) journal — the Semiotext(e) The German Issue, published in 1982, edited by Sylvère Lotringer, featuring the work of Joseph Beuys, Michel Foucault, Christo, Christa Wolf, Walter Abish, Alexander Kluge, Paul Virilio, Ulrilke Meinhof, William Burroughs, Jean Baudrillard, Hans Magnus Enzenberger, Maurice Blanchot, Hans Jürgen Syberberg, Heidegger, Félix Guattari, Fritz Teufel, André Gorz, Helke Sander...

First edition. Not the 2009 reprint.

The German Issue (1982) was originally conceived as a follow-up to Semiotext(e)’s Autonomia/Italy issue, published two years earlier. Although ideological terrorism was still a major issue in Germany, what ultimately emerged from these pages was an investigation of two outlaw cities, Berlin and New York, which embodied all the tensions and contradictions of the world at the time. The German Issue is the Tale of Two Cities, then, with each city separated from its own country by an invisible wall of suspicion or even hatred. It is also the complex evocation of the rebelling youth—squatters, punks, artists and radicals, theorists and ex-terrorists—who gathered all their energy and creativity in order to outlive a hostile environment.

Like a time capsule, The German Issue brings together all the major "issues" that were being debated on both sides of the Atlantic—which eventually found their abrupt resolution in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It involved the most important voices of the period—from writers and filmmakers to anthropologists, activists and poets, terrorists and philosophers. The book opens with Christo's “Wrapping Up of Germany” and the celebrated dialogue between East German dramaturge Heiner Müller and Sylvère Lotringer on the Wall (“Mauer”). Since it has been published in many languages, The German Issue offers a first-hand account of the Western world on the threshold of a major global mutation.

Founded in 1974, Semiotext(e) began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylvère Lotringer at the Columbia University philosophy department. Initially, the magazine was devoted to readings of thinkers like Nietzsche and Saussure. In 1978, Lotringer and his collaborators published a special issue, Schizo-Culture, in the wake of a conference of the same name he had organized two years before at Columbia University. The magazine brought together artists and thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, Martine Barrat and Lee Breuer. Schizo-Culture brought out connections between high theory and underground culture that had not yet been made, and forged the "high/low" aesthetic that remains central to the Semiotext(e) project.

Good—Very Good copy with general cover wear.

File under: Joseph Beuys Christo Joseph Beuys Michel Foucault Christo Christa Wolf Walter Abish Alexander Kluge Paul Virilio Ulrilke Meinhof William Burroughs Jean Baudrillard Hans Magnus Enzenberger Maurice Blanchot Hans Jürgen Syberberg André Gorz Helke Sander Martin Heidegger Félix Guattari Fritz Teufel SylveÌre Lotringer Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Sociology / Politics Socialism / Communism / Capitalism Out-of-print / Rare Anarchism Art Conceptual Art Fiction / Poetry Philosophy Psychoanalysis Crime / Violence Feminism Fluxus Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Performance / Dance / Theater Periodicals Theory / Essay Protest / Revolt

Semiotext(e) U.S.A.
edited by Jim Fleming and Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey)

1987, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Autonomedia / New York

$80.00 - Out of stock

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Rare copy of one of the remarkable special book issues of the original Semiotext(e) journal — the notorious Semiotext(e) U.S.A., published in 1987, edited by Jim Fleming and Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey), and designed by Sue Ann Harkley. Complete with the unprintable 4-pages, in still-sealed plastic pocket. ("Calling it "subversive" and "obscene," five book printers in the spring of 1987 refused to print Semiotext(e) USA. A sixth printer agreed to do all but four pages, which we have printed separately and included here.") Semiotext(e) U.S.A. is an absolute treasure and time-capsule of subcultural publishing in the 1980s—1990s, centering around Autonomedia and Semiotext(e). The original publisher's blurb says it all:

"THE JOURNAL DENOUNCED IN THE U.S. SENATE FOR ITS ADVOCACY OF "ANIMAL SEX" PRESENTS..."

"A huge compendium of works in AMERICAN PSYCHOTOPOGRAPHY Areas not found on the official map of consensus perception — Maps of energies, secret maps of the USA in the form of words and images.

We are amazed. We are NOT BORED. We have discarded the outworn charm of post-modern incommunicadismo. Passion and involvement, self-abandoned craziness, funny, sexy, dangerous, unabashedly precious, punk, loud and direct. SF, speculative fiction, weird fantasy — Pornography — Other mutated genres — Sermons, rants, broadsheets, crackpot pamphlets, manifestoes — Xerox and mimeo zines — Punkzines — Mail art — Kids' poetry — Subverted advertisements — American samizdat — Astounding rhetoric, elegant propaganda — Underground comix — Geographical documentation (maps, monuments, guides to weird places, photographs) — Stolen top secret documents — And a special feature: scores of personal and classified ads. each one with a box-number or address, to connect YOU with the edges of the USA — Anarchists, unidentified flying leftists, neo-pagans, secessionists, the lunatic fringe of survivalism, cults, foreign agents, mad bombers, ban-the-bombers, nudists, monarchists, children's liberation, tax resisters, zero-workers, mimeo poets, vampires, feuilletonistes, xerox pirates, prisoners, pataphysicians, unrepentant faggots, witches, hardcore youth, poetic terrorists...

For the realization of almost-unheard of desires"

Founded in 1974, Semiotext(e) began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylvère Lotringer at the Columbia University philosophy department. Initially, the magazine was devoted to readings of thinkers like Nietzsche and Saussure. In 1978, Lotringer and his collaborators published a special issue, Schizo-Culture, in the wake of a conference of the same name he had organized two years before at Columbia University. The magazine brought together artists and thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, Martine Barrat and Lee Breuer. Schizo-Culture brought out connections between high theory and underground culture that had not yet been made, and forged the "high/low" aesthetic that remains central to the Semiotext(e) project.

Good—VG copy with some wear and creasing to the covers and a couple of loose pages at the end. Complete with still-sealed additional censored pages.

File under: Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson) Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey) Hakim Bey Paul Virilio Allen Ginsberg Nathaniel Tarn William Burroughs Rudy Rucker Jean Baudrillard Sluggo Dick Higgins Elena Jandova Ligi Gary Indiana Jim Fleming William S. Burroughs Dodie Bellamy Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Autonomedia / New York Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Crime / Violence Eros Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Art Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay Philosophy Psychoanalysis Drugs / Psychedelia Anarchism LGBTQ+

Polysexuality

1981/1995, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 24.6 x 17 cm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$98.00 - Out of stock

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Originally conceived as a special Semiotext(e) issue on homosexuality at the end of the 70s, "Polysexuality" quickly evolved into a more complex and iconoclastic project whose intent was to do away with recognized genders altogether, considered far too limitative. The project landed somewhere between humor, anarchy, science-fiction, utopia and apocalypse. In the few years that it took to put it together, it also evolved from a joyous schizo concept to a darker, neo-Lacanian elaboration on the impossibility of sexuality. The tension between the two, occasionally perceptible, is the theoretical subtext of the issue. Upping the ante on gender distinctions, "Polysexuality" started by blowing wide open all sexual classifications, inventing unheard-of categories, regrouping singular features into often original configurations, like Corporate Sex, Alimentary Sex, Soft or Violent Sex, Discursive Sex, Self- Sex, Animal Sex, Child Sex, Morbid Sex, or Sex of the Gaze. Mixing documents, interviews, fiction, theory, poetry, psychiatry and anthropology, "Polysexuality" became the encyclopedia sexualis of a continent that is still emerging. What it displayed in all its forms could be called, broadly speaking, the Sexuality of Capital. (Actually the issue being rather hot, it was decided to cool it off somewhat by only using “capitals” throughout the issue. It was also the first issue for which we used the computer). It was first issued in 1981.—Semiotext(e)

The "Polysexuality" issue was attacked in Congress for its alleged advocation of animal sex.

Includes work by Pierre Klossowski, Pierre Guyotat, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, William S. Burroughs, Paul Virilio, Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Sylvère Lotringer, Bernard Noel, Terence Sellers, Guy Hocquenghem, Roger Caillois, Tony Duvert, together with an introduction written by Canadian editor and psychoanalyst François Peraldi.

1995 reprint edition.

File under: Pierre Klossowski Alain Robbe-Grillet Arthur Rimbaud Felix Guattari François Peraldi Georges Bataille Gilles Deleuze Guy Hocquenghem Jacques Lacan Jean-François Lyotard Paul Verlaine Paul Virilio Pierre Klossowski Roland Barthes William S. Burroughs Roger Caillois Pierre Guyotat Bernard Noel Tony Duvert Sylvère Lotringer Terence Sellers Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Eros Transgressive / Visceral / Abject LGBTQ+ Philosophy Fiction / Poetry Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Psychoanalysis Feminism Fetishism / BDSM

Tricks of the Light: Essays on Art and Spectacle
by Jonathan Crary

2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 264 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 cm
Published by Zone Books / New York

$56.00 - Out of stock

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Essays on media systems and contemporary art by a leading theorist of modern visual culture.

Tricks of the Light brings together essays by critic and art historian Jonathan Crary, internationally known for his groundbreaking and widely admired studies of modern Western visual culture. This collection features a compelling selection of Crary's responses to modern and contemporary art and to the transformations of twentieth-century media systems and urban/technological environments. These wide-ranging and provocative texts explore the work of painters, performance artists, writers, architects, and photographers, including Allan Kaprow, Eleanor Antin, Ed Ruscha, John Berger, Bridget Riley, J.G. Ballard, Rem Koolhaas, Gretchen Bender, Dennis Oppenheim, Paul Virilio, Robert Irwin, and Uta Barth. There are also reflections on filmmakers Fritz Lang, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc-Godard, David Cronenberg, and others. The book is enhanced by several expansive essays on the unstable status of television, both amid its beginnings in the 1930s and then during its assimilation into new assemblages and networks in the 1980s and 90s. These assess its many-sided role in the reshaping of subjectivity, temporality, and the operation of power. Like all of Crary's work, his writing here is grounded in the acuteness of his engagement with perceptual artifacts of many kinds and in his nuanced reading of historical processes and their cultural reverberations.

File under: Uta Barth Fritz Lang Stanley Kubrick Jean-Luc-Godard David Cronenberg Allan Kaprow Eleanor Antin Ed Ruscha Bridget Riley Rem Koolhaas Gretchen Bender Dennis Oppenheim Robert Irwin László Moholy-Nagy Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Marcel Duchamp Alfred Hitchcock Peter Fend Jonathan Crary Paul Virilio J.G. Ballard John Berger Zone Books / New York Theory / Essay Art Performance / Dance / Theater Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Film / Video Fluxus Situationism / Lettrism Photography

documenta X
The Book: Politics Poetics

1997, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 830 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by documenta / Kassel

$80.00 - Out of stock

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First English edition of this monumental 830 page book for documenta X, the last documenta of the twentieth century and the first directed by a woman, the French curator Catherine David, brings together the work of more than 100 of the world's foremost thinkers, writers, and artists in an extraordinary anthology of seminal texts and images of, on, and about the development of Western cultural and critical theory since 1945.

The book "seeks to indicate a political context for the interpretation of artistic activities at the close of the twentieth century, through a montage of images and documents from the immediate post-war period to the present. The range of material treated here is not encyclopaedic; it represents a polemical attempt to isolate specific strands of artistic production and political endeavour which can be taken as references in the contemporary debate over the evolution of our societies. Drawing from distinct yet interrelated territorial and linguistic domains, the book singles out complex cultural responses to the unifying processes of global modernity."—from the book jacket.

A comprehensive work in itself, rich with enmeshed texts and illustrations of artworks, film stills, historical documents throughout in colour and in black and white.

Writers include: Theodor W. Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paul Celan, Amílcar Cabral, Masao Miyoshi, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jacques Rancière, Tadao Sato, Youssef Ishaghpour, Josef Beuys, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rem Koolhaas, Sandra Álvarez de Toledo, Witold Gombrowicz, Herve Joubert-Laurencin, Jean-François Chevrier, Marguerite Duras, Edward Said, Henri Alleg, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Uwe Johnson, Jerzy Grotowski, James Clifford, Primo Levi, Pierre Clastres, Andrea Branzi, Fabrizio Gallanti, Gérard Chaliand, Stig Björkman, Daniel Defert, Saskia Sassen, Catherine David, Benjamin Buchloh, Paul Virilio, Serge Daney, Étienne Balibar, Nadia Tazi, and many others.....

Artists include : Archigram, Martin Kippenberger, Archizoom Associati, Art & Language, Hans Haacke, Oyvind Fahlström, Samuel Beckett, Franz West, Andrea Zittel, Heimo Zobernig, Nancy Spero, Jean-Luc Godard, Marcel Broodthaers, Lygia Clark, Jörg Herold, Fischli & Weiss, Dan Graham, Robert Adams, Peter Friedl, Paweł Althamer, Liam Gillick, Mike Kelley & Tony Oursler & Diedrich Diederichsen, Stan Douglas, Harun Farocki, Ed van der Elsken, Walker Evans, Aldo van Eyck, Heiner Goebbels, William Kentridge, Ulrike Grossarth, Richard Hamilton, Vito Acconci, Raymond Hains, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Siobhán Hapaska, Ecke Bonk, Carsten Höller & Rosemarie Trockel, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Lois Weinberger, Hélio Oiticica, Gabriel Orozco, Olaf Nicolai, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Schütte, Marc Pataut, Gordon Matta-Clark, Christian Philipp Müller, Matt Mullican, Antoni Muntadas, Jean-Luc Moulène, Reinhard Mucha, Álvaro Siza, Toyo Ito, John C. Portman Jr., Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Mariella Mosler, Josef Beuys, Steve McQueen, Chris Marker, Lothar Baumgarten, Jean Dubuffet, Kerry James Marshall, Maria Lassnig, Rem Koolhaas, Joachim Koester, Suzanne Lafont, Sigalit Landau, Helen Levitt, Garry Winogrand, Brassaï, Le Corbusier, Antonin Artaud, and so many more...

Very Good coy, light wear. Good dust jacket with some creasing and edge wear.

File under: Mike Kelley Tony Oursler Carsten Höller Rosemarie Trockel Archigram Martin Kippenberger Archizoom Associati Art & Language Hans Haacke Samuel Beckett Franz West Andrea Zittel Heimo Zobernig Jean-Luc Godard Marcel Broodthaers Lygia Clark Jörg Herold Fischli & Weiss Dan Graham Robert Adams Peter Friedl Öyvind Fahlström Paweł Althamer Liam Gillick Stan Douglas Harun Farocki Ed van der Elsken Walker Evans Aldo van Eyck Siobhán Hapaska Reinhard Mucha Mariella Mosler Steve McQueen Chris Marker Lothar Baumgarten Kerry James Marshall Maria Lassnig Rem Koolhaas Joachim Koester Suzanne Lafont Sigalit Landau Helen Levitt Garry Winogrand Jean-Luc Moulène Hélio Oiticica Thomas Schütte Christian Philip Muller Gabriel Orozco Olaf Nicolai Michelangelo Pistoletto Gerhard Richter Marc Pataut Gordon Matta-Clark Matt Mullican Antoni Muntadas Heiner Goebbels William Kentridge Ulrike Grossarth Richard Hamilton Vito Acconci Raymond Hains Ecke Bonk Carl Michael von Hausswolff Lois Weinberger Carsten Höller Pier Paolo Pasolini Joseph Beuys Nancy Spero Le Corbusier Brassaï Jean Dubuffet Alvaro Siza Toyo Ito Rainer Werner Fassbinder Paulo Mendes Da Rocha John C. Portman Jr. Antonin Artaud Diedrich Diederichsen Catherine David Yana Milev Klaus Biesenbach Nancy Spector Hans-Ulrich Obrist Theodor W. Adorno Maurice Blanchot Pier Paolo Pasolini Paul Celan Amílcar Cabral Masao Miyoshi Hannah Arendt Michel Foucault Gilles Deleuze Félix Guattari Jacques Rancière Tadao Sato Youssef Ishaghpour Josef Beuys Samuel Beckett Albert Camus Rainer Werner Fassbinder Rem Koolhaas Sandra Álvarez de Toledo Witold Gombrowicz Herve Joubert-Laurencin Jean-François Chevrier Marguerite Duras Edward Said Henri Alleg Pierre Vidal-Naquet Uwe Johnson Jerzy Grotowski James Clifford Primo Levi Pierre Clastres Andrea Branzi Fabrizio Gallanti Gérard Chaliand Stig Björkman Daniel Defert Saskia Sassen Benjamin Buchloh Paul Virilio Serge Daney Étienne Balibar Nadia Tazi and many others documenta / Kassel Art Group Shows / Collections Curatorial Out-of-print / Rare Sculpture / Installation Australian Photography Performance / Dance / Theater Protest / Revolt Theory / Essay Architecture / Interior Conceptual Art Film / Video Sound / Music Painting Photography Ecology

The Administration of Fear
by Paul Virilio

2012, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 17.6 x 11.4 cm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$30.00 - Out of stock

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We are living under the administration of fear: fear has become an environment, an everyday landscape. There was a time when wars, famines, and epidemics were localized and limited by a certain timeframe. Today, it is the world itself that is limited, saturated, and manipulated, the world itself that seizes us and confines us with a stressful claustrophobia. Stock-market crises, undifferentiated terrorism, lightning pandemics, "professional" suicides.... Fear has become the world we live in.

The administration of fear also means that states are tempted to create policies for the orchestration and management of fear. Globalization has progressively eaten away at the traditional prerogatives of states (most notably of the welfare state), and states have to convince citizens that they can ensure their physical safety.

In this new and lengthy interview, Paul Virilio shows us how the "propaganda of progress," the illuminism of new technologies, provide unexpected vectors for fear in the way that they manufacture frenzy and stupor. For Virilio, the economic catastrophe of 2007 was not the death knell of capitalism, as some have claimed, but just further evidence that capitalism has accelerated into turbo-capitalism, and is accelerating still. With every natural disaster, health scare, and malicious rumor now comes the inevitable "information bomb"--live feeds take over real space, and technology connects life to the immediacy of terror, the ultimate expression of speed. With the nuclear dissuasion of the Cold War behind us, we are faced with a new form of civil dissuasion: a state of fear that allows for the suspension of controversial social situations.

File under: Paul Virilio Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Sociology / Politics Theory / Essay

Pataphysics
Psychomilitary Issue

2002, English
Softcover, 70 pages, 20.8 x 29.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Pataphysics Books / Melbourne

$45.00 - Out of stock

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Out of print 2002 issue of the great Pataphysics magazine from Melbourne, the Psychomilitary issue.

Interviews with Paul Virilio & Sylvère Lotringer on The Genetic Bomb, Karl Jansen on the near-death experience via ketamine, Teddy Goldsmith on ecological fascism, The Empire of Disorder by Alain Joxe, Lemurs, Survivor by Chris Kraus, The Man and a Man with His Mule by Brian Aldiss, The Secret Mirror by Joyce Carol Oates, Execution I & II by David Miller, Facing the Camera by Sylvère Lotringer, Orangewash: An Amazonian Jungle Beauty by Rudi Ketz, 337,000, December, 2000 by Aaron Fogel, Rise of the Spirit of Independence by David Shapiro.

Published and edited by Leo Edelstein and Yanni Florence in Melbourne, with Judith Elliston, 2002, and long out of print. Fine copy.

File under: David Shapiro Brian Aldiss Joyce Carol Oates Chris Kraus Paul Virilio Sylvère Lotringer Teddy Goldsmith Alain Joxe Rudi Ketz Aaron Fogel Pataphysics Books / Melbourne Art Australian Art Photography Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals

Hatred of Capitalism (A Semiotext(e) Reader)
Chris Kraus and Sylvère Lotringer (Eds.)

2002, English
Softcover, 430 pages, 15.2 x 23 cm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$45.00 - In stock -

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Compiled in 2001 to commemorate the passing of an era, Hatred of Capitalism brings together highlights of Semiotext(e)’s most beloved and prescient works. Semiotext(e)’s three-decade history mirrors the history of American thought. Founded by French theorist and critic Sylvere Lotringer as a scholarly journal in 1974, Semiotext(e) quickly took on the mission of melding French theory with the American art world and punk underground. Its Foreign Agents, Native Agents, Active Agents and Double Agents imprints have brought together thinkers and writers as diverse as Gilles Deleuze, Assata Shakur, Bob Flanagan, Paul Virillio, Kate Millet, Jean Baudrillard, Michelle Tea, William S. Burroughs, Eileen Myles, Ulrike Meinhof, and Fanny Howe. In Hatred of Capitalism, editors Kraus and Lotringer bring these people together in the same volume for the first time.

Chris Kraus is a filmmaker and the author of I Love Dick and Aliens & Anorexia, and coeditor of Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader. Index called her “one of the most subversive voices in American fiction.” Her work has been praised for its damning intelligence, vulnerability and dazzling speed.

Sylvère Lotringer, general editor of Semiotext(e), lives in New York and Baja, California. He is the author of Overexposed: Perverting Perversions (Semiotext(e), 2007).

File under: John Cage Assata Shakur Bob Flanagan Chris Kraus Cookie Mueller Eileen Myles Fanny Howe Gilles Deleuze Jean Baudrillard John Cage Kate Millet Michel Foucault Michelle Tea Paul Virilio Sylvère Lotringer Ulrike Meinhof William S. Burroughs Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Art Feminism Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay

Bunker Archaeology
by Paul Virilio

2009, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 16.5 x 26.7 cm
Published by Princeton Architectural Press / New York

$75.00 - Out of stock

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Out of print for almost a decade, Princeton Architectural Press have brought back one of their most requested hard-to-find titles, philosopher and cultural theorist Paul Virilio's Bunker Archeology.

In 1994 we the first English-language translation was published of the classic French edition of 1975, which accompanied an exhibition of Virilio's photographs at the Centre Pompidou. In Bunker Archeology, urbanist Paul Virilio turns his attention and camera to the ominous yet strangely compelling German bunkers that lie abandoned along the coast of France. These ghostly reminders of destruction and oppression prompted Virilio to consider the nature of war and existence, in relation to both World War II and contemporary times. Virilio discusses fortresses and military space in general as well as the bunkers themselves, including an examination of the role of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, in the rise of the Third Reich.

File under: Paul Virilio Princeton Architectural Press / New York Architecture / Interior Theory / Essay

Paul Virilio
Aesthetics of Disappearance

2009, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 152 x 229 mm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$25.00 - In stock -

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Virilio himself referred to his 1980 work The Aesthetics of Disappearance as a “juncture” in his thinking, one at which he brought his focus onto the logistics of perception—a logistics he would soon come to refer to as the “vision machine.” If Speed and Politics established Virilio as the inaugural—and still consummate—theorist of “dromology” (the theory of speed and the society it defines), The Aesthetics of Disappearance introduced his understanding of “picnolepsy”—the epileptic state of consciousness produced by speed, or rather, the consciousness invented by the subject through its very absence: the gaps, glitches, and speed bumps lacing through and defining it. Speed and Politics defined the society of speed; The Aesthetics of Disappearance defines what it feels like to live in the society of speed.

“I always write with images,” Virilio has claimed, and this statement is nowhere better illustrated than with The Aesthetics of Disappearance. Moving from the movie theater to the freeway, and from Craig Breedlove’s attainment of terrifying speed in a rocket-power car to the immobility of Howard Hughes in his dark room atop the Desert Inn, Virilio himself jump cuts from such disparate reference points as Fred Astaire, Franz Liszt, and Adolf Loos to Dostoyevsky, Paul Morand, and Aldous Huxley. In its extension of the “aesthetics of disappearance” to war, film, and politics, this book paved the way to Virilio’s follow-up: the celebrated study, War and Cinema.

This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Crary, one of the leading theorists of modern visual culture.

Paul Virilio has published twenty-five books, including Pure War (1988) (his first in English) and The Accident of Art (2005), both written with Sylvère Lotringer, as well as Speed and Politics and Lost Dimension, all published by Semiotext(e).

File under: Jonathan Crary Paul Virilio Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Theory / Essay

Paul Virilio
Lost Dimension

2012, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 15 x 22.5 cm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$35.00 - Out of stock

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Originally written in French in 1983, Lost Dimension remains a cornerstone book in the work of Paul Virilio: the one most closely tied to his background as an urban planner and architect, and the one that most clearly anticipates the technologically wired urban space we live in today: a city of permanent transit and internalized borders, where time has overtaken space, and where telecommunications has replaced both our living and our working environments. We are living in the realm of the lost dimension, where the three-dimensional public square of our urban past has collapsed into the two-dimensional interface of the various screens that function as gateways to home, office, and public spaces, be they the flat-screen televisions on our walls, the computer screens on our desktops, or the smartphones in our pockets.

In this multidisciplinary tapestry of contemporary physics, architecture, aesthetic theory, and sociology, Virilio describes the effects of today’s hyperreality on our understanding of space. Having long since passed the opposition of city and country, and city and suburb, the speed-ridden city and space of today are an opposition between the nomadic and the sedentary: a web of interactive, informational networks that turn our world into a prison-house of illusory transcendence.

Paul Virilio was born in 1932 and has published a wide range of books, essays, and interviews grappling with the question of speed and technology, including Speed and Politics, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, and The Accident of Art, all published by Semiotext(e). Jean-Louis Violeau is a sociologist and researcher at the 'Architecture-Culture-Société' laboratory of the Ecole d'architecture de Paris-Malaquais in Paris. His most recent book is Les Architectes et Mai 68.

File under: Paul Virilio Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Architecture / Interior Theory / Essay

Sylvere Lotringer / Paul Virilio
The Accident of Art

2005, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 15 x 22.5 cm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$28.00 - Out of stock

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There is a catastrophe within contemporary art. What I call the "optically correct" is at stake. The vision machine and the motor have triggered it, but the visual arts haven't learned from it. Instead, they've masked this failure with commercial success. This "accident" is provoking a reversal of values. In my view, this is positive: the accident reveals something important we would not otherwise know how to perceive.-- Paul Virilio, The Accident of Art

Urbanist and technological theorist Paul Virilio trained as a painter, studying under Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Bazaine and de Stael. In The Accident of Art, his third extended conversation with Sylvere Lotringer, Virilio addresses the situation of art within technological society for the first time. This book completes a collaborative trilogy the two began in 1982 with Pure War and continued with Crepuscular Dawn, their 2002 work on architecture and biotechnology.In The Accident of Art, Virilio and Lotringer argue that a direct relation exists between war trauma and art. Why has art failed to reinvent itself in the face of technology, unlike performing art? Why has art simply retreated into painting, or surrendered to digital technology? Accidents, Virilio claims, can free us from speed's inertia. As technological catastrophes, accidents are inventions in their own right.

File under: Paul Virilio Sylvère Lotringer Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Art Theory / Essay

Paul Virilio
The Administration of Fear

2012, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 114 x 178 mm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$27.00 - Out of stock

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We are living under the administration of fear: fear has become an environment, an everyday landscape. There was a time when wars, famines, and epidemics were localized and limited by a certain timeframe. Today, it is the world itself that is limited, saturated, and manipulated, the world itself that seizes us and confines us with a stressful claustrophobia. Stock-market crises, undifferentiated terrorism, lightning pandemics, “professional” suicides . . . . Fear has become the world we live in.

The administration of fear also means that states are tempted to create policies for the orchestration and management of fear. Globalization has progressively eaten away at the traditional prerogatives of states (most notably of the welfare state), and states have to convince citizens that they can ensure their physical safety.

In this new and lengthy interview, Paul Virilio shows us how the “propaganda of progress,” the illuminism of new technologies, provide unexpected vectors for fear in the way that they manufacture frenzy and stupor. For Virilio, the economic catastrophe of 2007 was not the death knell of capitalism, as some have claimed, but just further evidence that capitalism has accelerated into turbo-capitalism, and is accelerating still. With every natural disaster, health scare, and malicious rumor now comes the inevitable “information bomb”–live feeds take over real space, and technology connects life to the immediacy of terror, the ultimate expression of speed. With the nuclear dissuasion of the Cold War behind us, we are faced with a new form of civil dissuasion: a state of fear that allows for the suspension of controversial social situations.

Paul Virilio has published twenty-five books, including Pure War (his first in English) and The Accident of Art, both written with Sylvère Lotringer, as well as the new edition of The Aesthetics of Disappearance, all published by Semiotext(e).
Translated by Ames Hodges
With Bertrand Richard

File under: Paul Virilio Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Theory / Essay

Paul Virilio
Speed and Politics

2006, English
Softcover, 174 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 cm
Published by Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles

$31.00 - Out of stock

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Speed and Politics (first published in France in 1977) is the matrix of Virilio's entire work. Building on the works of Morand, Marinetti, and McLuhan, Virilio presents a vision more radically political than that of any of his French contemporaries: speed as the engine of destruction. Speed and Politics presents a topological account of the entire history of humanity, honing in on the technological advances made possible through the militarization of society. Paralleling Heidegger's account of technology, Virilio's vision sees speed—not class or wealth—as the primary force shaping civilization. In this "technical vitalism," multiple projectiles—inert fortresses and bunkers, the "metabolic bodies" of soldiers, transport vessels, and now information and computer technology—are launched in a permanent assault on the world and on human nature. Written at a lightning-fast pace, Virilio's landmark book is a split-second, overwhelming look at how humanity's motivity has shaped the way we function today, and what might come of it.

File under: Paul Virilio Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles Architecture / Interior Theory / Essay