World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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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.
1985, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney
$100.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce catalogue and unique valuable resource published to accompany the exhibition "Working Art: A Survey of Art in The Australian Labour Movement in The 1980's", curated by Australian conceptual artist, curator and writer Ian Burn for the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1985. Designed by Michael Davies of the Art Workers Union (AWU), this heavily illustrated (in colour and black and white) catalogue surveys the Banners, Posters, Graphics, Photographs, and Media of the Australian Labour movement during the 1980's, as well as a detailed "Historical Sketch" written and compiled by Ian Burn and Sandy Kirby that illustrates the rich history of the Arts in Australian unionism and communities. Alongside the many exhibited prints and textiles, there is photo documentation throughout of marches, performances, artist's at work, historical exhibitions, plus reproductions of newsletters, newspapers, cartoons, announcements, along with further accompanying introductory texts and a bibliography.
Includes inserted Trade Union Information Kit "Art and Working Life : The Victorian Trades Hall Council Arts Workshop" booklet that takes an illustrated look at the activities of the VTHC Workshop in the 1980s. A perfect accompaniment to this catalogue. Also, errata slip enclosed from the NSW catalogue.
Ian Burn (1939-1993) was an Australian conceptual artist, curator and writer who spent the first part of his career working in London and New York. It was here that he began working with Art & Language, a collaborative group who produced the publication Art-Language and whose members included artists Roger Cutforth, Joseph Kosuth and Mel Ramsden. Returning to Australia in 1977 Burn became involved in the Art Workers Union (AWU), a political and social platform that championed artists’ rights and helped change the landscape and expectations under which artists worked in Australia. From 1980 onwards, together with artist and social activist Ian Millis, he worked on a number of initiatives to further the cause of the labour movement, including Union Media Services and the Art and Working Life program. Burn died by accidental drowning in 1993.
A great copy of an important resource on Australia's cultural, industrial and political history, and also an important publication by Ian Burn.
Light general reading/handling creasing to oblong pages, otherwise tight and clean throughout. Previous owner's name penned to title page.
2018, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 22.5 x 28.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$45.00 - Out of stock
Curated by Karola Kraus, the exhibition Optik Schröder II presents a representative selection from the collection of Alexander Schröder to date. This includes important works by Kai Althoff, Tom Burr, Bernadette Corporation, Claire Fontaine, Gelitin, Isa Genzken, Anne Imhof, Sergej Jensen, Pierre Klossowski, Manfred Pernice, Martha Rosler, and Reena Spaulings, and is one of the most important German private collections of contemporary art.
These works illustrate some of the key conceptual trends and positions in the development of Western art in the past three decades, including references to social issues, queer lifestyles, the critique of institutions and the economy, critical investigation of public spaces and architecture, poetry, and contemporary forms of critical painting. The prominently represented artists’ collectives exemplify endeavors to challenge and transform the traditional roles and systems of the artist, of art production, and of the sale of art.
This comprehensive overview shows a collection built up consistently since the mid-1990s and based on close proximity to the artists and sensitivity for new developments. The collection illustrates an exemplary philosophy of collecting focusing on the nature of the contemporary, on curiosity, expertise, humor, independence, and outstanding aesthetic judgement.
Participating Artists:
Kai Althoff, Lutz Bacher, Cosima von Bonin, KP Brehmer, Tom Burr, Merlin Carpenter, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Anne Collier, Bernadette Corporation, Lukas Duwenhögger, Jana Euler, Cerith Wyn Evans, Claire Fontaine, Gelitin, Isa Genzken, Ull Hohn, Karl Holmqvist, Alex Hubbard, Peter Hujar, Anne Imhof, Sergej Jensen, Martin Kippenberger, Pierre Klossowski, John Knight, Michael Krebber, Mark Leckey, Klara Lidén, Lucy McKenzie, Christian Philipp Müller, Henrik Olesen, Paulina Olowska, Dietrich Orth, Manfred Pernice, Josephine Pryde, Martha Rosler, Cameron Rowland, Andreas Slominski, Reena Spaulings, Katja Strunz, Philippe Thomas, Danh Vo, Peter Wächtler
Designed by Studio Manuel Raeder.
2006, English / German
Softcover, 240 pages, 220 x 270 mm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$75.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue from Optik Schröder, Werke aus der Sammlung Schröder, 2006 exhibition at Kunstverein Braunschweig.
Now out-of-print, this comprehensive book surveys the private art collection of gallerist Alexander Schröder, built up since the mid-1990s and featuring important artworks by Andreas Hofer, Andreas Slominski, Cerith Wyn Evans, Christian Flamm, Christian Philipp Müller, Clegg & Guttmann,Cosima von Bonin, Diedrich Orth, Guillaume Bijl, Henrik Olesen, Isa Genzken, Jan Timme, Jochen Klein, Josephine Pryde, Kai Althoff, Katharina Wulff, Katja Strunz, Keith Farquhar, Lucy McKenzie, Lukas Duwenhögger, Manfred Pernice, Mark Handforth, Martha Rosler, Michael Krebber, Paulina Olowska, Reena Spauling, Sergej jensen, Sharon Lockhart, Stephan Dillemuth, Thilo Heinzmann, Tom Burr, Torsten Slama, Ull Hohn, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Enrico David, Mark Leckey ...
Profusely illustrated throughout with texts by Dominic Eichler, Isabelle Graw, and Karola Grasslin.
Designed by Manuel Raeder.
2017, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 248 pages, 18.5 x 26.5 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
LUMA Foundation / Zürich
Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College / New York
$74.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Amanda Beech, Rony Brauman, David Campbell, Olivia Custer, Rosalyn Deutsche, Thomas Keenan, Eric Kluitenberg, David Levine, Suhail Malik, Sohrab Mohebbi, Sharon Sliwinski, Hito Steyerl, Bernard Stiegler, Tirdad Zolghadr
It is difficult to imagine making claims for human rights without using images. For better or worse, images of protest, evidence, and assertion are the lingua franca of struggles for justice today. And they seem to come in a flood, more and more, day and night. But through which channels does the torrent pass? The Flood of Rights examines the pathways through which these images and ideas circulate—routes that do not merely enable, but actually shape human-rights claims and their conceptual background. What are the technologies and languages that structure the global distribution of humanism and universalism, and how do they leave their mark on these ideas themselves? Which narratives and imageries have proven easier to export and import, and whose interests are at stake in the configurations in question?
The Flood of Rights draws on a conference of the same name, organized by the LUMA Foundation and Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, which took place in Arles, France, in 2013.
Copublished with the LUMA Foundation and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York
Design by Zak Group
2016, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 19.5 x 26 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$54.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Texts by Zdenka Badovinac, Jože Barši, Boris Beja, Goran Bertok, Irena Borić, Blaž Božič, BridA (Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica), Chang Tsong-Zung and Gao Shiming, Keti Chukhrov, Jasmina Cibic, Femkanje (Bojana S. Knežević, Katarina Petrović), Vadim Fishkin, Boris Groys, Ida Hiršenfelder, Maja Hodošček, IRWIN, Sergej Kapus, Staš Kleindienst, Nina Koželj, Tanja Lažetić, Gregor Mobius, Lívia Páldi, Marko & Marika Pogačnik, Uroš Potočnik, Marjetica Potrč, Tatjana Pregl Kobe, Lina Rica & Boštjan Čadež, Sašo Sedlaček, Miha Turšič, Ali Van, Anton Vidokle, Arseny Zhilyaev, Dragan Živadinov, Dunja Zupančič
In our cultural imagination, the cosmos is a harmonious, utopian universe, but it is also uncontrollable, even unknown, and the source of a specifically modern fear or uneasiness—one that could be described as “cosmic anxiety.” It’s no accident that mass culture today is obsessed with visions of asteroids coming out of space, causing the destruction of the earth. At the same time, space is the last frontier—the final chance for a genuine human endeavor. This catalogue presents many possibilities for the artistic exploration of the topic at hand: the connection between artistic and scientific imagination, the cosmos as analysis of sci-fi culture, perspectives of corporeal immortality, and the critique of contemporary technology.
Copublished with Moderna galerija, Ljubljana
Design by Novi kolektivizem
2013, English/German
Softcover, 320 pages (81 b/w ills.), 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$79.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Introduction by Petra Reichensperger; essays by Anke te Heesen, Kirsten Maar, Markus Miessen, Ursula Panhans-Bühler, Jan Verwoert, Choy Lee Weng; interviews by Dóra Maurer/ Cassandra Edlefsen Lasch, Channa Horwitz/Petra Reichensperger, Yael Davids/Adam Szymczyk, Brian O'Doherty/Dominikus Müller, Carl Michael von Hausswolff/Thibaut de Ruyter, Karl Holmqvist/Dominikus Müller, Daniel Knorr/Katharina Groth, Jaroslaw Kozlowski/Petra Stegmann, Hans Schabus/Kathrin Rhomberg, Steven Claydon/Lea Schleiffenbaum, Karin Sander/Anne Schreiber, Martin Germann/Petra Reichensperger/Renate Wagner
This publication explores themes of the exhibition through its terms—not, however, to confine into isolated conceptual categories, but to interconnect. These terms characterize exhibiting and emphasize a “between-ness.” Examining a term lays bare its ruptures, shifts, or recreations, as well as social, societal, and cultural changes that have the power to structure through historical conjecture.
Almost fifty terms relevant to the making and discussion of exhibitions today have been compiled in Terms of Exhibiting (from A to Z), contributed by Liam Gillick, Manfred Hermes, Wojciech Kosma, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Tobias Vogt, Jochen Volz, and June Yap, among others. Six essays investigate key terms raised by the three-part exhibition series “Terms of Exhibiting, Producing, and Performing” at Kunsthaus Dresden in 2012. Jan Verwoert reflects on the division of labor in artistic production, while Anke te Heesen presents a survey of the museum, collection, and exhibition. Markus Miessen discusses the advantages of curating institutions and inventing structures rather than merely implementing or appropriating them. The book also includes essays by Kirsten Maar, Ursula Panhans-Bühler, and Lee Weng-Choy. Each of the twelve conversations with various artists places one term under scrutiny within the context of their own artistic interests and practices—with reference to the term presence, Daniel Knorr explains the significance of materialization for his own creative process, while Brian O’Doherty discusses invention in relation to his practice. Each term generates further insight and reflection into each individual art practice.
Including glossaries written by Friedrich von Borries, Hans-Christian Dany, Stefanie Diekmann, Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Liam Gillick, Manfred Hermes, Ulrike Jordan, Vera Knolle, Wojciech Kosma, Verena Kuni, Pablo Larios, Oona Lochner, Fiona McGovern, Andrea Meyer, Ana Ofak, Christian Rattemeyer, Petra Reichensperger, Dietmar Rübel, Thibaut de Ruyter, Jörn Schafaff, Lea Schleiffenbaum, Anne Schreiber, Nora Sdun, Vera Tollmann, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Tobias Vogt, Jochen Volz, Renate Wagner, Friederike Wappler, June Yap
2012, English
Softcover, 80 pages (18 b/w ill.), 21.5 x 28 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$25.00 - Out of stock
With contributions by Andrea Fraser, Manfred Hermes, Karl Holmqvist and Tobias Kaspar, Isla Leaver-Yap, Jackie McAllister, James Meyer and Christian Philipp Müller, Magnus Schäfer, Axel John Wieder, Phillip Zach; a conversation between Colin de Land, Josef Strau, and Stephan Dillemuth; and an introduction by Hannes Loichinger and Magnus Schäfer
The New York gallery American Fine Arts, Co.—whose name today is largely synonymous with that of its gallerist, Colin de Land (1955–2003)—represents a gallery practice in which a decided deviation from conventional models overlaps with successful activities within the framework of the art market. Today, American Fine Arts, Co. and de Land figure as uncontested projection screens for the desire for independence from or bohemian resistance against the dictate of the market. Particularly in retrospect, a consistent image of the gallery is not discernible. Faced with the obvious risk of romanticization, it appears all the more important to pursue an understanding of how American Fine Arts, Co. functioned as a gallery.
This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition “Dealing with—Some Books, Visuals, and Works Related to American Fine Arts, Co.” at Halle für Kunst Lüneburg and Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Lüneburg (May 28–July 7, 2011), which was developed by Valérie Knoll, Hannes Loichinger, Julia Moritz, and Magnus Schäfer.
Design by HIT
2017, English / German
Softcover, 248 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$30.00 - In stock -
In art historical and art critical texts, the concept of “idiom” – an expression or mode of speaking that cannot be translated – is frequently used, even if it is rarely spoken of as such. TZK issue 108 explores how the idea of “idiom” might allow us to coherently engage with art's disparate materialist and iconographic connections at a time when the vitality of historical Western-centric cannons are fading (see: Documenta 14) and the traditional relations within and among artistic systems are ever less self-evident. The "Idiom" issue of TZK asks: What languages does art speak?
ISSUE NO. 108 / DECEMBER 2017 "IDIOM - LANGUAGES OF ART“
Table Of Contents
Preface
Susanne Leeb - Idioms: The Minor "A"s Of Art
Artist's Choice
Mirjam Thomann - Chapter 3: Women And Space
Anja Kirschner - In A Manner Of Speaking
Michael Dean
Linda Stupart - Didacticore: An Artist's Statement
Bouchra Khalili - Mother Tongue
Lawrence Abu Hamdan - Hear, Hear
Giovanna Zapperi - Body Of Evidence, Gestures Of Dysfunction / Technology As Practice In The Work Of Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Yvonne Volkart - From Trash To Waste / On Art's Media Geology
Monica Juneja - To Enter The Image / The Performative Self As Idiom*
Dieter Lesage - Research And Form / On "Artistic Research" And Its Aesthetic
Sven Lütticken - Modernist Memories / On The Conteporaneity of Günther Frg
Bildstrecke
Philipp Gufler
Maybe Devotion Is The Only Thing I Can Offer You
New Development
Once More With Feeling / Philipp Wüschner Über Das Symposium „Image Testimonies – Witnessing In Times Of Social Media“
Cloudism / Library Stack On Blockchain Archives And Library Futures
Liebe Arbeit Kino
Lauf, Genosse! / Madeleine Bernstorff Über „Cours, Cours, Camarade, Le Vieux Monde Est Derrière Toi. Das Kino Von Med Hondo“ Im Kino Arsenal, Berlin
Glück Auf! / Esther Buss Über Ben Russells „Good Luck“, 70. Locarno Festival
Reviews
Handlungsräume / Sophie Goltz Über „Radical Women“ Im Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
The Downward Spiral / Steven Warwick On “Trigger: Gender As A Tool And A Weapon” At The New Museum, New York
„Überlast“ Und Emanzipation – „Ich Weiss Nicht, Ob Mein Stand Es Erlaubt.“ / Isabel Mehl Über „Klassensprachen“ Im District Berlin
Katie Serva On “The Overworked Body: An Anthology Of 2000s Dress” At Ludlow 38 And Mathew Gallery, New York
Beiläufig Grundsätzlich / Bert Rebhandl Über Harun Farocki Im Neuen Berliner Kunstverein
Rien Ne Va Plus / Nuit Banai On Ericka Beckman At Secession, Vienna
Familienausstellung / Inka Meißner Über Verena Dengler In Der Kunsthalle Bern
Do You Like To Read? / Christian Berger Über „Hanne Darboven. Korrespondenzen“ Im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum Für Gegenwart, Berlin
After Hours / Andrew Durbin On Thomas Eggerer At Petzel Gallery, New York
Remembering The Future / Bennett Simpson On William Leavitt At Honor Fraser, Los Angeles
Garten, Werkstatt, Oper – Alexander Kluge In Ausstellungen / Rainer Bellenbaum Über Alexander Kluge In Der Fondazione Prada, Venedig, Und Im Württembergischen Kunstverein Stuttgart
Getting Real / Helena Vilalta On Lee Lozano At Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid
Queere Subjektivität Und (Anti-)Koloniale Begehren / Jenny Nachtigall Über „Odarodle – Sittengeschichte Eines Naturmysteriums, 1535–2017“ Im Schwulen Museum, Berlin
Herrschaftszeichen Noch Mal! / Clemens Krümmel Über Michael Dreyer Im Badischen Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
Nachruf
Karl Otto Götz (1914–2017)
Edition
Candida Höfer
Ed Ruscha
2017, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 13.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$36.00 - Out of stock
This title is out of print.
Edited by Joanna Warsza; with associate editors Ágnes Básthy, Anna Ten, Georgia Stellin, Judith Waldmann, Katharina Brandl, Lianne Mol, Mirela Baciak, Petra Belc, Renata Cervetto, Sarah Werkmeister, Ulrike Jordan, Ursula Guttmann, Vanda Sárai
Contributions by Corina L. Apostol, Julieta Aranda, Burak Arikan, Dave Beech, Boris Buden, Brad Butler & Karen Mirza, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, Tony Chakar, Chto Delat?, Ekaterina Degot, Galit Eilat, Charles Esche, Lara Fresko, Maria Galindo, Erdem Gündüz, Thomas Hirschhorn, Clara Ianni, Alevtina Kakhidze, Matthew Kiem, Kasper König, Vasif Kortun, Maria Kulikovska, Pablo Lafuente, Ana Lira, Vesna Madžoski, Angela Mitropoulos, Ahmet Öğüt, Andrea Phillips, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Christoph Schäfer, Gregory Sholette, Jonas Staal, Hito Steyerl, Chen Tamir, Nato Thompson, Gabrielle de Vietri, Dmitry Vilensky, Joanna Warsza, Tirdad Zolghadr
In recent years, artists and curators have often been confronted with the political dilemma of engagement or disengagement. The ideological, economic, or ethically objectionable circumstances of certain biennials and art exhibitions have raised the question of whether to continue and, if so, under what circumstances, with what consequences, and to what ends? From 2013 to 2015, biennials in Istanbul, St. Petersburg, Sydney, and São Paulo demonstrated that curating and art production can’t just carry on as if nothing had happened.
This reader is the result of Joanna Warsza’s course at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. It examines four recent cases of boycotts, presenting their political, ideological, and economic contexts, timelines, statements, as well as interviews with parties involved. It reflects on how certain biennials became the place where the power of art is renegotiated and why one simply “can’t work like this.”
Copublished with Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts
Design by Krzysztof Pyda
2004, English
Softcover, 87 pages, 18.5 x 12.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
ICA / Pennsylvania
$45.00 - Out of stock
Conceptions of “nothing” are one of the driving themes of twentieth-century art. One thinks of Piet Mondrian's reductivist approach to abstraction, Marcel Duchamp's contention that art resides in ideas, not objects, Mark Rothko's painterly reach for the sublime, Andy Warhol's affirmations of the vacuity of Pop culture. The Big Nothing will focus on themes of nothing, nothingness and negation in contemporary art and culture, surveying the legacy of these and other manifestations of absence made manifest in contemporary art. Artist include Gareth James, Jutta Koether, Louise Lawler, Richard Prince, Yves Klein, Bernadette Corporation, John Miller and James Welling, among others. Given its broad connotations, “nothing” provides general audiences with immediate access to looking at and thinking about the art of today.
Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held May 1 - August 1, 2004. Curated and with essays by Ingrid Schaffner, Bennett Simpson, and Tanya Leighton. Additional essay by Paula Marincola. Artists include: Bas Jan Ader, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, Michel Auder, Jo Baer, Robert Barry, Larry Bell, Bernadette Corporation, James Lee Byars, Maurizio Cattelan, Thomas Chimes, Bruce Conner, Day Without Art, Jessica Diamond, Roe Ethridge, Lili Fleury, Rene Gabri, Jack Goldstein, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Nicolas Guagnini, David Hammons, Heavy Industries, Nancy Holt, Richard Hoeck, Roni Horn, Pierre Huyghe, Gareth James, Ray Johnson, Yves Klein, Joachim Koester, Jutta Koether, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Lawler, Gordon Matta-Clark, Allan McCollum, Patrick McMullen, John Miller, Matt Mullican, Eileen Neff, Gabriel Orozco, Raphael Ortiz, Charlemagne Palestine, Philippe Parreno, William Pope.L, Doris Salcedo, Karin Schneider, Allan Sekula, Arlene Shechet, Santiago Sierra, John Smith, Robert Smithson, Paul Swenbeck, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andy Warhol, James Welling, John Wesley, and Steve Wolfe. Includes checklist of the exhibition.
2017, English / German
Softcover, 480 pages, 21 x 30 cm
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$42.00 - Out of stock
For forty years, the Sculpture Project Münster has been an important event for contemporary art. Held every ten years, its curatorial direction has been in the hands of Kasper King since its inception in 1977. In 2017, it was in close cooperation with Britta Peters and Marianne Wagner. For the exhibition, international artists are invited to develop site-related works for the urban space. The fifth edition of the Sculpture Project features around thirty new artistic positions moving between sculpture, installation, and performative art. This publication produced in conjunction with the exhibition contains seven essays, an extensive series of images, and short texts provide information about the projects.
Edited with text by Kasper König, Britta Peters, Marianne Wagner. Text by Inke Arns, Claire Doherty, Mit Sanyal, Mark von Schlegell, Gerhard Vinken, Raluca Voinea.
Includes the work of : Ei Arakawa, Aram Bartholl, Nairy Baghramian, Cosima von Bonin, Andreas Bunte,
Gerard Byrne, Camp (with Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran), Michael Dean, Jeremy Deller, Nicole Eisenman, Ayşe Erkmen, Lara Favaretto, Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Monika Gintersdorfer and Knut Klaßen, Pierre Huyghe, John Knight, Xavier Le Roy with Scarlet Yu, Justin Matherly, Sany (Samuel Nyholm), Christian Odzuck, Emeka Ogboh, Peles Empire with Barbara Wolff and Katharina Stöver, Alexandra Pirici, Mika Rottenberg, Gregor Schneider, Thomas Schütte, Nora Schultz, Michael Smith, Hito Steyerl, Koki Tanaka, Oscar Tuazon, Joelle Tuerlinckx, Cerith Wyn Evans, Herve Youmbi, Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca
2017, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 16.5 x 23.8 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$69.00 - Out of stock
In 1968, Robert Smithson reacted to Michael Fried's influential essay "Art and Objecthood" with a series of works called non-sites. While Fried described the spectator's connection with a work of art as a momentary visual engagement, Smithson's non-sites asked spectators to do something more: to take time looking, walking, seeing, reading, and thinking about the combination of objects, images, and texts installed in a gallery. In Beyond Objecthood, James Voorhies traces a genealogy of spectatorship through the rise of the exhibition as a critical form -- and artistic medium. Artists like Smithson, Group Material, and Michael Asher sought to reconfigure and expand the exhibition and the museum into something more active, open, and democratic, by inviting spectators into new and unexpected encounters with works of art and institutions. This practice was sharply critical of the ingrained characteristics long associated with art institutions and conventional exhibition-making; and yet, Voorhies finds, over time the critique has been diluted by efforts of the very institutions that now gravitate to the "participatory." Beyond Objecthood focuses on innovative figures, artworks, and institutions that pioneered the exhibition as a critical form, tracing its evolution through the activities of curator Harald Szeemann, relational art, and New Institutionalism. Voorhies examines recent artistic and curatorial work by Liam Gillick, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carsten Holler, Maria Lind, Apolonija Sustersic, and others, at such institutions as Documenta, e-flux, Manifesta, and Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and he considers the continued potential of the exhibition as a critical form in a time when the differences between art and entertainment increasingly blur.
James Voorhies is a curator and art historian of modern and contemporary art. He is Dean of Fine Arts and Associate Professor at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
1987, English
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 456 pages, 22.3 x 17.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
October Books / New York
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$95.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the heavy "OCTOBER: The First Decade, 1976 - 1986", which brings together a selection of some of the most important and representative texts, many from issues long out of print, that have appeared in one of the foremost journals in art criticism and theory - October.
Contributors include Rosalind Krauss, Sergei Eisenstein, Peter Handke, Georges Didi-Huberman, Mary Ann Doane, and Hans Haacke. Their essays are organized under the categories of "the index, historical materialism, the critique of institutions, psychoanalysis, rhetoric, and the body." -- publisher's statement.
Texts by Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Douglas Crimp, Joan Copjec, Nadar, Georges Didi-Huberman, Roger Caillois, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Sergei Einstein, Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi, Rosalyn Deutsche, Cara Gendel Ryan, Yve-Alain Bois, Daniel Buren, Louise Lawler, Christopher Philips, Homi Bhabha, Mary Ann Doane, Joel Fineman, Babette Mangolte, Peter Handke, Anette Michelson, Georges Bataille, Hollis Frampton, Robert Morris, Hans Haacke, and Trisha Brown.
"October is among the most advanced journals of the 1970s and 1980s in the fields of art theory, criticism, history, and practice. [Its editors] are intimately familiar with the cultural and political avant-garde of Europe and the U.S. and are able to attract its best thinkers.... Few, if any, journals could receive a higher recommendation."—Choice
2017, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 14 x 24 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Exhibition Research Lab / Liverpool
$22.00 - Out of stock
Texts by Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Boris Groys, Mathias Kokholm, Joasia Krysa, Fatima Hellberg, Lars Bang Larsen, Bárbara Rodriquez Muñoz, Jussi Parikka
Systemics brings together a collection of new writing and curatorial projects that unfolded at Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark, over a two-year period from 2013 to 2014. Contained here are its various parts: details of the four core exhibitions and related events, two commissioned exhibitions, and four essays, together comprising the Systemics series program as a whole. Like any series, it unfolds over time, in associative parts, using descriptive and poetic exhibition titles to develop a cumulative experience.
Borrowing the term systemics from the Austrian cybernetician Heinz von Foerster to point to a new conceptual attitude that embraces the growing complexity of the world, the book extends it to curatorial thinking—as theme for the artistic program and as curatorial method. What results is something close to the understanding of exhibition as a series, to unfold ideas through their temporal relations in their seriality without an ending: like episodes of an ongoing film narrative, words that weave into sentences, chapters that add to a book, or data that is arranged by algorithms to correlate meaning. In this sense, systemics lends itself to thinking about the conditions for making curatorial “events” that are extended over longer durations to connect their constituent elements across space and time—exhibitions, texts, projects—formally and thematically, overlapping and feeding into one another like reflexive feedback loops in a cybernetic system.
Design by Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey
2017, English
Softcover, 975 pages, 19 x 26 cm
Published by
The Exhibitionist / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
Edited with introduction by Jens Hoffmann.
A journal by curators for curators, The Exhibitionist has asked the most pertinent questions on contemporary exhibition-making since its founding in 2009.
The Exhibitionist: Journal on Exhibition Making is an anthology of the first 12 issues of the journal about contemporary curating that bears the same name. Established in 2009 as a forum for critical reflection on exhibition-making and curatorial practice, The Exhibitionist has always defined itself as “by curators, for curators.” Modelled after the iconic French film journal Cahiers du cinéma, The Exhibitionist has served a critical role in examining current curatorial practices by focusing specifically on the exhibition format as a site of experimentation and inquiry. The Exhibitionist has historicized, analyzed and critiqued a phenomenon it is itself symptomatic of—the rise of the curator since the 1960s, the ensuing explosion of curatorial creativity and the growing fascination with the discipline of curating.
Over the six years of its run, The Exhibitionist has published writings from many of the most prominent curatorial voices in the field, offering a who’s who of curatorial practice; contributors include Okwui Enwezor, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Mary Jane Jacob, Nato Thompson, Jessica Morgan, Maria Lind, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy and Massimiliano Gioni, to name just a select few.
Collected together in a monumental omnibus edition (clocking in at 975 pages), the complete run of the journal is accompanied by a new introduction by founding editor Jens Hoffmann, and a critical approach to a theory of the exhibition by senior editor Julian Myers-Szupinska. With the publication of this volume, The Exhibitionist closes a chapter of its existence as a print magazine and shifts its activities to the-exhibitionist.com.
2016, English / Italian
Softcover (w. French-folds and inserted booklets), 200 pages, 19.5 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Marsilio / Venice
$85.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Danh Vo, Caroline Bourgeois, Julie Ault, Heinz Peter Knez, Stefan A. Peterson.
Exhibition curated by Danh Vo and Caroline Bourgeois
Texts by Patricia Falguieres, Elisabeth Lebovici, and Amy Zion
Photography by Heinz Peter Knes
Danh Vo’s conceptual artworks and installations often draw upon elements of personal lived experience (his own, the lives of his parents and other family members) to explore broader historical, social or political themes, particularly those relating to the history of Vietnam at the close of the twentieth century. The works shown in this book—closely related to an exhibition at the Pinault Foundation in Venice—in addition to Vo’s site-specific installations, include some curious old works of art from Venetian museums and collections, provocatively chosen by Vo to establish an unprecedented dialogue between past and present.
Beautifully designed, comprehensive exhibition catalogue with two inserted booklets (text book with words by Patricia Falguieres, Elisabeth Lebovici, and Amy Zion; and exhibition guide/artist profile book and work list), with the main book entirely made up of elegant colour photographic imagery by Heinz Peter Knez of the exhibition itself and the wonderful collection of works assembled. Profusely illustrated with installation views, works and details, featuring the work of Leonor Antunes, Nairy Baghramian, Giovanni Bellini, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Broodthaers, Giovanni Buonconsigliodetto Il Marescalco, Hubert Duprat, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Luciano Fabro, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Petrit Halilaj, David Hammons, Roni Horn, Peter Hujar, Tetsumi Kudo, Bertrand Lavier, Zoe Leonard, Francesco Lo Savio, Lee Lozano, Robert Manson, Piero Manzoni, Sadamasa Motonaga, Jean-Luc Moulène, Henrik Olesen, Pablo Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Carol Rama, Charles Ray, Auguste Rodin, Cameron Rowland, Andres Serrano, Nancy Spero, Sturtevant, Alina Szapocznikow, Paul Thek, Harald Thys & Jos Degruyter, Danh Vo, David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong.
2017, English
Hardcover, 208 pages, 20 x 25.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts / Cambridge
$45.00 - Out of stock
Edited by James Voorhies
Contributions by Martin Beck, Keller Easterling, James Goggin, Alex Kitnick, James Voorhies
Martin Beck’s exhibition “Program” at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts comprised a sequence of interventions, installations, events, and displays that drew on the exhibition histories and academic pursuits of the famed 1963 Le Corbusier building at Harvard University. The sequence of explorative strategies—each node of which Beck considered an “episode”—lent particular attention to the founding aspirations of the Carpenter Center, which sought to cultivate its position as simultaneously an iconic modernist building, school, and exhibition venue. Beck performed and critically reflected on the kinds of activity an institution uses to build, organize, and engage with its audiences, and, in the case of the Carpenter Center, how it performed a kind of exhibition of education in both its pedagogical framework and its public outreach. From its physical infrastructure to its communication strategies, from its foundational curricular principles to visitor tallies, from building usage to welcome rituals, “Program,” which transpired over two years, examined institutional behaviors that collectively form institutional identity and integrate audiences into a cohesive program of public address.
This book, An Organized System of Instructions, is both a document of “Program” and an extension of the exhibition, which ran from October 24, 2014, to October 2016.
Copublished with Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Design by James Goggin, Practise
2017, English / Italian
Softcover, 296 pages, 24 x 35 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
This issue dedicated to documenta 14 addresses themes, artists, and projects spanning between Athens and Kassel. Including: Moyra Davey by Quinn Latimer; Vivian Suter & Elisabeth Sussman; Roee Rosen; “Preliminary notes for a Black manifesto” by Rasheed Araeen; Khvay Samnang “; The Globalised Museum?” by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung; articles by Kirsty Bell, Irena Haiduk, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Neni Panourgiá, Dieter Roelstraete, and more.
Mousse is a bimonthly magazine published in Italian and English. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format. Mousse keeps tabs on international trends in contemporary culture thanks to its city editors in major art capitals such as Berlin, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
Mousse (Mousse Publishing) is also publisher of catalogues, essays and curatorial projects, artist books and editions.
2017, English / Italian
Softcover, 296 pages, 24 x 35 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
Dean Daderko, Arthur Jafa and Sondra Perry on blackness, technology and Alien ontologies; Stefanie Hessler exchanges oceanic ideas with Heidi Ballet; Puppies Puppies talk to Tenzing Barshee; Hannah Black as seen by Rahel Aima; essays by Alexander Provan, Orit Gat and Jens Hoffmann; William Pope.L and Mia Locks; Sam Thorne with Marianna Simnett; Anna Gritz and Eric Baudelaire; Luke Willis Thompson; Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme; Raúl de Nieves, and more.
Mousse is a bimonthly magazine published in Italian and English. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format. Mousse keeps tabs on international trends in contemporary culture thanks to its city editors in major art capitals such as Berlin, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
Mousse (Mousse Publishing) is also publisher of catalogues, essays and curatorial projects, artist books and editions.
2017, English / Italian
Softcover, 440 pages, 18.5 x 26.5 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
10-year anniversary special issue: a selection of essays, interviews, conversations, and projects appeared in the first ten years of Mousse.
Featuring: Chantal Akerman, Cecilia Alemani, Jennifer Allen, Kai Althoff, Bruce Altshuler, Ed Atkins, Lutz Bacher, Darren Bader, Alex Bag, John Baldessari, Phyllida Barlow, Kirsty Bell, Andrew Berardini, Jonathan Berger, Michael Bracewell, Tom Burr, Maurizio Cattelan, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Stuart Comer, Lauren Cornell, Nicholas Cullinan, Roberto Cuoghi, Nick Currie, Massimo De Carlo, Gino De Dominicis, Gigiotto Del Vecchio, Simon Denny, Brian Dillon, Jimmie Durham, Dominic Eichler, Peter Eleey, Matias Faldbakken, Luigi Fassi, Elena Filipovic, Morgan Fisher, Isa Genzken, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, Liam Gillick, Massimiliano Gioni, Isabelle Graw, Ed Halter, Jens Hoffmann, Judith Hopf, William E. Jones, Omar Kholeif, Alexander Kluge, Jiří Kovanda, William Leavitt, Elisabeth Lebovici, Andrea Lissoni, Helen Marten, Chus Martínez, Nick Mauss, Lucy McKenzie, Fionn Meade, Simone Menegoi, John Menick, Ute Meta Bauer, Massimo Minini, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Trevor Paglen, Stefania Palumbo, Francesco Pedraglio, Otto Piene, Laura Poitras, Elizabeth Price, Seth Price, Laure Prouvost, Alessandro Rabottini, Carol Rama, Filipa Ramos, Jason Rhoades, Dieter Roelstraete, Esperanza Rosales, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Fender Schrade, Stuart Sherman, Frances Stark, Jamie Stevens, Hito Steyerl, Sturtevant, Sabrina Tarasoff, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Oscar Tuazon, Giorgio Verzotti, Jan Verwoert, Francesco Vezzoli, Adrián Villar Rojas, Peter Wächtler, Ian Wallace, Klaus Weber, Cathy Wilkes, Christopher Williams, Jordan Wolfson.
Mousse is a bimonthly magazine published in Italian and English. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format. Mousse keeps tabs on international trends in contemporary culture thanks to its city editors in major art capitals such as Berlin, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
Mousse (Mousse Publishing) is also publisher of catalogues, essays and curatorial projects, artist books and editions.
2016, English / German
Softcover, 540 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$70.00 - Out of stock
Having represented Beuys, Richter and Polke, German gallery owner , art publisher, art collector and curator René Block (born 1942) ranks among the central figures of the 1960s avant-garde. This publication collects writings by and interviews with Block, scanned from their original publications and organized chronologically, as well as an illustrated published history, artist portraits (taken by Block), performance ephemera, bibliography, and more. An enormous book that, via Block, encompasses the work of so many important movements and figures of 1960s - 1990s art.
Although primarily a German language publication, many of the original articles are in English. Regardless of language, the valuable historical listings translate.
1984, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 342 pages, 270 x 280 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
U.M.I. Research Press / Michigan
$150.00 - Out of stock
First, hardcover edition of "LOOKING CRITICALLY: 21 YEARS OF ARTFORUM MAGAZINE", the heavy 342 page volume anthology of the first 21 years of the world's most important modern and art journal. An incredibly valuable collection of art theory.
Edited by Amy Baker Sandback, designed by Roger Gorman and Mary Beath and published in 1984 by U.M.I. Research Press, this dense volume, bound in hardcover to the dimensions of a copy of ARTFORUM, begins with an Ed Kienholz review at the Ferus Gallery from ARTFORUM's June 1962 inaugural issue, and ends with Barbara Kruger reviewing the film "TRON" for the November 1982 issue. An amazing compendium of articles and reviews from the magazine's important first 21 years, featuring contributions by the likes of John Cage, Robert Morris, Kate Steinitz, Henry T. Hopkins, Don Factor, Robert Pincus-Witten, Dennis Adrian, John Coplans, Hilton Kramer, Harold Rosenberg, Henry Geldzahler, John Cage, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rosenblum, Dan Flavin, Boris Groys, Sam Wagstaff, Billy Kluver, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Rosenblum, Roger Shattuck, Ad Reinhardt, Mel Bochner, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Rose, Manny Farber, Michael Fried, Robert Morris, Philip Leider, Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Kruger, Jane Livingston, Lizzie Borden, Kenneth Baker, Laurie Anderson, Agnes Martin, Cindy Nemser, Sidney Tillim, Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Roberta Smith, Peter Plagens, Peter Schjeldahl, J. Hoberman, Hal Foster, Richard Flood, Carter Ratcliff, Stuart Morgan, Max Kozloff, Donald Kuspit, Dan Graham, Walter De Maria, Komar & Melamid, Edit De Ak, Lawrence Weiner, Kathy Acker, Robert Mapplethorpe, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas McEvilley, Louise Bourgeois, Ingrid Sischy, and too many more to list. Artists featured include: Josef Albers, Richard Tuttle, Jo Baer, Carl Andre, Ant Farm, Hans Arp, Max Bill, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Lee Bontecou, Constantin Brancusi, Bertholt Brecht, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Diane Arbus, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Lynda Beglis, Larry Bell, Terry Fox, James Byers, Rober Barry, Marcel Breuer, AA Bronson, Luis Buñel, Daniel Buren, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Anthony Caro, Marcel Broodthaers, John Chamberlain, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Merce Cunningham, Sonia Delauney, Walter de Maria, Bruce Connor, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Walker Evans, Dan Flavin, Marcel Duchamp, Albrecht Dürer, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Alberto Giacometti, Eva Hesse, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, John Cage, Nancy Graves, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Nancy Grossman, Walter Gropius, Hans Haacke, Hairy Who, David Hockney, Douglas Huebler, Jorg Immendorff, Donald Judd, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Keinholz, Paul Klee, Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Barbara Kruger, Jannis Kounellis, Markus Lüpertz, El Lissitzky, Rene Magritte, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Ree Morton, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzio, A. R. Penck, Irving Penn, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Larry Poons, Ken Price, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Roman Polanski, Jackson Pollock, Steve Reich, Gerrit Rietveld, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dorothae Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Lucas Samaras, Kurt Schwitters, Oscar Schlemmer, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Robert Venturi, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Saul Steinberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Taut, Jean Tinguely, Anne Truitt, Paul Wunderlich, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Alfred Hitchcock, and so many more.
Very uncommon hardcover edition, with dust jacket.
2016, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 145 x 210 mm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
Whitechapel / London
$52.00 - Out of stock
This anthology provides the first art-historical reassessment of information-based art in relation to data structures and exhibition curation. It examines such landmark exhibitions as “Information” at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1970, and the equally influential “Les Immatériaux,” initiated by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 1984. It reexamines work by artists of the 1960s to early 1980s, from Les Levine and N. E. Thing Co. to General Idea and Jenny Holzer, whose prescient grasp of information’s significance resonates today. It also reinscribes into the narrative of art history technologically critical artworks that for years have circulated within new media festivals rather than in galleries.
While information science draws distinctions between “information,” signals, and data, artists from the 1960s to the present have questioned the validity and value of such boundaries. Artists have investigated information’s materiality, in signs, records, and traces; its immateriality, in hidden codes, structures, and flows; its embodiment, in instructions, social interaction, and political agency; its overload, or uncontrollable excess, challenging utopian notions of networked society; its potential for misinformation and disinformation, subliminally altering our perceptions; and its post-digital unruliness, unsettling fixed notions of history and place.
Artists surveyed include
David Askevold, Iain Baxter, Guy Bleus, Heath Bunting, CAMP (Shaina Anand & Ashok Sukumaran), Ami Clarke, Richard Cochrane, Rod Dickinson, Hans Haacke, Graham Harwood, Jenny Holzer, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, Steve Lambert and the Yes Men, Oliver Laric, Les Levine, László Moholy-Nagy, Muntadas, Erhan Muratoglu, Raqs Media Collective, Erica Scourti, Stelarc, Thomson & Craighead, Angie Waller, Stephen Willats, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Elizabeth Vander Zaag
Writers include
James Bridle, Matthew Fuller, Francesca Gallo, Antony Hudek, Eduardo Kac, Friedrich Kittler, Arthur and Marielouise Kroker, Scott Lash, Alessandro Ludovico, Jean-François Lyotard, Charu Maithani, Suhail Malik, Armin Medosch, Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, Craig Saper, Jorinde Seijdel, Tom Sherman, Felix Stalder, McKenzie Wark, Benjamin Weil
About the Editor
Sarah Cook is a curator and researcher working at the intersection of art, digital and electronic media, and science. She is the coauthor (with Beryl Graham) of Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (MIT Press), and in 2004 cocurated the touring exhibition, “Database Imaginary.” She is Dundee Fellow at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.
2016, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 184 x 12 cm
Published by
California College of the Arts / Oakland
Koenig Books / London
The Banff Centre / Canada
$32.00 - Out of stock
How do we educate curators? Great Expectations: Prospects for the Future of Curatorial Education explores this question, focusing in particular on the challenges, opportunities, and subjects that motivate educators and students.
Great Expectations grew out of the symposium The Next 25 Years: Propositions for the Future of Curatorial Education, organized by the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, California College of the Arts, and held in San Francisco on March 14–15, 2015.
With contributions by: Mark Beasley, María del Carmen Carrión, Rebecca Coates, Maeve Connolly, Barbara Fischer, Reesa Greenberg, Kit Hammonds, Matthew Higgs, Sinéad Hogan, Anthony Huberman, Mami Kataoka, Salwa Mikdadi, Julian Myers-Szupinska, Estelle Nabeyrat, Nontobeko Ntombela, Kris Paulsen, Kristina Lee Podesva, Peta Rake, Grace Samboh, Kitty Scott, Ulay