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:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
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
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or 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.
2022, English
Softcover (two-book set), 200 pages, 15 x 23 cm
Published by
Fireflies Press / Berlin—Melbourne
$75.00 - In stock -
Published on the centenary year of Pasolini’s birth, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Writing on Burning Paper is a dual edition that stages a dialogue between cinema today and Pasolini’s timeless films and words.
The two complementary volumes slide into one another, forming a unique set that evokes and celebrates Pasolini’s enduring influence. The smaller book features his epic autobiographical poem ‘Poet of the Ashes’, in a revised translation by esteemed poet Stephen Sartarelli; the larger book comprises original tributes by vital filmmakers from across the contemporary cinema landscape.
Twenty filmmakers shared personal reflections in the form of essays, poems, photographs, drawings and more: Catherine Breillat, Luise Donschen & Helena Wittmann, Jia Zhangke, Radu Jude, Payal Kapadia, Alexandre Koberidze, Dane Komljen, Mike Leigh, Mariano Llinás, Roberto Minervini, Valérie Massadian, Luc Moullet, Ben Rivers, Angela Schanelec, Ulrich Seidl, Basma al-Sharif, Deborah Stratman, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Gustavo Vinagre.
To coincide with the NYC launch of the book on November 4, Fireflies Press has curated Love Meetings: Pasolini & Contemporary Cinema, a program of screenings at Metrograph, running through November.
2023, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$40.00 - In stock -
Published following the eponymous exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern in 2020–2021. A cultural examination of the enigmatically iconic figure of the Dandy, both in history and as a figure for the future.
With Kai Althoff, Lutz Bacher, Kévin Blinderman / Pierre-Alexandre Mateos / Charles Teyssou, Marcel Broodthaers, Ursula Böckler, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Hanne Darboven, Stephan Dillemuth, Victoire Douniama, Lukas Duwenhögger, Cerith Wyn Evans, Sylvie Fleury, Andrea Fraser, Sophie Gogl, Gogo Graham, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, David Hammons, Birgit Jürgenssen, K Foundation, John Kelsey, Michael Krebber, Miriam Laura Leonardi, David Lieske, Mathieu Malouf, Ulrike Ottinger, Mathias Poledna, Raymond Roussel, Heji Shin, Reena Spaulings, Sturtevant, Bernadette Van-Huy, James McNeill Whistler, Virginia Woolf.
Designed by HIT.
2022, English
Hardcover, 448 pages, 21.5 x 25 cm
Published by
FAB Press / UK
$120.00 - Out of stock
In 2012, a book debuted that would go on to canonical status and usher in a new way of writing about film. Kier-La Janisse's HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN is an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films that examines hundreds of films through a daringly personal lens. In this pioneering work, anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and a consideration of female madness, both onscreen and off.
To mark its 10th anniversary, Kier-La Janisse and FAB Press have reteamed to produce an expanded edition the book, featuring new writing on 100 more films - many of which were inspired in part by the book itself - and hundreds of new images. This first pressing of the Expanded Edition has been issued as a large format hardcover.
Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - 'the eccentric' - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play.
This sharply-designed book, including a 48-page full-colour section, is packed with 680 rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork throughout, that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more!
1967, German
Offset poster (double-sided), 83.5 x 59 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$600.00 - Out of stock
Where it all started.... H.R. Giger's first ever poster! Rare vintage original and never reprinted.
Published in a limited edition to accompany the The-Telllife-No-mads-presents: Poëtenz happening/exhibition, organized by young Giger's friend and collaborator, Swiss writer, artist and publisher Urban Gwerders. Gwerders was the publisher of Swiss underground counterculture magazine Hotcha (1968—1971), to which Giger was also a contributor. The poster folds-down into a catalogue/program for the event with original cover artwork by Giger and collage contents, poems, photographs (including pics of Giger, Li, et al) and Poëtenz information, all designed in the montage style of Hotcha, and the "poster" side entirely reproducing Giger's incredible early "Astreunuchen" masterpiece, pre-dating ALIEN by over ten years.
A stunning collector's item and piece of Giger history, ready to frame.
Dimensions : 83.5 x 59 cm
Very Good condition, never mounted/pinned, well preserved in folded state as issued.
2017, English
Softcover, 124 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Dancing Foxes Press / Brooklyn
Queens Museum / Queens
$50.00 $30.00 - In stock -
Integrating video, photography, sculpture, writing, and performance into one expansive body of work, Los Angeles–based artist Patty Chang examines the complex way stories develop through geography, history, cultural mythology, fiction, and personal experience. Accompanying her project A Wandering Lake that was in part inspired by turn-of-the-century colonial explorer Sven Hedin’s book Wandering Lake (1938)—which tells the story of a migrating body of water in the Chinese desert—this artist’s book, combining Chang’s writings and travel photographs with historic and theoretical text excerpts as well as photographs of her sculptures and watercolors, is a personal, associative, narrative meditation on mourning, caregiving, and landscape.
Copublished with the Queens Museum in 2017
Edited by Karen Kelly and Barbara Schroeder
With an afterword by Hitomi Iwasaki
Design by Leftloft
This is a guide to mourning; but Chang widens the scope to include political conflict and environmental degradation, and argues that, despite the losses we’ve incurred, we are still collaborators in the making of our worlds.”—Erin Schwartz, The New York Review of Books
2022, English
Softcover, 309 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Woodville Press / New York
$52.00 - Out of stock
“Essential”—Indiewire
“What’s most remarkable about this volume is its transparency. Throughout, in new, rewritten and republished pieces, you can see Godfrey’s questing and questioning mind latching onto a subject for which he has a deep affinity, learning as much as he can about it—by pondering the works themselves, talking to their creators, and absorbing the culture that birthed the scene—and then figuring out a way to transmit his enthusiasm to the widest American audience possible.”—Matt Zoller Seitz
“I admire Godfrey for his strong support of Iranian cinema and his efforts to introduce Iranian films to American audiences. Although movies are shown by distributors and exhibitors, it’s really the critics who bring the audience. Godfrey’s reviews also help us in Iran by providing critical support against those who attempt to suppress us and keep us from working.”—Jafar Panahi, filmmaker
“So impressed by his first encounters with contemporary Iranian films, Godfrey Cheshire decided to do a deep dive into Iranian literature, art and society, not to mention film history. The happy result is this book, displaying an incredible range of knowledge about what is the most remarkable film movement of the past decades, while offering a deep exploration of both this cinema’s deep roots as well as its celebrated achievements.”—Richard Pena, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Columbia University
“Godfrey Cheshire has been the preeminent American critic on Iranian cinema for decades. With rare access to master filmmakers, Cheshire weaves together rich, personal stories, with history, culture and his brilliant insights. His passion is infectious. This is his definitive book.”—Ramin Bahrani, Oscar-nominated filmmaker
“There is no better way to discover Iranian cinema than to immerse yourself in Godfrey Cheshire’s beautifully written 30 year personal cinematic journey. This is an important, informative and compelling book at this global political moment. It is vital to know these filmmakers of purpose through the perception of an outsider with whom we can identify and to lose ourselves to the wonder, humanity, and artistry of a culture and cinema that demands our attention now more than ever.”—Michael Barker, Sony Pictures Classics
2022, English
Softcover, 188 pages, 19 x 12.5 cm
Published by
Woodville Press / New York
$40.00 - Out of stock
“In many respects the best book yet published on the director.”—Cineaste
“For Kiarostami’s own overview of his early career, I’d recommend Conversations with Kiarostami.”—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Conversations with Kiarostami collects for the first time a far ranging series of interviews with the celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami by film critic, and Iranian cinema expert, Godfrey Cheshire.
Conducted in the 1990s, these in-depth conversations offer a film-by-film account of Kiarostami’s views of his artistic development from his first short “Bread and Alley” in 1970 to the 1999 feature The Wind Will Carry Us, covering his lesser known, and seldom written about, shorts from earlier in his career, along with the masterworks that made him world famous, such as the Koker Trilogy (Where Is the Friend’s House?, And Life Goes On, Through the Olive Trees), Close-Up and Taste of Cherry. The book includes a Foreword by Ahmad Kiarostami, the director’s son, as well as an introduction from Cheshire that contextualizes the interviews and discusses his relationship with the director.
“During Godfrey’s several visits to Iran throughout a decade, he formed a relationship with my father that I had rarely seen him having with other writers. I believe this is because of Godfrey’s ability to go beyond the surface; his unique views and interpretations…It is well-known that Godfrey was one of the first people who introduced the Iranian cinema to America and, yet, there is no trace of the usual “exotic” approach…That is what you will find in this book: a refreshing conversation with Abbas that has substance, and is far from cliché.”—Ahmad Kiarostami, from his foreword.
2023, English
Softcover, 296 pages, 19 x 14 cm
Published by
Hard Wait Press / New York
$55.00 $35.00 - Out of stock
Named one of the best books of 2023 by The Paris Review
Named one of the best books of 2023 by Sight & Sound
Time Tells is a grand study of time, technology, performance, the attention economy, and comedy. Using the cinematic time-jump, "a numerical shorthand for a fated intermission," to weave a narrative of chronopolitics, memoir, and cultural study, Masha Tupitsyn constructs a unique literary and visual phenomenology on the loss of time, presence, and attention in the digital age. Structured into two interlocked inquiries—Time and Acting—Time Tells focuses on the internet to talk about the ethics of presence and attention, comedy to talk about timing and the language of critique, and lying masculinity, the double, and acting to talk about performance and the reign of falsehood. Both volumes intersect to examine our inability to experience coherence and integration in the post-truth era.
In the first volume, Time, Tupitsyn covers wide-ranging cultural touchstones such as the ’90s TV show Felicity, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Pretty Woman, Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, David Fincher’s Zodiac, Jean-Luc Godard, the Beastie Boys, Wim Wenders, the art of style, memory and music in the post-internet age, and the lost ontology of cinema. Using what Tupitsyn terms “screen-shot criticism,” Time Tells makes innovative critical thinking accessible to anyone interested in American culture today.
Afterword by Felix Bernstein.
“Time Tells is a mesmerizing work about art, life, chronology, and magical thinking. Masha Tupitsyn is a treasure.”—Matt Zoller Seitz
“Masha Tupitsyn rescues films of our generation from the memory hole to which everything but box office is now consigned. Her writing is intimate and analytical, laced with radiant perceptions about movie stars, memory, and lost time.”—A. S. Hamrah
“I have been searching for books during the pandemic that will saddle up with me in my middle-aged sorrow. A sorrow having something to do with “before television went online, days of the week mattered.” Books about the state of the global crisis haven’t done it for me. Masha Tupitsyn’s Time Tells is the book I am looking for. I’m keeping that in the present tense to suggest my ongoing and vital relationship to an extraordinarily generous and profound hybrid text and manual that I will keep on hand at all times. As a poet, I am obsessed with how art can sequence events to expand or contract our sense of time. Mid-way through Tupitsyn’s treatise, she has placed one of the brightest and most innovative pieces of film criticism I have ever read. I would teach her writing on the film Zodiac as a list poem. She writes, ‘In Zodiac, time is forensic.’ I gasped with a little horror and a little joy.”—Stacy Szymaszek
1972, German / English / French
Vinyl ring-binder (screen printed w. design by E. Ruscha), 650 pages +, 32 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
documenta / Kassel
$500.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of the only edition of the most elaborately designed, and lowest circulated Documenta catalogue, conceived by curator Harald Szeemann to accompany the fifth edition of Documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany.
Subtitled "100 Days of Inquiry into Reality -- Today's Imagery," curated by the team of Harald Szeemann, Jean-Christophe Ammann and Arnold Bode, Documenta 5 followed a lineage of comprehensive shows documenting conceptually and minimally charged artworks curated by Szeemann including Live in Your Head (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969), and Happenings and Fluxus (Kunstverein, Köln), 1970. The largest, most expensive and most diverse of any exhibition anywhere, Documenta 5 was criticized in 1972 as being “bizarre…vulgar…sadistic” by art critic and essayist Hilton Kramer and “monstrous… overtly deranged” by art historian and art critic Barbara Rose, yet it still resonates today as one of the most important exhibitions in history. Featuring the works of over 170 artists and an equally expansive variety of materials and subjects drawn from popular cultural materials, architecture, science fiction, kitsch objects, film, advertising, children's art, etc. in addition to the more anticipated international survey of new painting and sculpture - Documenta 5 valiantly attempted to bridge the gap between art, culture, science and the broader society. This massive tome is housed in the iconic orange vinyl-covered, two-ring binder screen printed with the famous ant design by Edward Ruscha. The binder holds a tabbed index of illustrated artist's pages and associated texts and material, largely in German, but also many in English. All registers are present apart from the usual missing 19-25 which were not directly integrated into the catalogue and had to be ordered by the visitor separately to become their own contribution. This very complete copy also includes the additional 80 page, hole-punched Documenta 5 guide book, with floor plans, complete listing of exhibited artworks, list of exhibitions, bibliography, and many gallery, museum and other related advertisements. More than a catalogue, this publication is a piece of art history in itself.
Includes artists: Vito Acconci, Vincenzo Agnetti, Peter Alexander, John de Andrea, Giovanni Anselmo, Arbeitszeit, Archigram, Chuck Arnoldi, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Ashkin, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Georg Baselitz, Lothar Baumgarten, Robert Bechtle, Gottfried Bechtold, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Karl Oskar Blase, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Claudio Bravo, George Brecht, K.P. Brehmer, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Castelli, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, Tony Conrad, Ron Cooper, Bill Copley, Joseph Cornell, Robert Cottingham, Paul Cotton, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, David Deutsch, Jan Dibbets, Herbert Distel, Gino de Dominicis, Marcel Duchamp, John Dugger, Don Eddy, Franz Eggenschwiler, Ger van Elk, Richard Estes, Luciano Fabro, John C. Fernie, Robert Filliou, Jud Fine, Joel Fisher, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Hamish Fulton, Franz Gertsch, Gilbert & George, Ralph Goings, Hubert Gojowczyk, Dan Graham, Walter Grasskamp, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Duane Hanson, Guy Harloff, Michael Harvey, Haus-Rucker-Co, Auguste Herbin, Eva Hesse, Rebecca Horn, Jean Olivier Hucleux, Douglas Huebler, Jörg Immendorff, Will Insley, Rolf Iseli, Ken Jacobs, Neil Jenney, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Max G. Kaminski, Howard Kanovitz, Edward Kienholz, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhofer, Jannis Kounellis, Tom Kovachevich, Piotr Kowalski, David Lamelas, Barry Le Va, Jean LeGac, Alfred Leslie, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Ingeborg Luscher, Inge Mahn, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Etienne Martin, Richard McLean, David Medalla, Fernando Melani, Jim Melchert, Mario Merz, Gustav Metzger, Bernd Minnich, Malcolm Morley, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Hermann Nitsch, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Blinky Palermo, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, A.R. Penck, Giuseppe Penone, Vettor Pisani, Sigmar Polke, Stephen Posen, Markus Raetz, Arnulf Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dorothea Rockburne, Peter Roehr, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ulrich Ruckriem, Robert Ryman, John Salt, Salvo, Lucas Samaras, Paul Sarkisian, Jean-Frederic Schnyder, Ben Schonzeit, Werner Schroeter, HA Schult, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Fritz Schwegler, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Allan Shields, Katharina Sieverding, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Klaus Staeck, Paul Staiger, Jorge Stever, Robert Strubin, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Andre Thomkins, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Ben Vautier, W + B Hein, Franz Erhard Walther, Robert Watts, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, John Wesley, H.C. Westermann, William Wiley, Rolf Winnewisser, Tom Wudl, Klaus Wyborny, La Monte Young, Peter Young, Gilberto Zorio.
Catalogue also includes Bob Projansky and Seth Siegelaub's "The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement." This "Agreement form has been drafted by Bob Projansky, a New York lawyer, after my [Siegelaub] extensive discussions and correspondence with over 500 artists, dealers, lawyers, collectors, museum people, critics and other concerned people involved in the day-to-day workings of the international art world. The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists' lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it. The Agreement for has been written with special awareness of the current ordinary practices and economic realitites of the art world, particularly its private, cash and informal nature, with careful regard for the interests and motives of all concerned. It is expected to be the standard form for the transfer and sale of all contemporary art, and has been made as fair, simple and useful as possible. It can be used either as presented here or slightly altered to fit your specific situation. If the following information does not answer all your questions consult your attorney." -- from Agreement's cover. Copies of the contract are individually included in English, Germany, and French editions.
Very Good, complete (as issued) copy. Very minor wear.
2023, English
Softcover, 284 pages, 23.5 x 15.7 cm
Published by
Routledge / London
$90.00 - Out of stock
This is a timely update of a seminal text which re-interprets key films of the horror genre, including Carrie, The Exorcist, The Brood and Psycho.
In the first edition, Creed draws on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to challenge the popular view that women in horror are almost always victims, and argues that patriarchal ideology constructs women as monstrous in relation to her sexuality and reproductive body to justify her subjugation. Although a projection of male fears and paranoid fantasies, the monstrous-feminine is nonetheless a terrifying figure. Creed’s argument contests Freudian and Lacanian theories of sexual difference to offer a provocative rereading of classical and contemporary horror.
This updated edition includes a new section examining contemporary feminist horror films in relation to nonhuman theory. Creed proposes a new concept of radical abjection to reinterpret the monstrous-feminine as a figure who embraces abjection by reclaiming her body and re-defining her otherness as nonhuman – while questioning patriarchy, anthropocentrism, misogyny and the meaning of the human. Films discussed include Ginger Snaps, Teeth, Atlantics, The Girl with All the Gifts, Border and Titane.
Barbara Creed’s classic remains as relevant as ever and this edition will be of interest to academics and students of feminist theory, nonhuman theory, critical animal studies, race, and queer theory.
Barbara Creed is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of seven books, including Darwin’s Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema (2009); and Stray: Human- Animal Ethics in the Anthropocene (2017). She is the director of the Human Rights and Animal Ethics Research Network (HRAE). She has been on the boards of Writers Week, the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.
2024, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 15.4 x 23 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$34.00 - Out of stock
The early essays of the most influential French film critic of the post-68 period.
The Footlights (1983) was the first book by Serge Daney, a film critic admired in his lifetime by Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Luc Godard and recognized since his premature death in 1992 as the most important French writer on film after André Bazin. The Footlights stands apart in Daney's body of work as the only collection of his essays he conceived of as a book, organizing his seminal pieces from Cahiers du Cinéma by theme and linking them with original texts that reflect in a personal voice on the doubts, battles, and illuminations of a generation of film lovers inspired by the explorations of Lacanian theory and roused by the collective aspirations of Maoist dogma. In pieces on fellow travelers Godard and Straub/Huillet, on films ranging from Pasolini's Saló to Spielberg's Jaws, and on the difference between film language and television discourse, Daney offers a definitive portrait of an era of radical hope and disappointment.
Translated by Nicholas Elliott
2021, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 15 x 12 cm
Published by
Ex Film / Melbourne
$15.00 - In stock -
Leonard Schrader and Sheldon Renan's 1981 documentary on violence in American society was never released for almost 40 years in the country which it profiles, such was its visceral impact and blunt force message. The film was a major success in Australia, running for 3 weeks at Melbourne's Capitol theatre and huge sales on home video. For people of a certain generation, viewing was a rite of passage - an assemblage of various real-life footage in the peak era of the US serial killer, political assassinations and the post-Vietnam mayhem of American society.
Ex Film's Australian Blu-ray restoration and release was accompanied by this 84 page perfect-bound booklet containing liner notes by Dean Brandum (Technicolor Yawn) and Chris Desjardins (The Flesh Eaters, Slash magazine) accompanied by years of archival material collected from years of research, including, ad mats, theatrical and home video art and Japanese promotional material translated into English for the first time.
2013, English / Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), various pagination, 28.5 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Comme des Garçons / Tokyo
$220.00 - Out of stock
Copies of the infamous printed collaboration between Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons and legendary manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo, best known as the creator of Akira, both the original 1982 manga series and the 1988 animated film adaptation. Issued as mail-outs privately by Comme to announce the arrival of their 2013—14 Autumn—Winter collection, and not commercially available, these gorgeous, elaborate leaflets designed by CDG founder Rei Kawakubo, showcase Otomo’s Akira artwork in a series of collages put together and coloured by Kawakubo herself, with fold-outs, inserts and die-cut illustrations have become highly desirable, for obvious reasons. Surprisingly Otomo is the first Japanese artist to feature in Comme’s mail outs, so this collaboration was very special for fans of both. Very Good, preserved copies of three of the best of 28 volumes (issued separately) as they all feature Otomo's artwork on the covers (many others feature other artist mash-ups from Otomo-related NoBrow magazine, and now becoming very scarce.
2022, English
Softcover, 358 pages, 20.5 x 13 cm
Published by
11:11 Press / US
$48.00 - Out of stock
Children of the New Flesh is a wide-ranging compendium of reflections on the enduring impact of David Cronenberg, one of the most significant filmmakers of all time. Focusing on a series of short films that Cronenberg directed in the 1960s and 70s, many of which have rarely been seen, this book considers the legacy of these works in their own right, as well as their relationship to future masterpieces like Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and eXistenZ.
Much more than a work of tribute, Children of the New Flesh is a meditation on the nature of influence itself. It teases out the undercurrents in Cronenberg's films, obsessed as they are with secret signals, sinister experiments, and mental viruses, and shows how these ideas resonate in our own paranoid, sickened, hyper-networked times.
Featuring original fiction and essays from luminaries such as Brian Evenson, Blake Butler, Michael Cisco, Graham Rae, Joe Koch, Gary J. Shipley, Tobias Carroll, and Charlene Elsby, and interviews with figures such as Kathe Koja, Patrick McGrath, Tim Lucas, and Bruce Wagner—not to mention an exclusive interview with Cronenberg himself—this book is at once a study and a living example of the singular power of hybrid forms. It's an invitation to seek undead materials in the dark recesses of the past, and to use them as a means of tuning into the freakish wavelengths of the present.
"CHILDREN OF THE NEW FLESH IS A MUST-READ FOR FILM FANATICS AND FANS OF DAVID CRONENBERG. EDITED BY CHRIS KELSO AND DAVID LEO RICE, THIS COLLECTION EXPLORES THE DARK PERIPHERIES OF CRONENBERG'S INFLUENCE AND EARLY WORK, EXAMINING A WORLD OF STRANGENESS AND MYSTERY." - BRANDON HOBSON, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST AND AUTHOR OF THE REMOVED
"THE LIVING LEGEND OF ECCENTRIC CINEMA BEGETS WEIRD NEW PROGENY IN CHILDREN OF THE NEW FLESH" - RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE
"DO NOT OVEREMPHASIZE CRONENBERG'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE PHYSICAL BODY; THAT DOES A DISSERVICE TO HIS DEEP, ABIDING, PASSIONATE INTEREST IN THE ENERGY BODY, THE ETHEREAL BODY, THE BODY DOUBLE, THE COSMIC BODY. IN THE END, HE IS A CONSUMMATE PHILOSOPHER OF THE SPIRIT." - BRUCE WAGNER, AUTHOR OF DEAD STARS, MAPS TO THE STARS, AND THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
1972, Japanese
Softcover, 122 pages, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Lemon Inc. / Tokyo
$35.00 - Out of stock
September 1972 (with cover by Aoi Fujimoto) issue of legendary Japanese underground arts periodical, Black Magazine (or Black Notebook), a taboo-shattering vehicle of the 1970s subculture in Tokyo. A magazine like no-other, each issue, "a paradise of 1970's heretical culture", was a who's who of non-conformity, introducing a new wave of illustrators, painters, doll-makers and photographers, "taboo" sexuality and fetish culture, avant-garde comics, sadistic literature, radical criticism, queer poetry, activism, black humour, underground film and theatre, and all manner of transgressive, esoteric and erotic material, new and historical. Black Magazine featured the work of Yukio Mishima, Toshio Saeki, Izumi Suzuki, Simon Yotsuya, Shūji Terayama, Ken Katayama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Genpei Akasegawa, Keiichi Tanaami, Kikuji Yamashita, Aoi Fujimoto, Tadanori Yokoo, Hiroshi Nakamura, and so many others. It was also where Japanese photographer Satomi Nihongi's Tokyo Transgender photographs were first printed. Black Magazine was heavy with queer and trans content, and Nihongi's "The Most Beautifuls" was a regular photo-feature in its pages. A lot of great things started in the pages of this unique magazine. A highly recommended publication!
1982, English
Softcover, 378 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$25.00 - Out of stock
Since the publications of his first essays in the early 1960s Christian Metz has produced a body of work that has established him as the most influential contemporary theorist of cinema and as a leading contributor to the development of semiotics generally.
Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Signifier is in many ways a culmination of this work. In the first half of the book Metz explores a number of aspects of the psychological anchoring of cinema as a social institution, using Freudian psychoanalysis to examine the nature of cinematic spectatorship, the relations of cinema and voyeurism, fetishism and so on. In the second half, he shifts his approach a little to look at the operations of meaning in the film text, at the figures of image and sound concatenation. Thus he is led to consideration of metaphor and metonymy in film, this involving a detailed account of these two figures as they appear in psychoanalysis and linguistics - an account which brilliantly disentangles the various analogies that have been proposed between metaphor and metonymy, condensation and displacement, paradigm and syntagm, and makes an important contribution to our general understanding of these issues as well as to our particular understanding of cinema.
Throughout, the book is an argument with and recasting of initial semiotic thinking dependent on reference to fixed linguistics models; it offers something of a 'second semiotics', concerned now with the institution of modes of subjectivity, cinema as imaginary signifier, and with the movement and effects of meaning, film as text.
CHRISTIAN METZ teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His published works include two volumes of Essais sur la signification au cinema, Langage et cinema and Essais semiotiques. The Translators CELIA BRITTON and ANNWYL WILLIAMS are with the Department of French Studies at the University of Reading. BEN BREWSTER is at the University of Kent at Canterbury. ALFRED GUZZETTI is at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University.
VG copy.
1988, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 28 pages, 29.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
ABKCO / Japan
$190.00 - In stock -
Very rare Japanese brochure from around 1988, promoting the release on VHS (we think!) of The Holy Mountain, the cult classic 1973 Mexican surreal film directed, written, produced, co-scored, co-edited by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also designed sets and costumes, inspired in part by René Daumal's Mount Analogue. The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Alejandro Jodorowsky's flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism is a surreal sojourn for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth. In a corrupt, greed-fueled world, a powerful alchemist leads a messianic character and seven materialistic figures representing the negative aspects of the seven planets, to the Holy Mountain, where they hope to achieve enlightenment. Following Jodorowsky's underground hit El Topo, acclaimed by both John Lennon and George Harrison, the film was produced by the Beatles manager Allen Klein and John Lennon and Yoko Ono put up production money. It was shown at various international film festivals in 1973, including Cannes, and limited screenings in New York and San Francisco, gaining cult status. The Holy Mountain is a mythical, mystical masterpiece, a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life - part spiritual quest, part science fiction, part social satire, and completely without comparison.
This rare collectible brochure published by Allen Klein's ABKCO gives synopsis and introduction to the film, illustrated throughout with glorious stills, including a four-panel colour fold-out, Japanese texts, cast and production information, even Holy Mountain manga! A wonderful piece of printed history to Jodorowsky's masterpiece.
Very Good copy with some handling pinches.
1985, German
Softcover, 736 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Nationalgalerie / Berlin
$40.00 - In stock -
Enormous 700+ page volume about "Art in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945—1985", published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, September 27, 1985—January 21, 1986. Profusely illustrated in colour with many works by Vostell, Baselitz, Beuys, Polke, Richter, Palermo, Klapheck, Darboven, Schultze, Uecker, Horn, Lüpertz, Haacke, Ruthenbeck, Antes, the Bechers, Rinke, Gerz, Erhard Walther, Penck, Knowles, Higgins, June Paik, Maciunas, Christiansen, Filliou, Brecht, Kriwet, Roth, Ulrichs, and many more, accompanied by texts in German, bibliography and index.
Good copy, some rubbing to the cover boards, light wear, bumping with age/size.
1996, English
Softcover, 280 pages, 17.7 x 11.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$35.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first 1996 edition of Soft Subversions by Félix Guattari, published by Semiotext(e) in their Native Agents book series. Edited by Sylvère Lotringer, this collection of Felix Guattari's essays, lectures, and interviews traces the militant anti-psychiatrist and theorist's thought and activity throughout the 1980s ("the winter years"). Concepts such as "micropolitics," "schizoanalysis," and "becoming-woman" open up new horizons for political and creative resistance in the "postmedia era." Guattari's energetic analyses of art, cinema, youth culture, economics, and power formations introduce a radically inventive thought process engaged in liberating subjectivity from the standardizing and homogenizing processes of global capitalism.
Very Good copy.
1999 / 2006, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 240 pages, 23 x 16 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kokushokankokai / Tokyo
$60.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this wonderful hardcover monographic study on the work of Czech Surrealist artist, puppeteer, animator, and filmmaker, Jan Švankmajer (b. Prague, 1934), first published in Japan in 1999. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with all of his film and artworks, including his sculpture, collage, ceramics, “tactile experiments”, and much more. With chapters such as "Manipulation of malicious intent", "Everything starts with a doll", and "Realistic delusions, grotesque dreams", the book is largely made up of conversations with Jan Švankmajer, his own diaries on the making of "Faust" and other subjects, extensive texts and dialogues with the artist relating to central themes in his work, from the "Tactile Imagination" to Alchemy. It also provides a full chronology of the artist, a complete filmography, a list of his works, and bibliography of the artist. Texts are
Well-known for his dark re-imaginings of well-known fairy tales and for his avant-garde merging of live action, stop-motion animation and puppetry, Švankmajer is one of the most distinctive and acclaimed Czech filmmakers. Since the mid-1960s, his films have shocked, mesmerized, repulsed and delighted audiences, amassing international cult-like following. His prolific work off-screen across assemblage and collage mediums, using both man-made and organic materials, share the central thematic elements of his subversive films, such as black humour, metamorphosis, sex, decomposition, mythology, scatology, death, humour and the absurd. Over 300 illustrations with texts by Hideto Fuse, Maki Kumagai, Petr Holly, Jan Švankmajer.
Fine copy, As New.
2011, Japanese / Czech
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 180 pages, 23 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Access / Japan
$90.00 - Out of stock
Scarce exhibition catalogue surveying the work of Czech Surrealist artists Jan and Eva Švankmajer, published to accompany a major retrospective in Japan in 2011. Eva Švankmajerová (1940 – 2005, b. Eva Dvořáková in Kostelec nad Černými lesy), was a renowned painter, ceramicist, and writer active in the Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group who's poetry and prose regularly appeared in the journal Analogon. Švankmajerová was married to the Surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer (b. Prague, 1934) and collaborated on many of his award-winning animated masterpieces, including Alice (1988), Faust (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) and Otesánek (2000). Lavishly illustrated throughout, this catalogue includes chapters on Jan and Eva Švankmajer's independent and collaborative works, spanning painting, objects, collage, ceramics, poetry, graphics, and their highly acclaimed animated film works. Also includes Jan Švankmajer's collaboration with Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe. Includes detailed history, list of works and accompanying texts, alongside production insights and studio photography.
As New copy.
2023, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 110 pages, 25 x 17 cm
Published by
ACCA / Melbourne
$25.00 - In stock -
Produced in association with the upcoming ACCA exhibition of the same name, this publication casts a lens upon feminist, queer, and non-binary subjectivities to consider the transgressive pleasures and liberations of horror, as makers, masters and consumers of the genre.
From the other side features curatorial texts by Elyse Goldfinch and Jessica Clark, alongside writings from Barbara Creed, author of The Monstrous Feminine; Canadian film writer Kier-La Janisse, author of the cult classic, House of Psychotic Women, 2012; Lisa Fuller, a Murri woman and author of the novel Ghost Bird, 2021; and a horror-themed screenplay by UK-based author and filmmaker Alison Peirse, editor of the Women Make Horror anthology, 2021.
Artists featured in the exhibition and book include Clare Milledge, Cybele Cox, Heather B Swann, Jemima Lucas, Julia Robinson, Karla Dickens, Kellie Wells, Lonnie Hutchinson, Louise Bourgeois, Maria Kozic, Marianna Simnett, Mia Boe, Minyoung Kim, Naomi Blacklock, Naomi Kantjuriny, SJ Norman, Suzan Pitt, Tracey Moffatt and Zamara Zamara.
The exhibition crosses the artificial parameters of horror in the everyday, as something that exists as part of society but also from outside of it. Culminating in a potent synthesis of dread, camp, humour and catharsis, From the other side challenges the traditional narratives and assumed boundaries of the body, gender, the self and the ‘other’.
2023, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 20.2 x 12.7 cm
Published by
The New York Review of Books / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
Boys Alive, published in 1955, was Pier Paolo Pasolini's first work of fiction and it remains his best known. Written in the aftermath of Pasolini's move from the provinces to Rome, the novel captures the hunger and anger, waywardness and squalor of the big city. The life of the novel is the life of the city streets; from the streets, too, come its raw, mongrel, assaultive language. Here unblinkered realism and passionate lyricism meet in a vision of a vast urban inferno, blazing with darkness and light.
There is no one story to the book, only stories, splitting off, breaking away, going nowhere, flaming out, stories in which scenes of comic debacle, bitter conflict, wild joy, and crushing disappointment quickly follow. Pasolini's young characters have nothing to trade on except youth, and the struggle to live is unending. They loot, hustle, scavenge, steal. Somehow money will turn up; as soon as it does it will get spent. The main thing, in any case, is to have fun, and so the boys boast and vie, the desperate uncertainty of their days and nights offset by the fabulous inventiveness of their words. A warehouse heist, a night of gambling, the hunt for sex - The world of Boys Alive is a world in convulsion where at any instant disaster may strike.
Tim Parks' new translation of Pasolini's early masterpiece brings out the salt and brilliance of a still-scandalous work of art.
2023, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 20.2 x 12.7 cm
Published by
The New York Review of Books / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
Theorem is the most enigmatic of Pier Paolo Pasolini's four novels. The book started as a poem and took shape as a film, also called Theorem, before turning at last into a work of fiction. In short prose chapters interspersed with stark passages of poetry, Pasolini tells a story of transfiguration and trauma.
To the suburban mansion of a prosperous Milanese businessman comes a mysterious and beautiful young man who invites himself to stay. From the beginning he exercises a strange fascination on the inhabitants of the house, and soon everyone, from the busy father to the frustrated mother, from the yearning daughter to the weak-willed son to the housemaid from the country, has fallen in love with him. Then, as mysteriously as he appeared, the infatuating young man departs. How will these people he has touched so deeply do without him? Is there a passage out of the spiritual desert of modern capitalism into a new awakening, both of the senses and of the soul? Only questions remain at the end of a book that is at once a bedroom comedy, a political novel, and a religious parable.