World Food Books

Against Nature
By Lorraine Daston

2019, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by The MIT Press / Massachusetts

$28.00 - Out of stock

A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders.

Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the "is" of natural orders with the "ought" of moral orders.

In this short, pithy work of philosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition-specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws-and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions: horror, terror, and wonder.

Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets.

File under: Lorraine Daston The MIT Press / Massachusetts Ecology Theory / Essay Philosophy

Wolfgang Müller
Hausmusik — Stare aus Hjertøya singen Kurt Schwitters

2000, German
Softcover (staple-bound + CD), 32 pages, 25 x 17.5 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Galerie Katze 5 / Berlin

$70.00 - In stock -

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In the summer of 1997, Wolfgang Müller discovered the house on the small island of Hjertøya opposite the western Norwegian city of Molde, where Kurt Schwitters spent the summer months from 1932. It's full of peeling collages, inscriptions, and painted, crumbling plaster pillars. Up until a few years ago, the door wasn't locked and anyone could get in.

Lying in the grass in front of the house, Wolfgang Müller suddenly heard a starling making strange noises. Somehow, what the bird said seemed familiar to him: they were passages from the Ursonate that an unknown and distant ancestor had overheard from Schwitters many years ago. Starlings are known to be masters of imitation. Coincidentally, Wolfgang Müller had a recording device with him and had the "Ursonate" pressed onto the enclosed CD. It didn't take long for the rights holders to contact Schwitters' work. The case is still ongoing...

Wolfgang Müller is a German artist, author and musician, born 24 October 1957 in Wolfsburg, based in Berlin and Reykjavík, Iceland. Brother of Max Müller.

Out-of-print first only edition of 500 copies, with audio field recording CD. Profusely illustrated throughout with full colour photography by Müller of the interior details of Hjertøya opposite the western Norwegian city of Molde, where Kurt Schwitters' Hjertøya house.

File under: Wolfgang Müller Galerie Katze 5 / Berlin Objects / Ephemera / A/V Sound / Music Out-of-print / Rare Art Ecology Ecology / Earth Photography

THE TERRAFORMING
by Benjamin H. Bratton

2019, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Published by Strelka / Moscow

$35.00 $15.00 - In stock -

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The Terraforming is the comprehensive project to fundamentally transform Earth cities, technologies, and ecosystems to ensure that the planet will bе сараblе of supporting Earth-like life. Artificiality, astronomy, and automation form the basis of that alternative planetarity.

Benjamin H. Bratton’s work spans philosophy, art, design, and computer science. He is the Program Director at Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, and a Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a Professor at The European Graduate School, and a Visiting Professor at SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) and NYU Shanghai.

File under: Benjamin H. Bratton Strelka / Moscow Philosophy Theory / Essay Ecology SALE

Introduction to Comparative Planetology
by Lukáš Likavčan

2019, English
Softcover, 134 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Published by Strelka / Moscow

$24.00 $10.00 - In stock -

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Introduction to Comparative Planetology presents an intertwined analysis of visual cultures of imagining the Earth and geopolitics of climate emergency. It compares different "figures" of the planet – the Planetary, the Globe, the Terrestrial, Earth-without-us and Spectral Earth – in order to assess their geopolitical implications. These implications are then mapped on respective prospects of these figures in developing an infrastructural space for planetary coordination of our design interventions against runaway global heating, and ultimately against mass species extinction.

File under: Lukáš Likavčan Strelka / Moscow Theory / Essay Ecology SALE

Hannah Villiger
Roma and afterwards

2021, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 22.5 x 16 cm
Published by Mousse / Milan

$59.00 - Out of stock

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How do we draft a life, make of it a project, do our daily work? In what material and language does it arrive to us? And what if but it is done with one’s own body, and that body becomes this material but not the subject? Villiger’s autofictions––whether sculpture or image, human or vegetal body––prompt such queries. As Griselda Pollock writes brilliantly, ‘here are the collected works that form the project that we name Hannah Villiger. She is not the originating and knowing cause of the work, but the site of its daily compulsion.” –– Quinn Latimer

Hannah Villiger (1951–1997) lived and worked as a resident artist at Istituto Svizzero in Rome from 1974 to 1976. There she realized her early artistic ideas and developed the sculptural approach to photography that would shape all of her later work—namely large-format photographs of her own body arranged into blocks of several images, which show close-ups of sometimes fragmented and abstracted body parts. Villiger viewed herself as a sculptor rather than a photographer, and these Roman years were decisive in shaping her artistic practice. In her studio and in the garden of Villa Maraini, she first developed simple objects inspired by the materials of Arte Povera, then gradually shifted to photography, perceiving it as a more sculptural method.

Published on the occasion of Works/Sculptural at Istituto Svizzero in Rome, Villiger’s first major solo exhibition in Italy, Hannah Villiger: Roma and afterwards expands the horizon of the exhibition with unpublished materials from the artist’s estate as well as images from her working diaries that offer insight into her artistic practice in Rome.

Edited by Gioia Dal Molin.
Texts by Elizabeth Bronfen, Gioia Dal Molin, Quinn Latimer, Thomas Schmutz.

File under: Hannah Villiger Elizabeth Bronfen Gioia Dal Molin Quinn Latimer Thomas Schmutz Mousse / Milan Art Sculpture / Installation Arte Povera Ecology Photography

More-Than-Human

2021, English
Softcover, 500 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by Het Nieuwe Instituut / Rotterdam

$62.00 - Out of stock

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The More-than-Human reader brings together texts by writers across a wide array of disciplines that serve to reflect on the state of post-anthropocentric thinking today. Focusing on the ecologies and technologies of climate injustice and inequalities, as well as the destructive structures lurking within anthropocentrism, More-than-Human proposes complex entanglements, frictions, and reparative attention across species and beings. Thinking past the centrality of the human subject, the texts that compose this reader begin to imagine networks of ethics and responsibility emerging not from the ideologies of old, but from the messy and complex liveliness around us, and underfoot.

Rather than attempting to be a comprehensive compendium on the topic (which would be virtually impossible), More-than-Human provides a cross-section of the breadth and vitality of a literary, scientific, and conceptual milieu where multiple strands of work intersect even as they are frequently regarded as belonging to separate disciplinary discourses.

The book includes a collection of thirty-four texts published between 1990 and 2020 and is "dis-organized" into five sections: Assemblages and Proliferations, Queering More-than-Human, Towards More-than-Human Justice, Technologies, With and Through the More-than-Human. The act of reprinting these texts allows readers to explore how anthropological, legal, philosophical, poetic, and scientific inquiries often share common concerns, motivations, and challenges, despite the critical, ontological, and methodological differences in the fields from which they have emerged.

Edited by Andrés Jaque (architect and scholar, Office for Political Innovation / Columbia University, GSAPP), Marina Otero Verzier (director of research, Het Nieuwe Instituut), Lucia Pietroiusti (curator of General Ecology, Serpentine Galleries)

Contributors: Stacy Alaimo, Ramon Amaro, Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Octavia Butler, Georges Canguilhem, Marisol de la Cadena, NASA History Department, Silvia Federici, Scott F. Gilbert, Édouard Glissant, Jack Halberstam, Donna Haraway, Myra J. Hird, Kristina Lyons, Patricia MacCormack, John T. Maher, Michael Marder, Timothy Mitchell, Reza Negarastani, Jussi Parikka, Elizabeth Povinelli, Paul B. Preciado, María Puig de la Bellacasa, Filipa Ramos, Isabelle Stengers, Elly R. Truitt, Anna L. Tsing, Eduardo Vivieros de Castro, Jason Wallin, Kathryn Yusoff and Joanna Zylinska.

Co-published by Het Nieuwe Instituut, Office for Political Innovation, General Ecology Project at Serpentine Galleries and Manifesta Foundation

File under: Rosi Braidotti Reza Negarestani Filipa Ramos Timothy Mitchell Stacy Alaimo Ramon Amaro Karen Barad Octavia Butler Georges Canguilhem Marisol de la Cadena NASA History Department Silvia Federici Scott F. Gilbert Édouard Glissant Jack Halberstam Donna Haraway Myra J. Hird Kristina Lyons Patricia MacCormack John T. Maher Michael Marder Reza Negarastani Jussi Parikka Elizabeth Povinelli Paul B. Preciado María Puig de la Bellacasa Isabelle Stengers Elly R. Truitt Anna L. Tsing Eduardo Vivieros de Castro Jason Wallin Kathryn Yusoff Joanna Zylinska Andrés Jaque Marina Otero Verzier Het Nieuwe Instituut / Rotterdam Art Theory / Essay Ecology Fiction / Poetry Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction

Jochen Lempert
Paare / Pairs

2022, English / German
Softcover, 112 pages, 21 x 29 cm
Published by Roma / Amsterdam

$69.00 - Out of stock

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Jochen Lempert’s photographs begin with an encounter: his meeting with plants and animals, real or artificial representations in urban or rural settings, museum displays, scientific books, and more. The resulting images display a certain ease, a proximity that speaks to his comfort around his subjects. Rather than applying his scientific knowledge to what he photographs, he visually invites meaning through the act of seeing. ‘Pairs’ appears with an exhibition of Lempert’s work in Frankfurt am Main, curated by Yasmil Raymond and Deborah Müller. The juxtapositions in this series might be two pictures of the same subject, a pair of animals, or visually evocative matches.

File under: Jochen Lempert Roma / Amsterdam Photography Art Ecology

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

Parallel Minds : Discovering the Intelligence of Materials
by Laura Tripaldi

2022, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 19.8 x 12.9 cm
Published by Urbanomic / Cornwall

$35.00 - Out of stock

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Insights into the intelligence throughout the natural and technical environment, in the fabric of our devices and dwellings, in our clothes, and under our skin.

Is there a way to understand the materials that surround us not as passive objects, but as other intelligences interacting with our own?

In Parallel Minds, expert in materials science and nanotechnology Laura Tripaldi delivers not only detailed insights into the properties and emergent behaviours of matter as revealed by state-of-the-art chemistry, synthetic biology, and nanotech, but also a rich philosophical reflection that crosses the frontier between nature and culture, and where the most cutting-edge scientific syntheses resonate with ancient myth.

The result is a technomaterial bestiary full of unexpected encounters with ‘strange minds’—from cobwebs to kevlar and carbon fibre, from centaurs to amoebas to arachnids, from polycephalic slime to resonating plasmons, from viruses to golems. In leading us through this labyrinth of intelligent materials, Tripaldi picks up the thread of new materialisms and—in the historical weave between ‘women’s work’ and the ‘unnatural sciences’—contemporary feminisms.

Parallel Minds reveals the intelligence at large throughout the natural and technical environment, in the fabric of our devices and dwellings, in our clothes, and even under our skin. Full of lateral ideas and unexpected images, Tripaldi’s book imbues the study and synthesis of materials with a new urgency. For not only do the materials that surround us participate actively in the construction of the world in which we live, but harnessing their ability to interact intelligently with their environment could be the key to the future of our species.

"Parallel Minds is a welcome guide to contemporary debates about material intelligence: calm and measured, it is also bold in its ambitions and unafraid to face the challenges posed by an increasingly—and often disconcertingly—smart and lively world in which culture is inseparable from technology." —Sadie Plant, author of Zeros and Ones

"Tripaldi’s book is the most important philosophical surprise of recent years. It outlines a research programme in which philosophy and chemistry, the science of living beings and morality will have to work together in order to overcome all the dualisms that have marked modernity. Radical and erudite, very readable, and revolutionary, Tripaldi’s book is sure to become a great contemporary classic." —Emmanuele Coccia, author of Metamorphoses

File under: Laura Tripaldi Urbanomic / Cornwall Theory / Essay Feminism Ecology

Let The River Flow Let The River Flow - An Eco-Indigenous Uprising And Its Legacies In Art And Politics
Edited by Katya García-Antón, Harald Gaski and Gunvor Guttorm

2020, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 23.5 x 16.5 cm
Published by Valiz / Amsterdam

$52.00 - In stock -

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‘Let the River Flow’ takes the eco-indigenous action against the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the Altaelva river in Northern Norway during the late 1970s and early ’80s as its starting point. The series of massive protests led by the Sámi people grew into an unexpectedly broad movement of solidarity across society, in which artists played a pivotal role. This book reflects on events at the time and their correlations with artists’ eco-actions worldwide today. It addresses the political, cultural, and artistic aspects, including political organising, new influences of indigenous thinking on contemporary politics, and the centrality of artists within these activities.

Let the River Flow makes essential reading for any discussion regarding how governments, artists and citizens will act upon these questions within the frame of today’s worldwide call for decolonization and Indigenization.

New essays by 24 leading Indigenous artists, writers and scholars as well as allies, together with key existing texts, focus on the significant political and artistic reverberations of the Action past and present. These include current Indigenous discourses and protests across Sápmi, and internationally.

Let the River Flow addresses readers with an interest in decolonial, Indigenous, solidarity and environmental questions within artistic practice and beyond.

Contributors: Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste, Matti Aikio, Ivar Bjørklund, Mari Boine, Daniela Catrileo, Carolina Caycedo, Raven Chacon, Eva Maria Fjellheim, Katya García-Antón, Harald Gaski, Gunvor Guttorm, Aslak Holmberg, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Sofia Jannok, Rauna Kuokkanen, Wanda Nanibush, Beaska Niillas, Synnøve Persen, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Niillas A. Somby, Paulus Utsi, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Magne Ove Varsi
Design: Hans Gremmen

File under: Valiz / Amsterdam Art Theory / Essay Ecology

Conserving Active Matter
Edited by Peter N. Miller and Soon Kai Poh

2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 400 pages, 23 x 15.3 cm
Published by Bard Graduate Center Gallery / New York

$95.00 - Out of stock

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For as long as people have made things and kept things, they have cared for them and repaired them. The field of conservation developed in Europe and the United States and then spread around the world. Today’s conservator uses a variety of tools and categories developed over the last 150 years to do this work. But in the next decades, new kinds of materials and a new scale of change will pose unprecedented challenges. Thinking through the lens of “active matter,” as understood by philosophers, historians, materials scientists, conservators, and those who work on Indigenous artifacts, this project raises questions and establishes new lines of inquiry for the future rethinking of conservation and the human sciences of the object.

Conserving Active Matter draws together the main lines and interim conclusions of a five-year research project embedded in a ten-year effort to reimagine the relationship between conservation knowledge and the humanistic study of the material world—Cultures of Conservation. The effort to conserve things is part of the human struggle with the pervasive activity of matter.

Peter N. Miller is dean and professor at Bard Graduate Center.
Soon Kai Poh is a conservator and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postgraduate Fellow at Bard Graduate Center.

File under: Peter N. Miller Soon Kai Poh Bard Graduate Center Gallery / New York Theory / Essay Art Curatorial Architecture / Interior Painting Ecology

Octavia's Brood : Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
Edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha

2015, English
Softcover, 298 pages, 14 x 20.3 cm
Published by AK Press / Edinburgh

$36.00 - Out of stock

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Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia’s Brood span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. The collection is rounded off with essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a preface by Sheree Renée Thomas.

PRAISE FOR OCTAVIA'S BROOD:

"Those concerned with justice and liberation must always persuade the mass of people that a better world is possible. Our job begins with speculative fictions that fire society's imagination and its desire for change. In adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha's visionary conception, and by its activist-artists' often stunning acts of creative inception, Octavia's Brood makes for great thinking and damn good reading. The rest will be up to us." —Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be: The Colorization of America

“Conventional exclamatory phrases don’t come close to capturing the essence of what we have here in Octavia’s Brood. One part sacred text, one part social movement manual, one part diary of our future selves telling us, ‘It’s going to be okay, keep working, keep loving.’ Our radical imaginations are under siege and this text is the rescue mission. It is the new cornerstone of every class I teach on inequality, justice, and social change....This is the text we’ve been waiting for.” —Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier

"Octavia [Butler] once told me that two things worried her about the future of humanity: The tendency to think hierarchically, and the tendency to place ourselves higher on the hierarchy than others. I think she would be humbled beyond words that the fine, thoughtful writers in this volume have honored her with their hearts and minds. And that in calling for us to consider that hierarchical structure, they are not walking in her shadow, nor standing on her shoulders, but marching at her side." —Steven Barnes, author of Lion’s Blood

“Never has one book so thoroughly realized the dream of its namesake. Octavia's Brood is the progeny of two lovers of Octavia Butler and their belief in her dream that science fiction is for everybody. In these pages we witness the power of sci-fi to map our visions of worlds we want, or don't, through the imaginations of some of our favorite activists and artists. We hope this is the first of many generations of Octavia's Brood, midwifed to life by such attentive editors. Butler could not wish for better evidence of her touch changing our literary and living landscapes. Play with these children, read these works, and find the children in you waiting to take root under the stars!” —Moya Bailey and Ayana Jamieson, Octavia E. Butler Legacy

“In this provocative collection of fiction, Walida Imarisha and adrienne maree brown provide boundless space for their writers—changemakers, teachers, organizers and leaders—to untether from this realm their struggles for justice.... Like Butler's fiction, this collection is cartography, a map to freedom.” —dream hampton, filmmaker and Visiting Artist at Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts

Walidah Imarisha is a writer, organizer, educator, and spoken word artist. She is the author of the poetry collectionScars/Stars and facilitates writing workshops at schools, community centers, youth detention facilities, and women's prisons.

adrienne maree brown is a 2013 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow writing science fiction in Detroit, Michigan. She received a 2013 Detroit Knight Arts Challenge Award to run a series of Octavia Butler–based writing workshops.

File under: adrienne maree brown Walidah Imarisha Tananarive Due Mumia Abu-Jamal Sheree Renée Thomas Bao Phi David F. Walker Alexis Pauline Gumbs Morrigan Phillips Tunde Olaniran Dawolu Jabari Anderson Tara Betts Vagabond Jelani Wilson Kalamu ya Salaam LeVar Burton Terry Bisson Dani McClain Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Autumn Brown Alixa Garcia Mia Mingus AK Press / Edinburgh Fiction / Poetry Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Feminism Ecology Theory / Essay

Nicholas Mangan
Termite Economies

2021, English
Softcover, 154 pages, 24.5 x 17.5 cm
Published by Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite / Berlin

$74.00 - Out of stock

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This publication assembles three phases of Termite Economies, a major series of artworks produced between 2018 and 2020 by the Australian artist Nicholas Mangan.

In Termite Economies (Phase 1) Mangan researched an anecdote that termite abilities might one day lead humans to gold deposits. Phase 2 explored termite eusociality, pheromonal communication, building behavior, biomimicry, superorganism and swarm intelligence. Phase 3 deployed termite collectivism as a speculative model for rerouting human neural pathways. Within each phase, Mangan developed specific methods to explore these phenomena formally, spatially, and through moving images.

Termite Economies grappled with the potentiality of collective social behavior and complexities of systematic exploitation of non-human intelligence.

The book presents each phase in the order of the exhibition series. It includes process and research photographs, diagrams, installation and detailed imagery. It includes an essay by Artist Mariana Silva, a fictional text by writer ST.Lore, a conversation between Mangan and cultural theorist Ana Teixeira Pinto, and a republished essay by Dr. Guy Theraulaz Research Director Member of Team CAB: Collective Animal Behavior Center for Research on Animal Cognition, CNRS.

Alert to both history and science, Nicholas Mangan (born 1979, Geelong, Victoria, lives and works in Melbourne) is a multi-disciplinary artist known for interrogating narratives embedded in a diverse range of objects. With a keen interest in the processes of forming meaning from objects, culture and natural phenomena, Mangan creates unnerving drawings, montages, sculptures and installations. His work addresses a wide range of themes, including the ongoing impacts of colonialism, humanity's fraught relationship with the natural environment, contemporary consumptive cultures and the complex dynamics of the global political economy.

Mangan completed a two year studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, in 2002. He has been awarded numerous international residencies, including Recollets Artist Residency, Paris, 2011 and Australia Council's New York Green Street Residency, 2006. In 2007 he was a recipient of the Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, resulting in post graduate studies at Universität der Künste in Berlin, Germany.

Edited by Nicholas Mangan and Žiga Testen.
Texts by Nicholas Mangan, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Guy Theraulaz, Mariana Silva.

Graphic design: Žiga Testen.

File under: Žiga Testen Nicholas Mangan Nicholas Mangan Ana Teixeira Pinto Guy Theraulaz Mariana Silva Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite / Berlin Art Theory / Essay Sculpture / Installation Ecology Ecology / Earth Film / Video

Peter Cripps
Projects for Two Museums

1993, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 25 x 17.5 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by University of South Australia Art Museum / Adelaide The Museum of Economic Botany / Adelaide

$55.00 - Out of stock

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Wonderful catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Peter Cripps: Projects for Two Museums, held at the University of South Australia Art Museum and the Museum of Economic Botany, Adelaide Botanic Garden, September 5—October 2, 1993. Illustrated in colour with extensive catalogue texts written by curator John Barrett-Lennard and author Carolyn Barnes, with an introduction by Erica Green, Art Museum director. An innovative project across two wholly different museum spaces—one, full already of objects and the apparatus of display, the other a formal exhibition space and empty—this catalogue looks in-depth at Cripps' rigorous conceptual practice whilst presenting a different voice on the nature of Australian museums and their role.

Edition of 500.

Peter Cripps (b. 1948, Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works Melbourne) is an artist, curator and educator and has been a key figure in Australian art since the 1970s. Emerging at a time when minimal and conceptual art were at the forefront of contemporary practice, Cripps’ work has been concerned with the formal, conceptual, phenomenological and ideological relationships between objects and the spaces in which they are presented.

Fine, As New copy with light tanning.

File under: Peter Cripps Peter Cripps John Barrett-Lennard Carolyn Barnes University of South Australia Art Museum / Adelaide The Museum of Economic Botany / Adelaide Art Conceptual Art Australian Art Sculpture / Installation Out-of-print / Rare Ecology

Memo Review 05 : 2021

2022, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 25 x 17.5 cm
Published by Monash Art Projects / Victoria

$25.00 - In stock -

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What is it like to make art the way the world is today? What is it to write about art? Every review you read in 2022 will attempt to answer these questions, whether it knows it or not. You can see it if you look hard enough. And in thinking about this we perhaps hold a candle to the darkness, or perhaps these questions are the light that allows us to see the darkness around us. Thank you for reading Memo lit by the world’s candlelight.

These are the reviews from 2021, the fourth year of Melbourne's Memo Review. Memo Review is Melbourne's only weekly art criticism, publishing reviews of "a broad variety of art exhibitions at public art museums, commercial galleries and smaller artist-run spaces in Melbourne, offering new critical perspectives from an up-and-coming younger generation of Australian art scholars, writers and artists."

Featuring contributions by A. D. S. Donaldson, Adelle Mills, Amelia Winata, Amy May Stuart, Anna Parlane, Audrey Schmidt, Babs Rapeport, Cameron Hurst, Chelsea Hopper, David Wlazlo, Diego Ramírez, Francis Plagne, Giles Fielke, Hilary Thurlow, Jarrod Zlatic, Léuli Eshrāghi, Luke Smythe, Matt Marasco, Michelle Guo, Miriam La Rosa, Paris Lettau, Philip Brophy, Rex Butler Sofia Skobeleva, Tara Heffernan, Tara Mcdowell, Timmah Ball, Ursula Cornelia De Leeuw, Victoria Perin, and Vincent Le.

File under: A.D.S. Donaldson Diego Ramírez Adelle Mills Amelia Winata Amy May Stuart Anna Parlane Audrey Schmidt Babs Rapeport Cameron Hurst Chelsea Hopper David Wlazlo Francis Plagne Giles Fielke Hilary Thurlow Jarrod Zlatic Luke Smythe Matt Marasco Michelle Guo Miriam La Rosa Paris Lettau Philip Brophy Rex Butler Sofia Skobeleva Tara Heffernan Tara Mcdowell Timmah Ball Ursula Cornelia De Leeuw Victoria Perin Vincent Le Léuli Eshrāghi Monash Art Projects / Victoria Art Sculpture / Installation Film / Video Painting Group Shows / Collections Theory / Essay Periodicals Australian Art Australian Photography Conceptual Art Curatorial Ecology Performance / Dance / Theater Photography

Living on The Earth

1971, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 27.7 x 21.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Vintage Books / New York

$85.00 - Out of stock

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"Celebrations, storm warnings, formulas, recipes, rumors, and country dances harvested by Alicia Bay Laurel."

Originally published in Berkeley, California in 1970, more than fifty years ago, the seminal "Living on the Earth" is for people who would rather chop wood for fire than work behind a desk to pay the electric company. It's for people who want the best recipe for lavender soap or huckleberry jam. It's for people who want to make their own clothing, play guitar, learn woodcarving, gardening, canning and drying food, and natural first aid methods. The book has no chapters; no rigid structures or rules. It grew naturally out of the lessons the author has learned, and which she shares. Living on the Earth is a beautiful book to see and read, as well as a spiritually uplifting work whose simplicity radiates warmth and promotes serenity and goodwill to all those who encounter it. The large format paperback is entirely written in Alicia's cursive script and beautifully illustrated on every page with her line drawings. Alicia's innovative illustration and book design styles have been enthusiastically emulated in dozens of books and greeting cards since it's original publishing, and in 2012 "Living on the Earth" was chosen as one of the 101 most influential American cookbooks of the 20th century. Alicia was just 20 years old when the book was first published, and it would go on to become a New York Times "best-seller" and one of the most influential manuals for natural, conscious living ever created.

Very Good copy, beautifully preserved with only a few nicks to the cover edges, very light tanning. Very rarely is the first popular edition found in such lovely condition.

File under: Alicia Bay Laurel Alicia Bay Laurel Vintage Books / New York Ecology Health Out-of-print / Rare Counterculture Ecology / Earth

On the Necessity of Gardening : An ABC of Art, Botany and Cultivation

2021, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 25 x 32 cm
Published by Valiz / Amsterdam

$70.00 - Out of stock

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Not your everyday gardening book! Through the metaphor of gardening, this book offers insights on the convergence of nature and culture, ecology, climate, and care for the environment, with themes such as Arcadia, Control, Ecofascism, Guerilla Gardening, Queer Ecology.

For centuries, the garden has been regarded as a mirror of society, a microcosm, in which the broader relationships between nature and culture are played out on small scale. From this long cultural tradition also raises a call for a new awareness of our relationship with the Earth.

On the Necessity of Gardening tells the story of the garden as a rich source of inspiration. Over the centuries, artists, writers, poets and thinkers have each described, depicted and designed the garden in different ways. In medieval art, the garden was a reflection of paradise, a place of harmony and fertility, shielded from worldly problems.

However, the garden is not just a neutral place and intended solely for personal pastime, it is a place where the world manifests itself and where the relationship between culture and nature is expressed. In the eighteenth century this image shifted: the garden became a symbol of worldly power and politics. The Anthropocene, the era in which man completely dominates nature with disastrous consequences, is forcing us to radically rethink the role we have given nature in recent decades.

There is a renewed interest in the theme of the garden among contemporary makers. It is not a romantic desire that drives them, but rather a call for a new awareness of our relationship with the earth, by connecting different fields of activity in landscape, art and culture. Through many different essays and an extensive abecedarium, On the Necessity of Gardening reflects on the garden as a metaphor for society, through concepts such as botanomania and capitalocene, from guerrilla gardening to queer ecology and zen garden.

File under: Laurie Cluitmans Valiz / Amsterdam Ecology Health Art Occult / Esoterica Ecology / Earth Theory / Essay

Paolo Soleri
Arcologie: la ville à l'image de l'homme

1980, French
Softcover, 122 pages, 23 x 39 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Editions Parenthèses / Marseille

$150.00 - Out of stock

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First French edition of this visionary book by Italian architect Paolo Soleri (1919 Turin — 2013 Scottsdale, Arizona), published by Editions Parenthèses, Marseille, in 1980. This stunning over-sized landscape book reads like a manifesto/blue-print/scrap-book of Soleri's Arcology (Architecture+Ecology), through his own words (here in French) and 120 pages of his intricate and fantastic architectural drawings.

"I am advocating a Lean Hypothesis about reality and a Lean Alternative to our materialistic culture. With the lean urban development I put tangibility to my conjecturing. Years ago I declared that Leanness is frugality fraught with sophistication. The gazelle is lean, i.e. frugality wrapped in grace. Can anyone imagine a frozen tundra or a scorching Sahara colonized by millions of hermitages, single homes? A nightmarish American Dream incapable of supporting any kind of dignified life, let alone the evolution of a civilization. Is the exurban (ever-expanding suburban) metastasis a bejeweled dream? Of food and shelter, the two indispensable needs of life, shelter is the direct responsibility of planners; architects, urban planners, builders, developers, speculators, politicians, students ... time to wake up!" — Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti, Arizona

Through his work as architect, urban designer, artist, craftsman and philosopher, Paolo Soleri has been exploring the countless possibilities of human aspiration. The envisioned future taking shape in his mind has been expressed in various media. One outstanding endeavor is Arcosanti, an urban laboratory, constructed in the high Arizona desert. It attempts to demonstrate an alternative human habitat much needed in this increasingly perplexing world. This project also exemplifies his steadfast devotion to creating an experiential space to "prototype" an environment in harmony with man. Through his articulated philosophy "Arcology (Architecture+Ecology)", Soleri formulates a path that may aid us on our evolutionary journey toward a state of aesthetic, equity and compassion. The half century work of his broad-ranging and coherent intellect (so scarce in the age of specialization) has influenced many in the field in search of a new paradigm for our built environment. — Tomiaki Tamura

Very Good copy with light bump to top-right cover corner, light tanning and ex-shop sticker mark.

File under: Paolo Soleri Paolo Soleri Editions Parenthèses / Marseille Architecture / Interior Out-of-print / Rare Ecology Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Ceramics / Glass

MAGIC
Edited by Jamie Sutcliffe

2021, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 14.5 x 21 cm
Published by Whitechapel / London The MIT Press / Massachusetts

$40.00 - Out of stock

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From the hexing of presidents to a renewed interest in herbalism and atavistic forms of self-care, magic has furnished the contemporary imagination with mysterious and complex bodies of arcane thought and practice. This volume brings together writings by artists, magicians, historians, and theorists that illuminate the vibrant correspondences animating contemporary art's varied encounters with magical culture, inspiring a reconsideration of the relationship between the symbolic and the pragmatic.

Dispensing with simple narratives of re-enchantment, Magic illustrates the intricate ways in which we have to some extent always been captivated by the allure of the numinous. It demonstrates how magical culture's tendencies toward secrecy, occlusion, and encryption might provide contemporary artists with strategies of remedial communality, a renewed faith in the invocational power of personal testimony, and a poetics of practice that could boldly question our political circumstances, from the crisis of climate collapse to the strictures of socially sanctioned techniques of medical and psychiatric care.

Tracing its various emergences through the shadows of modernity, the circuitries of ritual media, and declarations of psychic self-defence, Magic deciphers the evolution of a 'magical-critical' thinking that productively complicates, contradicts and expands the boundaries of our increasingly weird present.

Artists surveyed:
Holly Pester, Katrina Palmer, Ithell Colquhoun, Anna Zett, Monica Sjoeo, Sofia Al-Maria, Jack Burnham, Jeremy Millar, Susan Hiller, Mike Kelley, Morehshin Allahyari, Center for Tactical Magic, David Steans, Porpentine, Travis Jeppesen, Linda Stupart, Caspar Heinemann, Elizabeth Mputu, Faith Wilding, David Hammons, Ana Mendieta, Henri Michaux, Kenneth Anger, Benedict Drew, Mark Leckey, Robert Morris, Jenna Sutela, Haroon Mirza, Zadie Xa, Saya Woolfalk, Ian Cheng, Tabita Rezaire, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, Elijah Burgher, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sahej Rahal

Writers:
Charles Fort, Victoria Nelson, Gary Lachman, Yvonne P. Chireau, Randall Styers, Isabelle Stengers, Alan Moore, Simon O' Sullivan, Lucy Lippard, Louis Chude Sokei, Patricia MacCormack, Mark Pilkington, AE, Annie Besant & C.W. Leadbeater, Michel Leiris, Aime Cesaire, Austin Osman Spare, Erik Davis, Mark Dery, Elaine Graham, Jeffrey Sconce, Giulia Smith, Esther Leslie, Alice Bucknell, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Hannah Gregory, Kristen Gallerneaux, Mahan Moalemi, Jamie Sutcliffe, Gregory Sholette, Aaron Gach, Eugene Thacker, Diane Di Prima, Allan Doyle, Aria Dean, Emily LaBarge, Lou Cornum, Joy KMT, Scott Wark, McKenzie Wark, Phil Hine, Jackie Wang, Sean Bonney

File under: Pier Paolo Pasolini Holly Pester Katrina Palmer Ithell Colquhoun Anna Zett Monica Sjoeo Sofia Al-Maria Jack Burnham Jeremy Millar Susan Hiller Mike Kelley Morehshin Allahyari Center for Tactical Magic David Steans Porpentine Travis Jeppesen Linda Stupart Caspar Heinemann Elizabeth Mputu Faith Wilding David Hammons Ana Mendieta Henri Michaux Kenneth Anger Benedict Drew Mark Leckey Robert Morris Jenna Sutela Haroon Mirza Zadie Xa Saya Woolfalk Ian Cheng Tabita Rezaire Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth Elijah Burgher Sahej Rahal Charles Fort Victoria Nelson Gary Lachman Yvonne P. Chireau Randall Styers Isabelle Stengers Alan Moore Simon O' Sullivan Lucy Lippard Louis Chude Sokei Patricia MacCormack Mark Pilkington AE Annie Besant & C.W. Leadbeater Michel Leiris Aime Cesaire Austin Osman Spare Erik Davis Mark Dery Elaine Graham Jeffrey Sconce Giulia Smith Esther Leslie Alice Bucknell Gary Zhexi Zhang Hannah Gregory Kristen Gallerneaux Mahan Moalemi Jamie Sutcliffe Gregory Sholette Aaron Gach Eugene Thacker Diane Di Prima Allan Doyle Aria Dean Emily LaBarge Lou Cornum Joy KMT Scott Wark McKenzie Wark Phil Hine Jackie Wang Sean Bonney Whitechapel / London The MIT Press / Massachusetts Art Painting Surrealism Occult / Esoterica Ecology / Earth Ecology Sculpture / Installation Sound / Music Film / Video Performance / Dance / Theater Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Drawing Feminism Theory / Essay

Martin Beck
The Aspen Complex

2012, English
Hardcover with dust jacket, 192 pages, 17.4 x 23.2 cm
Published by Sternberg Press / Berlin

$74.00 $25.00 - In stock -

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Martin Beck’s exhibition “Panel 2—‘Nothing better than a touch of ecology and catastrophe to unite the social classes…’” draws on the events of the 1970 International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) and the development of the Aspen Movie Map to form a visual environment that reflects the interrelations between art, architecture, design, ecology, and social movements.

The 1970 IDCA marked a turning point in design thinking. The conference’s theme, “Environment by Design,” brought together venerable figures of modern design in the United States, including Eliot Noyes, George Nelson, and Saul Bass; environmental collectives and activist architects from Berkeley such as the Environmental Action Group, Sim Van der Ryn, and Ant Farm; as well as a group of French designers and sociologists, among them Jean Aubert, Lionel Schein, and Jean Baudrillard. The conference quickly escalated into a site of unresolvable conflict about communication formats and the potential role of design for environmental practices in a rapidly changing society.

The ensuing decade heralded the development of an interactive navigation system, which used the same Colorado resort town as its test site. The Aspen Movie Map—initiated by MIT’s Architecture Machine Group (the predecessor to the Media Lab) and partially funded by the US Department of Defense—is an image-based surrogate travel system using footage filmed in Aspen. Meant to prepare users for quick orientation in places they have never been to, the Aspen Movie Map was a seminal prototype for today’s military and consumer navigation systems.

The Aspen Complexdocuments two versions of Beck’s exhibition—at London’s Gasworks and Columbia University’s Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery—and brings together yet unpublished archival material and new research on the 1970 IDCA and the Aspen Movie Map.

With essays by Sabeth Buchmann, Felicity D. Scott, and Alice Twemlow

File under: Martin Beck Alice Twemlow Felicity D. Scott Sabeth Buchmann Sternberg Press / Berlin Art Graphic Design / Typography Ecology Theory / Essay SALE Architecture / Interior Film / Video

The Artist in The Service of Science

1974, English / German / French
Hardcover, 120 pages, 30.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by The Graphis Press / Zürich

$50.00 - Out of stock

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Wonderful hardcover book edition of this Graphis special dedicated entirely to the visual language of science. Expanding into book form from the special issue #165 (1973/74), edited by Walter Herdeg, this volume is profusely illustrated with colour and b/w artworks and graphics from numerous designers and illustrators working in the field, with a cover painting by Hans Erni. Articles are featured: Editor’s Foreword, written by Walter Herdeg; Introduction, by Jerome Snyder; Pre-Twentieth-Century Scientific Art, by Adolf Portmann; Scientific Illustration in the Twentieth Century, by Paul Peck; Scientific Illustration for the General Public, by Edward A. Hamilton; Walter Linsenmaier, by Walter Robert Corti, Winterthur; and Visual Presentations in the Promotion of Pharmaceutical Companies, by Werner Reber.

"Anyone who is familiar with the various domains of the applied graphic arts will know that the present-day scientific illustrator is something of a wallflower compared with his historical predecessors and his more widely acclaimed colleagues from the fields of advertising, editorial art and book illustration. The function of scientific drawing is admittedly an essentially practical one : to inform, to explain and to instruct. But that does not prevent it from measuring up to aesthetic criteria. In fact, this area can show a wealth of artistically outstanding work which is at the same time a valuable contribution to the records of science and which certainly deserves to be brought to the notice of a wider public. The following survey sets out to show that within the confines of scientific illustration there is plenty of latitude for the exercise of the artist's talents. It is my hope that it will stimulate gifted illustrators to try their hands in this field and will encourage young artists to choose scientific illustration as a career. It would also be gratifying if as a result of this publication more opportunities were offered to qualified artists and designers to place their skills at the disposal of science. It is not by any oversight that the most famous of all the artists of science, Leonardo da Vinci, is not represented in our first section. His work is so well known to most of our readers that I found it wiser to save a little space for artists who have had less exposure. If some contemporary scientific illustrators of repute are likewise absent from this survey, this does not imply any lack of appreciation for their work but is due merely to limitations of space which are unavoidable in a publication such as this." — from introduction.

Good ex-libris copy with some wear and chipping to laminate covers and a few associated library markings not affecting the content.

File under: Hans Erni The Graphis Press / Zürich Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Ecology Health Out-of-print / Rare Graphic Design / Typography

AGNES DENES
ABSOLUTES AND INTERMEDIATES

2020, English
Hardcover (clothbound in slipcase), 384 pages, 23 x 30 cm
Published by The Shed / US

$130.00 - Out of stock

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"Agnes Denes, the queen of land art, made one of New York's greatest public art projects ever in 1982. Now, the world might be catching up with her." — Karrie Jacobs, New York Times

Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates accompanies the largest exhibition of the artist's work in New York to date, held at The Shed in fall 2019 as part of the arts space's opening season. Presenting more than 130 works, this comprehensive publication, presented in an embossed slipcase, spans the 50-year career of the path-breaking artist dubbed "the queen of land art" by the New York Times, famed for her iconic Wheatfield—A Confrontation (1982), for which she planted a two-acre wheatfield in Lower Manhattan on the Battery Park Landfill, in the shadow of the then recently erected Twin Towers.

A major undertaking, this superb hardcover catalog includes a comprehensive text by the exhibition's curator, Emma Enderby, an interview with Denes by Hans Ulrich Obrist, essays by prominent scholars and curators including Caroline A. Jones, Lucy R. Lippard and Timothy Morton that examine Denes' multifaceted practice in new ways, writings by the artist and reflections by curators who have worked with Denes over the course of her career. New works by Denes commissioned by The Shed for the exhibition are presented in a special insert.

Budapest-born, New York-based artist Agnes Denes (born 1931) rose to international attention in the 1960s and 1970s as a leading figure in conceptual, environmental and ecological art. A pioneer of several art genres, she has created work in many mediums, utilizing various disciplines--such as science, philosophy, linguistics, ecology and psychology—to analyze, document and ultimately aid humanity.

"Denes's ecological artworks, which she commenced in the late 1960s, are just as prescient as this early diagnosis of climate catastrophe. Over the ensuing decades, she has been called a visionary. But such encomiums risk eliding the depth and complexity they celebrate. Denes has never been just one thing." — Lauren O'Neill-Butler, Artforum

File under: Agnes Denes Hans Ulrich Obrist Caroline A. Jones Lucy R. Lippard Timothy Morton Emma Enderby Giampaolo Bianconi Lynn Gamwell Renee Gladman Klaus Ottmann Agnes Denes The Shed / US Sculpture / Installation Conceptual Art Art Theory / Essay Drawing Ecology Ecology / Earth

Design with Nature
by Ian L. McHarg

1971, English
Softcover, 198 pages, 20.5 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by Natural History Press / New York

$40.00 - Out of stock

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"... may well be one of the most important books of the century, a turning point in man's view and treatment of his environment." — Wolf Von Eckardt

1971 popular paperback edition of the prescient and pioneering Design with Nature by Ian L. McHarg, a publication that signalled the high-water mark of the ecological movement in the United States.

"McHarg, an outspoken critic of the traditional notion that urban development must be imposed upon the landscape, regardless of the ecological consequences, in Design with Nature, proves that necessary man-made structures can be accommodated within the existing natural order. Here are the foundations for a civilization that will replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating and disappearing before our eyes. In presenting us with a vision of organic exuberance and human delight, which ecology and ecological design promise to open up for us, McHarg revives the hope for a better world."

No one, before or since McHarg, has done more to shape the culture of landscape architecture and nothing better exemplifies the scale and scope of his revolutionary impact than his 1969 book Design with Nature. This landmark study was published in 1969 amid a ferment of activism and environmental consciousness erupting throughout the US. Organizers and activists were building a movement to confront the ecological crises of the time—corporate pollution, rampant suburbanization, industrial agriculture—and McHarg’s book quickly pushed him to the center of the zeitgeist. Like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), Design with Nature helped instigate what’s become known as the environmental decade—a series of political victories that produced landmark legislation including the National Environmental Policy Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972), the Endangered Species Act (1973), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (better known as the Superfund program, 1980), as well as the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (1970).

With successive periods of devolutionary politics and the rise of neoliberalism that would undo many of the hard-won environmental victories of the 1970s through mass privatization and monetization of resources, these reversals in national policy and design ideology ultimately sank the world Design with Nature’s philosophy endeavored to build. Today the teachings of Design with Nature scream out with an urgency more relevant than ever before. Warnings have become alarm bells for drastic action.

Ian L. McHarg (1920 – 2001) was a Scottish landscape architect and writer on regional planning using natural systems. McHarg was one of the most influential persons in the environmental movement who brought environmental concerns into broad public awareness and ecological planning methods into the mainstream of landscape architecture, city planning and public policy. He was the founder of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. His 1969 book Design with Nature pioneered the concept of ecological planning. It continues to be one of the most widely celebrated books on landscape architecture and land-use planning. In this book, he set forth the basic concepts that were to develop later in geographic information systems.

Average to good copy. General cover wear and chipping/bump to bottom of spine.

File under: Ian McHarg Natural History Press / New York Ecology Ecology / Earth Health Anarchism Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare

Shelter

1973, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 27 x 38 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Shelter Publishing / California

$85.00 - Out of stock

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First printing of the great "Shelter", from 1973.

From the early days of the environmental movement that began in the 1970s, this book attempted to find "a responsive & sensitive balance between the still-usable skills & wisdom of the past & the sustainable products & inventions of the 20th century. About simple homes, natural materials, & human resourcefulness."

Shelter is many things — a visually dynamic, oversized compendium of organic architecture past and present; a how-to book that includes over 1,250 illustrations; and a Whole Earth Catalog-type sourcebook for living in harmony with the earth by using every conceivable material.

First published in 1973, Shelter remains a source of inspiration and invention. Including the nuts-and-bolts aspects of building, the book covers such topics as dwellings from Iron Age huts to Bedouin tents to Togo's tin-and-thatch houses; nomadic shelters from tipis to "housecars"; and domes, dome cities, sod iglus, and even treehouses.

By the same guys who brought you the earlier "Domebook" 1 and 2, this is a wonderful design resource, illustrated with black-and-white & color photographs, sketches, & plans throughout.

The authors recount personal stories about alternative dwellings that illustrate sensible solutions to problems associated with using materials found in the environment — with fascinating, often surprising results.

"It's an inspiring celebration of indigenous, handmade, personal-statement building. Oughta be the first book a freshman architecture student sees." — J. Baldwin, Whole Earth Review

"It's time to educate the architects. To that extent this book on shakes and wattle and daub is the most revolutionary architecture book around..." — Architecture in Australia

Very Good with light wear. Rarely seen in first edition is such condition,

File under: Antfarm Buckminster Fuller Bob Easton Lloyd Kahn Shelter Publishing / California Architecture / Interior Graphic Design / Typography Out-of-print / Rare Ecology Ecology / Earth Counterculture