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—SAT 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.
2018, English
Softcover, 92 pages, 21 cm x 30 cm
Ed. of 1000,
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$44.00 $15.00 - In stock -
This publication is an unedited reprint of the catalogue originally published by De Appel in 1980 as a follow-up to the international art manifestation ‘Works and Words’. The event sought to break with the one-way traffic of Western artists traveling to the East by inviting artists from Eastern Bloc countries to Amsterdam. The invited artists, theoreticians, film-makers, and art historians represented a broad spectrum of practices, theoretical approaches, and developments. The manifestation resulted in an active exchange of ideas, new insights, and collaborations. Indicative of the early days of De Appel, the project reflects the groundbreaking forms of artistic practice it represented.
Artists: Franklin Aalders, Jaroslav Anděl, Gábor Attalai, Zoran Belic, Jerzy Bereś, Gábor Bódy, Branko Bubenik, Michel Cardena, Nuša and Srečo Dragan, Ľubomír Ďurček, Miklós Erdély, Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Tomislav Gotovac, Frank Gribling, Buky Grinberg, Vladimir Gudac, Tibor Hajas, Zlatko Hajdler, Janusz Haka, Károly Halasz, Ágnes Háy, Vladimír Havrilla, Nan Hoover, Sanja Iveković, Servie Janssen, Zoltan Jeney, Gyorgy Jovanovic, Cezary Jaworski, Jacek Jozwiak, Szigmond Károlyi, Karoly Kelemen, Michal Kern, Milan Knížák, Tomislav Kobija, Július Koller, Mirko Komosar, Tomasz Konart, Jiří Kovanda, Harrie de Kroon, Zofia Kulik, Romuald Kutera, Paweł Kwiek, Przemyslaw Kwiek, KwieKulik, Natalia LL, Andrzej Lachowicz, Dušan Makavejev, Ivan Martinac, Dalibor Martinis, Raùl Marroquin, Dóra Maurer, Antoni Mikolajczyk, Karel Miler, Jan Mlčoch, Teresa Murak, Vjekoslav Nakić, Mihovil Pansini, Aldo Paquola, Andrzej Paruzel, Sef Peeters, Vladimir Petek, Sandor Pinczehelyi, Reindeer Werk (Dirk Larsen & Tom Puckey), Jaroslav Richtr, Józef Robakowski, Vinco Rozman, Tomasz Sikorski, Petr Štembera, Mladen Stilinović, Peter Timar, Teresa Tyszkiewicz and Zdzislaw Sosnowski, Goran Svob, Janusz Szczerek, István Sziranyi, Raša Todosijević, Endre Tot, Janos Toth, Sava Trifkovic, Ulay, Jiri Valoch, Ante Verzotti, Janos Veto, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Ryszard Waśko, Albert van der Weide, Dobroslav Zborník.
2015, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 9.5 x 14.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Moderna Museet / Stockholm
$27.00 - In stock -
In October 1963 I met Gil J., and we schlepped to the scrap-metal market. [...] It was there that I came up with the following definition of Lettrism:
Lettrism: 1) technical definition: smithy, arsenal, place where unused weapons are stored; 2) volcanology: rumbling that announces certain volcanic eruptions. Examples: 1) “Thanks to L., insurgent groups were armed” – 2) “The people of Herculaneum did not pay heed to L.” [Acad.]
—Jean-Louis Brau, 1972
The Lettrist movement is unique in the history of avant-garde formations. Founded by Isidore Isou in Paris immediately after World War II, it remains active to this day, having lost none of its radicalism, either aesthetic or ethical. In this book, Nicole Brenez presents the key figures and the basic concepts of Lettrist cinema, the art form within which their formal innovations proved the most far-reaching, prefiguring the breakthroughs of the nouvelle vague and the experiments of expanded cinema.
All the King’s Horses series, edited by Daniel Birnbaum and Kim West
Copublished with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, with support from Allianz Kulturstiftung
Translated from the French by Clodagh Kinsella
Design by Studio Christopher West
2011, Japanese / English
Softcover, 240 pages, 30 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art Days / Tokyo
$55.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
Second issue of DUNE Libertin, Japanese fashion and culture magazine following DUNE Quarterly, edited by the legendary Fumihiro Hayashi, re-launched for the new millennium, and as much a time-capsule of the 00s as Quarterly was of the 90s. With cover artwork by Gus Van Sant, other features in this issue include Mark Gonzales, Barry Mcgee, Momoko Ando, 111 Boadrum (Boredoms), Jeffrey Deitch, Mario Sorrenti, Ari Marcopoulos, Spike Jonze, Shepard Fairey, Hiromix, Liz Goldwyn, Aaron Rose, Punk Is Still Alive (w. Mike Watt — SST, Minutemen, Firehose), Rodarte, Chikashi Suzuki, Oliver Zahm (Purple), Tomoo Gokita, and much much more.
Very Good copy with small scuff to spine edge.
1996, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 22.5 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art Days / Tokyo
$200.00 - Out of stock
Special Summer 1996 10th issue of DUNE, featuring the iconic Chloë Sevigny cover styled by Andrew Richardson and shot by Terry Richardson. Rare and most sought-after issue of this Japanese fashion and culture magazine, edited by the legendary Fumihiro Hayashi, with the theme of "REALITY", encapsulating the "realism" of 1990's new fashion photography and anti-fashion aesthetic, including a huge photo feature of Chloë by Richardson, Hysteric Glamor shot by David Sorrenti, Prada does Palm Springs by Takashi Homma, Baby Generation by Takashi Homma, featuring Sofia Coppola, Kim Gordon, Ione Skye, Tamra Davis and Karen Klimnik, Walter Van Beirendonck, photography by Sofia Coppola, Shingo Wakagi, Katsumi Omori, Masashi Sanai, Fujio Saimon, Gregory Crewdson, Masashi Ohashi, plus Visionaire, Hiroshi Tanabe, Hunter S. Thompson, ads for X-Girl, Milk Fed, Paul Smith... a rare (even in Japan) time capsule and distant memory of the Genki days of the bookshop building.
Very Good copy.
2015, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 21.6 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$45.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
Hamlet, mise-en-scène
EXTRA TROUBLE—Jack Smith in Frankfurt
Texts by Sylvère Lotringer, Birte Löschenkohl, Sophie von Olfers, Laura Preston, Juliane Rebentisch, Mark von Schlegell, et al.
The publication brings together extensive material from Hamlet, mise-en-scène presented at Portikus, along with recently restored as well as never-published stills, drawings, and writings by American filmmaker and artist Jack Smith, related to his filmHamlet in the Rented World (A Fragment) (1970–73).
Hamlet, mise-en-scène, directed by Mark von Schlegell, was an adaptation that retold Shakespeare’s most abused tragedy while channeling the ghost of Jack Smith. The two-night rendition of Hamlet was performed by members of Städelschule’s Pure Fiction seminar, presented here alongside a rare selection of works by Smith, both from private collections and from the Jack Smith Archive.
Design by Pacific Design Solutions
2014, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 23.1 x 15.2 cm
Published by
University of Hawaii Press / Honolulu
$120.00 - Out of stock
How can we qualify slowness in cinema? What is the relationship between a cinema of slowness and a wider socio-cultural "slow movement"? A body of films that shares a propensity toward slowness has emerged in many parts of the world over the past two decades. This is the first book to examine the concept of cinematic slowness and address this fascinating phenomenon in contemporary film culture.
Providing a critical investigation into questions of temporality, materiality, and aesthetics, and examining concepts of authorship, cinephilia, and nostalgia, Song Hwee Lim offers insight into cinematic slowness through the films of the Malaysian-born, Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-liang. Through detailed analysis of aspects of stillness and silence in cinema, Lim delineates the strategies by which slowness in film can be constructed. By drawing on writings on cinephilia and the films of directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, he makes a passionate case for a slow cinema that calls for renewed attention to the image and to the experience of time in film.
Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness will speak to readers with an interest in art cinema, queer studies, East Asian culture, and the question of time. In an age of unrelenting acceleration of pace both in film and in life, this book invites us to pause and listen, to linger and look, and, above all, to take things slowly.
"Lim's study examines the director as a prime example of slow cinema, both in terms of his film aesthetics and underlying political motivations. Lim's approach is to contextualize Tsai's filmmaking practice within an extensive evaluation of slow cinema . . . Considering the noteworthy contribution it provides to the development of "slow cinema studies" as an academic subfield, Lim's work should be considered among the the earliest, if not the first, scholarly studies of slow cinema."—Film Quarterly
2023, English
Hardcover, 112 pages, 22 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$66.00 - In stock -
One of the great experimental composers of our time, Phill Niblock has during his sixty-year career produced minimalist music, structural cinema, dance performance, improvised theatre, systematic art, and ethnographic photography. Since 1985, Niblock has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. In 2014 the artist received the John Cage Award.
This hardbound catalogue is devoted to Niblock’s wide intermedia art, including his masterpieces the Six Films (1966-69), the Environments (1968-72) and The Movement of People Working (1973-91). A thorough publication that includes Charles Mingus, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington, Elaine Summers, Yoko Ono, Sun Ra, The Open Theatre, Muna Tseng and Arthur Russell. Co-published with Copeland. Published on occasion of the exhibition ‘Nothin’ But Working, Phill Niblock, A Retrospective’, 30 Jan – 12 May 2013, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, in partnership with Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne).
2023, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages, 19 x 12 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$44.00 - Out of stock
The most significant critical, theoretical, and art historical texts by the artist, writer, and filmmaker Aria Dean.
Compiled here for the first time, the selected writings of Aria Dean (b. 1993, Los Angeles) mount a trenchant critique of representational systems. A visual artist and filmmaker, Dean has also emerged as one of the leading critical voices of her generation through a body of writing that maps the forces of aesthetic theory, image regimes, and visibility onto questions of race and power. Dean's work across media has long been defined by what she calls a "fixation on the subject and its borders," and the texts collected here filter that inquiry through digital networks, art history, and Black radical thought. Equally at home discussing artists who embrace difficulty-from Robert Morris to David Hammons, Lorna Simpson, and Ulysses Jenkins-and conceptual frameworks such as Afropessimism, Dean often contends with how theoretical positions brush against the grain of lived reality: how the Structuralism handed down from the academy, for instance, can be commingled with critiques of structural racism, or how Georges Bataille's notion of base matter transforms through an encounter with Blackness.
Dean's thinking embraces a definition of "Black art that luxuriates in its outside-the-world-ness," as she writes in this volume, which works to elucidate "Blackness's proclivity for making and unmaking its own rules as it produces objects" of cultural necessity. Originally published in November-of which Dean is a founding editor-as well as in Texte zur Kunst, e-flux journal, and in exhibition contexts, the essays compiled in Bad Infinity were written over a six-year span that charts our rapidly evolving forms of subjectivity and sociality.
2007, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 58 pages (w. fold-outs), 28 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hammer / Los Angeles
$40.00 $20.00 - In stock -
Hardcover artist's book published on the occasion of Mathias Poledna’s Crystal Palace, a travelling exhibition/commission organized by the New Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Crystal Palace is a 35mm film installation comprised of a small number of long, static shots of the montane rainforest landscape of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Using tightly framed medium-close to medium-wide shots, the film’s carefully selected scenes focus on the complex patterns, textures, and the overall abstract qualities of this environment, seemingly without human presence. Only subtle changes in light and movement in foliage provide visual cues to the passing of time. The film is accompanied by a dense and highly edited soundtrack created from on-location and archival field recordings that oscillate between distinct insect and bird sounds, and drone-like noise.
Poledna’s title, Crystal Palace, evokes the monumental glass-and-steel structure of that name constructed for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, an important precursor of modern architecture and industrialized construction that was built to present the newest products of the capitalist economy, accompanied by exotic displays, fauna and flora. Poledna’s work explores how meaning becomes attached to images and sounds; it creates a complex tension between a specific place, its cinematic appearance, and historical concepts circulating around it. In Crystal Palace, Poledna specifically references Sounds of a Tropical Rainforest, a 1951 album of staged field recordings produced by Folkways Records for the American Museum of Natural History to accompany an exhibition about indigenous Amazonian people.
Poledna’s work is also informed by film history, particularly the interconnections between early film and popular and avant-garde cinema, as well as the history of visual ethnography. Unlike traditional documentary and ethnographic film, Crystal Palace lacks an authoritative voice as it investigates a foreign place through an extremely narrow focus and highly subjective framing. While it presents itself as a fragmentary document of an existing landscape and its history, its images seem to deviate only slightly from our common assumptions of how a tropical rainforest might appear. The images’ virtual motionlessness and extreme depth of field, which paradoxically makes them appear flat, enforces a nonobjective dimension in the work, which, along with the intense soundtrack, suggests the physiological experience of abstract and structural film.
Very Good copy with buckle to boards and wave to inner edge pages.
1981, English
Softcover, 102 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Society for Education in Film and Television Ltd. / London
$14.00 - In stock -
Vol. 21 No. 4 of Screen, Independent Cinema, British TV - The Future, published by the Society for Education in Film and Television Ltd., London.
Contents : JOHN CAUGHIE: Because I am King and Independent Cinema; A discussion between Marc Karlin and Claire Johnston, Mark Nash and Paul Willemen: Problems of Independent Cinema; JOHN ELLIS: At the Fountainhead (of TV History); The Independent Film-makers' Association and the Fourth Channel; British TV Today; Channel Four and Innovation; PAUL KERR: Re-Inventing the Cinema; ALAN LOVELL: BFI Regional Conference; IAN CONNELL: Edinburgh TV Festival; MICHAEL O'PRAY: On Adrian Stokes and Film Aesthetics.
G—VG copy.
1981, English
Softcover, 260 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Indiana University Press / Indiana
$30.00 - Out of stock
1981 first edition of Questions of Cinema by Stephen Heath, published by Indiana University Press. Stephen Heath's approach to the study of film, drawing on developments in psycho-analysis, semiotics and Marxism, is massively influential not only among cinema specialists, but also for students of art, literature and the sociology of culture. His own writings continue to be the most approachable in a notoriously difficult field.
For Questions of Cinema he has collected together a representative range of pieces, many of which are unpublished or not easily available to English readers, presenting film as a signifying practice and the cinema as a social institution of meanings. Topics treated include: the construction of space in film, narrative, the terms of the presence of people in film, relations of viewer to film, cinema and language, technology, political and avant-garde film practice ... Directors' work considered runs from Orson Welles through Hitchcock to Oshima and a number of British and American "independents."
Stephen Heath is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He is the author of The Nouveau Roman and Vertige du deplacement and has recently edited with Teresa de Lauretis The Cinematic Apparatus. He has taught and lectured on film in Europe and the United States.
Good copy general wear split to bottom spine cover edge. Erasable marginalia in pencil.
1974 / 1983, English
Softcover, 360 pages, 21 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Oxford University Press / New York
$20.00 - Out of stock
Revised 1983 edition of the 1974 Oxford University publication Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film by Erik Barnouw, a classic work on documentary films and filmmaking that surveys the history of the genre from 1895 to the present day (1983). Filled with photographs, many of them rare, collected during the author's travels around the world, Barnouw considers the medium within international political and social climate, examining the impact of new technical breakthroughs such as the video cassettes and cable television, spanning an extensive chronology of documentary works from Louis Lumiere's first effort to David Attenborough's groundbreaking Life on Earth via Dziga Vertov, Frederick Wiseman, Jean Pianleve, Roman Lazarevich Karmen, Arne Sucksdorff, Leni Riefenstahl, Albert and David Maysles, and hundreds more. This book makes the growing importance of a unique blend of art and reality accessible and understandable to all film lovers.
Good copy with general wear.
unknown, English
Softcover (screw post binding), 108 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
? / ?
$140.00 - In stock -
Super rare production storyboard bootleg publication for the original 1984 Blade Runner, illustrated throughout by Sherman Labby with typed and handwritten notes, original notes from the production team and bearing the photocopied signature of production manager John W. Rogers. These storyboards were confidential and not allowed to be re-xeroxed, but leaked copies were bootlegged and leaked into fan market places. An incredible insight into the making of one of the greatest films of all time.
Sherman Labby (1929—1998) was a legendary American storyboard artist and production illustrator. After many years as a magazine illustrator, and like many in his craft, his first motion-picture work was in animation at studios such as Filmation, Hanna-Barbera, and Marvel. He worked as a storyboard artist on such shows as Star Trek: The Animated Series, Groovie Goolies, The Batman/Superman Hour, The New Adventures of Batman, The New Adventures of Gilligan, The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty, and Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down, and the animated TV series of Journey to the Center of the Earth, Fantastic Voyage, and Godzilla. His best-known live-action credits include Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Wanderers, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Blade Runner, 2010, The Witches of Eastwick, Broadcast News, Lethal Weapon 2, The War of the Roses, Thelma & Louise, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Made in America, Free Willy, The Horse Whisperer, and What Dreams May Come.
Near Fine copy.
2000, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 72 pages, 24 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Titan Books / London
$300.00 - Out of stock
Super collectible first, limited edition hardcover edition of the amazing "Blade Runner : The Inside Story," the first extensively illustrated book about the most influential sci-fi film ever made, published by the mighty Cinefex and Titan Books in 2000.
In 1982, to coincide with Blade Runner's original release, the highly respected movie magazine Cinefex devoted an entire, extended issue to the design and special effects of Ridley Scott's sci-fi masterpiece. Selling out immediately and in constant demand since, Cinefex and Titan Books brought this classic back into print, in an expanded, remastered hardcover edition in 2000. Not surprisingly, this first clothbound book edition, which was published in a limited edition, also went out of print quickly and has become a collectors item itself. It was later re-issued again in the more common 2003 edition.
Described as 'the single most comprehensive examination of Blade Runner's special effects', this must-have book contains scores of images not available elsewhere, as well as authoritative text, containing in-depth, exclusive interviews with director Ridley Scott, special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, legendary futurist/designer Syd Mead and dozens of other artists who contributed to this landmark film. This book is the definitive guide to the creation of Bladerunner's unsurpassed vision of the future, and a must for any fan.
Don Shay is the founder and publisher of Cinefex magazine.
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket with tanning and light wear.
1976, French
Softcover, 360 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Obliques / Paris
$100.00 - Out of stock
The landmark, over-sized Obliques special double issue dedicated to Antonin Artaud, published in Paris in 1976. The French literary journal Obliques (who published special issues on Bellmer, Kafka, Klossowski, Vian, Sartre, Robbe-Grillet, Strindberg, Genet, Female Surrealists...) published this extensive study and portrait of the extreme and provocative life of Antonin Artaud (1896—1948), French writer, poet, dramatist, artist, essayist, actor, theatre director and major figure of the European avant-garde. From his volatile alliance with the Surrealist movement to his legendary Theatre of Cruelty, this heavily illustrated (including many photographs and Artaud's drawings) documents his writings, letters and artworks, his cinema, theatre and esotericism, biography and bibliography, with contributions by Michel Sicard, Michel Camus,
Jerome Peignot, Guy Rosolato, Jean Domeneghini, Jerome Prieur, Jean Cocteau, Françoise Buisson, Alfred Jarry, Marc Fumaroli, Jean Thibaudeau, Alain Jouffroy, Jean-Michel Heimonet, Jean-Paul Morel, Pierre Courtens, Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt, Charles Bachat, Ronald Hayman, Jacques Prevel, Anie Besnard, Bruno Chabert, Claude Reichler, Florence De Meredieu, Daniel Giraud, Camille Bryen, J.M.G. Le Clezio, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Thomas, Philippe Sollers, Paule Thevenin, Camille Bryen, Michel Butor, Jean-Claude Grosjean, Gerard Mace, Jose Quiroga, Roger Caillois, and more. Texts in French.
was the first publisher to present a comprehensive list of the literary and plastic production of Surrealist women with this gorgeous volume, long before the works of surrealist women, as a corpus, began to be more widely studied in the 1980s. Featuring well known names, but also many female artists neglected and seldom mentioned in the recent (strangely narrow-minded) re-evaluation of this period, this beautifully printed issue of Obliques is an incredibly valuable reference on a movement that was decidedly ‘feminine’. Edited by Roger Borderie with Michel Camus, it features profiles on the work and writing of Belen, Maya Bell, Bona, Leonora Carrington, Lise Deharme, Jacqueline Duprey, Aube Elléouët, Josette Exandier, Leonor Fini, Aline Gagnaire, Giovanna, Jane Graverol, Marianne Van Hirtum, Rozeta Hum, Valentine Hugo, Karskaya, Greta Knutson, Laure, Gina Pane, Annie Lebrun, Georgette Magritte, Manina, Joyce Mansour, Nora Mitrani, Meret Oppenheim, Mimi Parent, Valentine Penrose, Gisele Prassinos, Karina Raeck, Remedios Varo, Sibylle Ruppert, Colette Thomas, Toyen, Isabelle Waldberg, Unica Zurn, Cécile Reims, Dorothea Tanning, Greta Knutson, and more. Additional texts and works by Beatrice Didier, Cécile Reims, Michel Butor, Michel Sicard, Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues, Jean Roudaut, Rene Micha, Gerard Legrand, Jean Pfeiffer, Jacques Laurans, Michel Carassou, Annie Lebrun, Charles Bachat, Olivier Milliard, Robert Brechon, Jules Michelet, Jerome Prieur, Xaviere Gauthier, Elsa Thoresen Gouveia, plus a gallery by Titi Parant and Henri Maccheroni's Portraits Corrigés. Profusely illustrated with artworks, mostly in b/w with some colour sections.
Very Good copy of the rarer hardcover edition in VG dust jacket with signs of ageing and some wear/small tears
1973 / 1997, English
Softcover, 280 pages, 173 x 213 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$70.00 - Out of stock
“Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or 'dematerialized.'”—Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years
In 1973 the critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a book with possibly the longest subtitle in the bibliography of art: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as a conceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new type of art-making that Lippard was intent on identifying and cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing and curating art. The result is a book with the character of a lively contemporary forum that offers an invaluable record of the thinking of the artists—a historical survey and essential reference book for the period. Lippard provides a new preface to this 1997 reprint edition.
Includes: Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Dennis Adrian, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Peter Hutchinson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Bruce McLean, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Mel Ramsden, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Seth Siegelaub, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Athena Tacha Spear, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wiley, Ian Wilson, La Monte Young
"Essential source book of documentation of the Conceptual Art, Land Art, Earth Art, Arte Povera, Minimal Art, Performance Art, Video Art movements. Documents the activities, day by day, month by month, year by year of artists including Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Dennis Adrian, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., Josef Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Peter Hutchinson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Bruce McLean, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Mel Ramsden, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Seth Siegelaub, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Athena Tacha Spear, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wiley, Ian Wilson, La Monte Young and others. "The unusual form of this provocative book intentionally reflects the chaotic network of ideas connected with so-called conceptual art or information art or idea art, in America and abroad, from 1966 to 1972. Arranged as a continuous bibliographical chronology, into which is woven a rich collection of original documents - including texts by, and taped discussions with and among, the artists involved - and annotations by Lucy R. Lippard, the book has the informal quality of a lively contemporary forum. Only a minimum of order is imposed; for the most part the reader is left to confront the curious compendium of information on his or her own, to follow changing ideas and artistic developments over the six-year period, to witness the gradual (and controversial) "dematerialization" of the art object." -- publisher's statement."
Good—Very Good copy with general light shelf wear and tanning to spine.
2017, English
Softcover, 672 pages, 20 x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Many of Them / Spain
$80.00 - Out of stock
Sealed copy, out-of-print, limited to 1000 copies.
Fashion : Cosmic Wonder, Balenciaga, Loewe, Dries Van Noten, Chanel, Comme Des Garçons, Sacai, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe, Paco, Rabanne, Off-White, Dior Homme, Olivier Theyskens, Jacquemus, Lutz Huelle, Vejas, Simone Rocha, Louis Vuitton, Courrèges, Undercover, Celine, Miu Miu, Hermès, Bernhard Willhelm, Sies Marjan, Prada, Raf Simons, John Alexander, Skelton, Olympia Le-Tan, Wendy & Jim, Koché, JW Anderson, Ligia Dias, Lemaire, Cherevichkiotvichki, Eatable Of Many Orders, Daniela Gregis, Hood By Air, Molly Goddard, Bless.
Cinema : Oliver Laxe, Paz Encina, Paul Verhoeven, Amat Escalante, Andres Di Tella, Milagros Mumenthaler, Joao Pedro Rodriges Pablo Larrain Terence Davies, Walter Salles, Jonas Trueba, Bertrand Tavernier.
Many of Them is a limited edition publication. Its aim is to offer a space for discussion in which creators can share their perspective about their own field, their languages and the problems they face in their everyday practices. It originally started as a diary in 2008 and it keeps evolving into different formats.
2018, English
Softcover, 552 pages, 19.6 × 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Many of Them / Spain
$80.00 - Out of stock
"This issue is the result of daily photo shoots on the same street of Paris from 15 May 2018 to 15 July 2018, with selected pieces from: LOEWE, BALENCIAGA, CHANEL, COMME DES GARÇONS, MIU MIU, SACAI, ISSEY MIYAKE, YOHJI YAMAMOTO, PACO RABANNE, BYREDO, GUCCI, SIMONEROCHA, OLIVIER THEYSKENS, JACQUEMUS, REALITY STUDIO, LOUIS VUITTON, CÉLINE , HERMÈS, DIOR HOMME, PRADA, RAF SIMONS, UNDERCOVER, OFF-WHITE, LEMAIRE, BLESS, JUNYA WATANABE, ÉTUDES, LAUREN MANOOGIAN, SIES MARJAN, GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY, BEIRA, GEOFFREY B. SMALL; and conversations with YOSHIYUKI MIYAMAE, WIM WENDERS, BEN GORHAM, DRIES VAN NOTEN, JAMES FRANCO, RUBEN ÖSTLUND, ECKHAUS LATTA, MARK JENKINS, TODD HAYNES AND ANDRE WALKER. Thanks to all the contributors for making it possible to accomplish this love letter to Paris and its citizens."
As New, sealed.
2012, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 21.6 x 14 cm
Published by
Zero Books / UK
$34.00 - Out of stock
Through speculative philosophy and lurid cultural objects, Slime Dynamics explores the muck of life as a darkly vitalistic substance.
Despite humanity's gradual ascent from clustered pools of it, slime is more often than not relegated to a mere residue—the trail of a verminous life form, the trace of decomposition, or an entertaining synthetic material—thereby leaving its generative and mutative associations with life neatly removed from the human sphere of thought and existence. Arguing that slime is a viable physical and metaphysical object necessary to produce a realist bio-philosophy void of anthrocentricity, this text explores naturephilosophie, speculative realism, and contemporary science; hyperbolic representations of slime found in the weird texts of HP Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti; as well as survival horror films, video games, and graphic novels, in order to present the dynamics of slime not only as the trace of life but as the darkly vitalistic substance of life.
Ben Woodard received his PhD in Theory and Criticism from Western University in 2016. From 2017–20 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the IPK (Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art) at Leuphana University where he completed a habilitation on the analytic/continental divide in philosophy through the work of F.H. Bradley. Since 2020 Ben has lectured at the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy mostly on the history, philosophy, and politics of the life sciences. In broad terms, his work focuses on the relationship between naturalism and idealism in the long 19th century. Ben also writes on science fiction and horror film and literature.
1988, German
Softcover, 96 pages, 42.5 x 30.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edition C. (Edition Crocodile) / Switzerland
$500.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, very first 1988 Swiss edition of H. R. Giger's Biomechanics, published by Edition C. (Edition Crocodile). In his classic series of oversized and visually overwhelming early art volumes, this book comprises a retrospective showcase, from 1964—88, of Giger's work, designed by and with running commentary by Giger himself, with over 200 drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and including concept art for the film Poltergeist II, and design paintings for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer albums. With a foreword by legendary Science Fiction author and longtime Giger fan Harlan Ellison, who dubs him "out latter-day Hieronymus Bosch."
Very Good copy with light wear and light pinch to spine.
2000, English / German
Softcover w. CD in printed bag, 104 pages, 23 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Raster-Noton / Chemnitz
$50.00 $25.00 - In stock -
Deluxe edition of raster-noton.oacis, the experimental audio-visual book and CD project published in 2000 by Raster-Noton, the legendary electronic music label founded in Germany in 1996, on the occasion of taktlos-bern event, 15-16 September 2000, Dampfzentrale, Bern. Edition of 3000 copies. Acoustics and optics, raster-noton.oacis goes beyond the momentary. The texts by top writers like Susanne Binas, Rob Young (The Wire), Pinky Rose, Peter Kraut (NZZ) and Martin Pesch (e.g. Frieze, Spex, Kunstforum) examine how raster-noton works on the cutting edge of electronic music, computer graphics and video animation, with which supreme ease the label moves between pop/club culture and the fine arts. Archives all discographies and performances throughout the 1990s, with graphics and photographic illustrations throughout in colour/bw. Softcover book housed in printed plastic bag — creative cover flap includes enhanced CD with audiotracks from the artists and multimedia data for Macintosh to adequately complete this state-of-the-art project. Includes tracks by Carsten Nicolai, Olaf Bender, and others via projects Noto, Impulse, Byetone, Komet, CoH, Alva Noto...
Award for "Best Books of Switzerland" 2000.
Very Good all round, some wear to bag, otherwise all perfectly preserved.
2023, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 13.5 x 20 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$58.00 - In stock -
A collection of Dan Graham's interviews and conversations with a wide array of individuals from various backgrounds and disciplines.
Dan Graham- Some Rockin' is a compilation of fifteen interviews (two of them previously unpublished) between Dan Graham and artist friends, architects, musicians, art critics, and curators from various parts of our world. In these interviews Graham's intense interest in and observation of cultural phenomena such as rock music, urbanism, architecture, corporate culture, and art world politics and their historical development overlaps and interferes with the articulated interest of the interviewers in Graham's art, sense of humour, attitude, and point of view in regard of a huge variety of topics. Two essays, besides the "Introduction," are added to this compilation- the essay "The Museum in Evolution" by Dan Graham, and an essay by the editor, Gregor Stemmrich, on the development and far reaching implications of Graham's art.
2003, English
Softcover, 258 pages, 20.3 x 22.5 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$65.00 - Out of stock
Critical writings and commentary by the Los Angeles based artist Mike Kelley.
The work of artist Mike Kelley (b. 1954) embraces performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture. Drawing distinctively on high art and vernacular traditions, including historical research, popular culture, and psychology, Kelley came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of sculptures composed of craft materials. His recent work offers dialogues with architecture and with repressed memory syndrome, and a sustained inquiry into his own aesthetic and social history. The subjects on which Kelley has written are as varied as his artistic media. They include the work of fellow artists, sound, caricature, the uncanny, UFOlogy, and gender-bending.
This book offers a diverse collection of Kelley's writings from the last twenty-five years. It contains major critical texts on art, film, and the wider culture, including his piece on the aesthetic he calls "urban Gothic." It also contains essays, mostly commissioned for exhibition catalogs and journals, on the artists and groups David Askevold, OEyvind Fahlstroem, Douglas Huebler, John Miller, Survival Research Laboratories, and Paul Thek, among others. Kelley's voices are passionate, analytic, and ironic, and his critical intelligence is leavened with touches of whimsy.
“This collection proves that [Kelley] has not only helped write history but has had an effect on it.” — Diedrich Diederichsen, Artforum
2021, English
Softcover, 244 pages, 13 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$90.00 - Out of stock
Now out-of-print, Mike Kelley — Materialist Aesthetics and Memory Illusions is a critical appraisal of Mike Kelley’s politics of culture as expressed in his visual art and writings. An essay by Laura López Paniagua, with an introduction by John Miller.
American artist Mike Kelley (1954–2012) was the mastermind behind some of the most bizarre and instantly recognizable artistic projects of the 1990s. Dedicated as he was to visual art, Kelley was also an insightful theorist who wrote prolifically about his own creations as well as the historical context in which he worked. His writing reveals a matrix of deeply felt theories regarding the aesthetics of the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s, and his concern with victim culture and repressed memory syndrome.
This book presents a new perspective on the life and work of the artist, assessing his personal philosophy via art as well as writing. Art historian Laura López Paniagua places Kelley’s work in conversation with the theories of thinkers such as Georges Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Through Paniagua’s transdisciplinary approach, Kelley’s oeuvre emerges as a stance based in materialist aesthetics.
As New.