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.
2025, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 20.3 x 12.7 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$38.00 - In stock -
A masterful study of the elusive French composer, on the centenary of his death.
Composer, pianist, and writer Erik Satie was one of the great figures of Belle Époque Paris. Known for his unvarying image of bowler hat, three-piece suit, and umbrella, Satie was a surrealist before surrealism and a conceptual artist before conceptual art. Friend of Cocteau and Debussy, Picabia and Picasso, Satie was always a few steps ahead of his peers at the apex of modernism. There's scarcely a turn in postwar music, both classical and popular, that Satie doesn't anticipate. Moving from the variety shows of Montmartre's Le Chat Noir to suburban Arcueil, from the Parisian demimonde to the artistic avant-garde, cult critic Ian Penman's masterful Erik Satie Three Piece Suite is an exhilarating and playful three-part study of this elusive and endlessly fascinating figure, published to mark the centenary of Satie's death.
2010, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 26 x 18.5 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Lars Müller / Zürich
$350.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of the first edition of Windfall Light: The Visual Language, edited by Lars Müller and published in 2010.
ECM Since its founding in 1969, ECM has been dedicated primarily to jazz and contemporary classical music and is a leading international label in both these fields. ECM has also received acclaim for its unique cover designs, which have always been an integral part of its productions. Over the years, the collaboration between Manfred Eicher, the label's founder and producer, and designers including Barbara Wojirsch, Dieter Rehm and Sascha Kleis has produced an aesthetic of the cover that initiates a dialogue between the photographic image and the music. After the highly acclaimed “Sleeves of Desire” of 1996, which offered an overview of ECM cover art, this volume presents the covers that have been created since then. These covers are arranged here in the form of a visual score that invites personal interpretations and individual discoveries. The entire collection of ECM cover art chronicles a program that has written modern music history — it is also a manifesto declaring the congruence of the visible and the audible in the form of the CD.
A veritable art book, beautifully designed and printed, “Windfall Light” is an insightful exploration of ECM’s visual aesthetics. This 448 page soft-cover book includes approximately 1300 colour and black and white illustrations, as well as penetrating essays by leading writers.
The volume includes a fully-illustrated catalogue of all of ECM's releases to date, incorporating all of the artwork featured in “Sleeves of Desire”, and offering an invaluable resource to collector's and enthusiasts of one of the world's most significant record labels.
Near Fine copy.
1993, English
Softcover (spiral-bound), 32 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Robert Paredes / Iowa City
$65.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, private issued publication of "Empty", written in Iowa City, Summer, 1990-Spring 19993 by experimental composer Robert Paredes (1948-2005) at the invitation of American composer and music theorist Benjamin Boretz (b. 1934), and first read at the Birmingham Art Association, Alabama, April, 1993. This publication also published around that time, in 1993. A beautiful meditation on Emptiness.... On music-making, writing, procrastination, aging, distraction, virtuosity, isolation, perfection, immortality, the self, the other, the body, the absolute, the words.... Typeset, signed (in print), illustrated and published by Paredes.
Robert Paredes (1948-2005) was a composer, multi-reed performer (clarinet, saxophone, flute), essayist, multi-media artist and teacher whose output was consistently and consciously experimental. Expressing his deep interest in language, social justice and interpersonal relationships, his work was often a context to investigate the essence of music, its meaning and its role in society.
Very Good—Near Fine copy, light back cover wear.
1976 / ?, English
Softcover, 24 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
David Dunn / California
$65.00 - Out of stock
Privately issued full colour facsimile of the 1976 graphic score for "String Quartet #2; two violins, viola, cello and 2-channel tape" by Harry Partch's assistant and Harry Partch Ensemble member, Californian experimental composer and researcher David Dunn. Signed and dated (in the print) 4/76.
Composer David Dunn was born in 1953 in San Diego, California. He was an assistant to the American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Harry Partch Ensemble for over a decade. He has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. His compositions and soundscape recordings have appeared in many international forums, concerts, broadcasts, and exhibitions. In addition to his multiple books, recordings and soundtracks, he has been anthologized in over 50 books and journals. Much of his current work is focused upon the development of listening strategies and technologies for environmental sound monitoring in both aesthetic and scientific contexts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Very Good copy, light wear and light rusting to staple.
1990, English
Softcover (single staple-bound), 26 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
David Dunn / California
$35.00 - Out of stock
Privately issued in 1990 by Harry Partch's assistant and Harry Partch Ensemble member, Californian experimental composer and researcher David Dunn. First book of a series of 4 staple-bound publications that document the work of Dunn's collected works in his own words. With introductions by composers Norman Lowrey and Kenneth Gaburo, this first book entitled "Music, Language and Environment" catalogues Dunn's recording projects with personal texts, performance info and personnel, including fellow artists Chris Mann, Bill Viola, Warren Burt, Phil and Mary Edelstein, Robert Paredes, and many more. Further publications covered Dunn's writings, scores, etc.
"PREFACE:
The materials gathered within this collection reflect a period of thought and investigation roughly spanning two decades. While this research might appear to constitute some sort of linear development, my experience has been more akin to the rotation of a geometric object: I have been examining a set of issues and ideas from various perspectives as facets of some larger process of questioning. Hopefully the individual compositions or essays can be evaluated within an intellectual context of their status as research reports rather than as isolated works of art. This at least has been my intention. Towards this aim I have not statements or concepts which I now reject. My criteria for inclusion of material has been based upon the verity of representation of my investigative process.
Some of the various essays, recordings and scores have been previously published in a variety of journals and anthologies. I wish to thank these publications for their interest and support: The Aerial, Crawl Out Your Window, IS Journal, Interval, Kunstforum, Leonardo, Lingua Press, Music Works, News of Music, Perspectives of New Music, Post Neo, Stereoplay, and Words and Spaces: University Press of America.
—David Dunn 10/90"
Composer David Dunn was born in 1953 in San Diego, California. He was an assistant to the American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Harry Partch Ensemble for over a decade. He has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. His compositions and soundscape recordings have appeared in many international forums, concerts, broadcasts, and exhibitions. In addition to his multiple books, recordings and soundtracks, he has been anthologized in over 50 books and journals. Much of his current work is focused upon the development of listening strategies and technologies for environmental sound monitoring in both aesthetic and scientific contexts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Very Good copy, light wear and light rusting to staple.
1984, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 100 pages, 22 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bard College / New York
$35.00 - In stock -
Rare 1984 issue of the small press photocopied contemporary music magazine issued by the Music Department of Bard College, edited by Sarah Johnson. Each issue with wraparound covers listing a calendar of events (films, concerts, theatre), the contents packed with essays, transcribed lectures, conversations, historical articles, record reviews, reading lists, compositions, visual scores, text art, sound poetry, and various artworks, facsimiles and reproductions.
G—VG copy with general tanning, wear and foxing.
1984, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 100 pages, 22 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bard College / New York
$35.00 - In stock -
Rare 1984 issue of the small press photocopied contemporary music magazine issued by the Music Department of Bard College, edited by Sarah Johnson. Each issue with wraparound covers listing a calendar of events (films, concerts, theatre), the contents packed with essays, transcribed lectures, conversations, historical articles, record reviews, reading lists, compositions, visual scores, text art, sound poetry, and various artworks, facsimiles and reproductions.
VG copy with general tanning, wear and foxing.
1992, English
Softcover (loose-leaf w. paperclip), unpaginated, 23 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Mercurial Editions
Elwood
$55.00 - In stock -
Rare first edition of Australian text artist and performer Berni Janssen's 1992 work, Mangon, published by Mercurial Editions in Elwood, Melbourne, a private press "specialising in publishing new work which explores, poetic form, imaginal philosophy and psychology and non realist approaches to art and image." Edition of only 250 copies, hand-bound with a single large paper-clip. In 1992, the publication was launched with speaking voice and found object sounds in collaboration with experimental composer Warren Burt.
"One of Australia’s treasures, berni janssen, a pioneering sound poet, is fully focused on the auditory as a means of experiencing the world. The voice of berni is loud and clear. She takes us with her into the auditory world as it is changing and asks us to reconsider "the strange echo chamber we live in."—Dr Ros Bandt, International Environmental Sound Artist
Berni Janssen is a text artist who works with words in all their forms, printed, spoken, performed. She has a collaborative multidisciplinary practice spanning over thirty-five years, working with composers, performers, visual artists and community members to make word inspired art. She is renowned for her evocative and captivating performances. Her publications include Possessives and Plurals (Fillia Press. 1985); Xstatic (Post Neo. 1988); mangon (Mercurial Editions. 1992) and Lake & Vale (PressPress. 2010). Poems have been published in magazines including Cordite, Heat, Meanjin, Overland, Extra and performed on radio and at festivals around the world. She lives in Dja Dja Wurrung Country in the Central Highlands of Victoria.
Good copy with rusted paper-clip, rubbing to frot cover, wear to extremities.
2013, English
Softcover, 20 pages, 24 x 15.5 cm
Hand numbered edition of 70,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Kowhai Press / Christchurch
$200.00 - In stock -
Gorgeous and exceptionally rare limited edition, letter-pressed collection of lyrics by New Zealand musician Peter Stapleton (1954–2020) of The Terminals, Vacuum, The Pin Group, Dadamah, Flies Inside the Sun, Eye, and Scorched Earth Policy. Hand-set and hand-printed nocturnally on an Albion press by Peter Vangioni at the Kowhai Press, St Albans, Christchurch, N.Z., during the autumn and winter months of 2013. Monoprint frontispiece by New Zealand artist Jason Greig. Faux leather card covers, metallic print and thread-bound.
Collects the lyrics spanning the record releases of the Terminals, plus Vacuum, Victor Dimisich Band, Dadamah, etc. (Flying Nun, Siltbreeze, Xpressway, Majora, Raffmond...), plus previously unpublished lyrics.
Printed in an edition of 70 of which this is no. 29. Hand-numbered.
Perfect copy. As New.
1993, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 220 pages, 13.6 cm x 19.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seikyūsha / Tokyo
$110.00 - In stock -
New Tribalism In Sexual City, Prick Up, Rubbers, Gay Fetishism, Consensual SM, Modern Primitives, Pre-Tech Tattoo, Fakir Musafar, Ignore the White Culture, Body Manipulation, Hyper Pornography, Harrison Marks, Allen Jones, She-Male, Mannequin, Kinbaku, Seppuku, Kyoko Hamura, Rightbrain, Trevor Brown, Roman Slocombe, Medical Art, Forest Of Guts, Auto Erotic, J. P. Witkin, Anatomic Images, Discipline, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkoglar, Aktion, Meat Performance, Trans-Gender, Transmutation, John Gacy, Ed Gain, Death ...
First hardcover edition of "Terminal Body Play", written by Merzbow's Masami Akita and published only in Japan in 1993. Covering all the above subjects with b/w illustrations, "Terminal Body Play" explores a plethora of physical utopias, including a revived ancient culture of body decoration and manipulation, the pleasure of the body perverted by BDSM, the dematerialised body of performance art, the aesthetics of murder, medicine and anatomy, and so much more. Merzbow is a noise project created in Tokyo, Japan in 1979 under the direction of noise technician Masami Akita. As well as a legendary underground noise artist, Akita is a prolific writer in Japan and frequently writes on the arts, music, erotica, esoterica, modern architecture, and animal rights, with articles on emerging subcultures and underground extreme cultures appearing in publications like SM Sniper, Studio Voice and Fool's Mate. His development of the Merzbow aesthetic ran parallel with a series of investigative books in which he catalogued and introduced a vast amount of hermetic types of music, sexual practices and autonomous creativity to a fairly conservative (but not close-minded) Japanese audience. "Terminal Body Play" is one of these very books.
First edition, Japanese text, fine copy with fine "textured" and illustrated dust jacket.
2000, English
Hardcover (w. obi), 280 pages, 24 x 17.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rockin' On / Tokyo
$160.00 - In stock -
First 2000 edition and first printing. Hiromix Works is iconic Tokyo photographer Hiromix's selection of her best photographs spanning 1995—2000. Born Tokyo in 1976, Hiromix (Hiromi Toshikawa) is a Tokyo photographer who, along with Yurie Nagashima and Mika Ninagawa, is considered the main instigator of the girly photo boom in the 1990s, a photographic movement in which Japanese teenagers, and especially, teenage Japanese women from the early 90's, took center stage in a new visual language. Championed by photographers Takashi Homma and Nobuyoshi Araki, to whom he dedicated this book, Hiromix was selected by Araki to win the 11th New Cosmos of Photography award in 1995 with a series of photographs depicting high school life from a teenager's perspective — images of her half-eaten breakfast, blurred portraits of her friends, stuffed toys, flowers, musicians, images that helped to build a world of the intimately feminine, personal and unknown to a nation accustomed to overly sexualized representations of women, created, of course, by men. In 2001, Hiromix was the youngest person ever to win the 26th Kimura Ihei Photography Award. Hiromix Works is a heavy hardcover compilation of her best 1990's photographs, during the time where she was also working as a photographer for ‘Rockin' On’, a Japanese bi-monthly music magazine, and publisher of this prized first book. Issued only in Japan, includes many works shot for Studio Voice, Purple, Rockin' On, Self Service, Purple Sexe, Visionaire...
VG—Near Fine first edition, with obi.
1994, English
Softcover, 132 pages, 27 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
AK Press / Edinburgh
$100.00 - Out of stock
First 1994 AK Press printing of the book anthology of the first three issues of ANSWER Me!, the short-lived but ever-controversial Los Angeles zine edited by Jim and Debbie Goad and published between 1991 and 1994. At the forefront of 1990's "End of the Century"/anti-humanist/nihilist/piss-take underground rant/black humour publishing, ANSWER Me! focused on the social pathologies of interest to the Los Angeles–based couple ("Two Against The World, honest assholes in a world of dishonest ones"). The anthology sold thousands before going out of print. ANSWER Me! has been blamed for a White House shooting and a triple suicide. It has been banned in several countries and put on trial for obscenity in the USA. Chock full of well-written rants, interviews, and articles on topics ranging from music and subcultures to sex, love, hate, murder, serial killers, and suicide, this fat, gorgeous anthology contains the legendary rant-zine’s first three issues in their entirety.
"ANSWER Me! was so wonderful because it reminded me of when my uncle Joey turned me on to National Lampoon when I was eight years old. After National Lampoon I was always looking for uglier forms of humor, and then comes along ANSWER Me!"—Shaun Partridge, Partridge Family Temple
The mouthpiece of Jim and Debbie Goad, ANSWER Me! also featured written and illustrated contributors, from comic artists to serial killers, such as Adam Parfrey (Feral House/Apocalypse Party), Mike Diana, Boyd Rice, Peter Sotos, Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez, Molly Kiely, Jim Blanchard, Frank Kozik, Randall Phillip, Nick Bougas, Mark David Chapman, John Wayne Gacy, Trevor Brown, Kenneth Bianchi, Gary M. Heidnik, Phil Cisco, Marcel Ruijters, Larry Wessel, Tom Crites, Shaun Partridge, Ottis Toole, Henry Lee Lucas, Timothy Patrick Butler, Coop, who contributed the cover artwork to the anthology (and also the following issue 4), and others.
Issue No. 1 (October 1991) features interviews with Russ Meyer, Timothy Leary, Holly Woodlawn, Kid Frost, Public Enemy, Iceberg Slim, and pieces on Bakersfield, California, Sunset Boulevard, masturbation in literature, and Twelve-Step programs.
Issue No. 2 (July 1992) features Anton LaVey, David Duke, Al Goldstein, El Duce of The Mentors, the Geto Boys, Ray Dennis Steckler, 100 serial killers and mass murderers, Vietnamese gangs, and Mexican murder magazines.
Issue No. 3 (July 1993) features Jack Kevorkian, Al Sharpton, NAMBLA, the Kids of Widney High, Boyd Rice, Suzanne Muldowney, 100 suicides, guns, Andrei Chikatilo, pedophilia in Steven Spielberg's work, Mexican deformity comics[clarification needed], paintings and drawings by murderers, and a prank call to a suicide hotline.
"THIS IS HATE LITERATURE. IF YOU AREN'T FILLED WITH HATRED, THIS BOOK ISN'T FOR YOU. IT'S NOT WHAT YOUR MOTHER WARNED YOU ABOUT, BECAUSE THE OLD BITCH COULD NEVER IMAGINE SOMETHING SO VILE.
YOUR STUBBY, UNDESERVING FINGERS HOLD THE ENTIRE FIRST THREE ISSUES OF ANSWER Me! MAGAZINE-HERE ARE THE GENESIS, EXODUS, AND LEVITICUS OF THE "BIBLE OF HATRED." ANSWER Me! WAS CREATED BY TWO HUMANS WHO WERE BRAVE ENOUGH TO DENY THEIR OWN HUMANITY. THEY HAVE SAVAGELY SWALLOWED EVERY EXISTING SOCIAL PATHOLOGY, SLOSHED THEM AROUND INSIDE THEIR BILIOUS STOMACHS, AND REGURGITATED THE ONLY MAGAZINE WORTH HATING.
HATRED IS THE ONLY RATIONAL RESPONSE TO AN UNLOVABLE WORLD. LOVE IS FOR EVERYONE;
HATRED IS FOR THE FEW. IF YOU READ ANSWER Me!, YOU WILL BUILD SELF-ESTEEM
BY EXPLOITING THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS. THROUGH THE FINE ART OF "SCAPEGOADING," YOU WILL LEARN TO BLAME THE WORLD FOR YOUR PROBLEMS.
HATE EVERYONE YOU SEE TODAY.
YOU'LL FEEL BETTER.
HATRED IS THE EASY WAY OUT.
HATRED WILL HEAL YOU.
HATRED IS THE ONLY ANSWER."
—book jacket blurb
Mature audiences only!
VG copy with wear to extremities.
1980, English
Softcover (staple + tape bound), 76 pages, 29 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Experimental Art Foundation / Adelaide
$380.00 - Out of stock
Exceptionally rare private-issue publication documenting the Experimental Art Foundation (EAF) Performance Week, March 1980. The festival, directed by Noel Sheridan, centred around Carclew House, Adelaide, and featured the work of Brian Abraham, Arch-y Brothers (Pram Factory), Art Circus, Chris Barnett, Richard Boulez, Ross Boyd, Peter Callas, Domenico de Clario, → ↑ → (Tsk Tsk Tsk), Graeme Davis, Ross Digby, Lionel Doolan, EG (Chris Mann, Paul Pendergast, Peter Munnie, Hugh McSpedden), F.A.C.K (F Martins, A. White, C. Brooks, K Turner, K. Flugelman), Dale Franks, Ann Fogarty, Sandra Greentree, Adrian Hall, Elizabeth Honeybun, Jan Hubrechsen, Kathy Marmour, Robert McDonald, Kevin Mortensen, Bruce Lamrock, Steve Turpie, Peter Hopcraft, Jill Orr, Mike Parr, Jackie Redgate, SALT workers (C. Brooks, P. Cheslyn, A. Davy, K Flugelman, F. Martins, B. Sachs, D. Watt, A. White, S. Wigg, D. Kreckler), SIDE F/X (G. Aldridge, J. Lawes, W. Hutchins, M. Shirley, R. Maude, M. Kolodrovic, T. Reid, K. Stanton, L. Lee), Strachan and Pearce, David Tolley and Bruce Tolley, Karen Tyler, Peter Tyndall, Donald Walters, Dave Watt, Arthur Wicks, Dave Young... no less!
Profusely illustrated with artist pages packed with photographic documentation, texts, drawings, and more. Two page introduction text by Noel Sheridan. Printed and published by EAF for the participants, this is an incredibly rare and important document of the history of radical performance art in Australia in the 1980's.
The EAF was founded in Adelaide in 1974 by a small group of artists, curators and theorists, with a mission to promote art that interrogated the status quo, was only incidentally aesthetic, and, by definition, was radical. This important national and international organisation promoted experimental art practices and became renowned for supporting early performance art in Australia.
Very Good copy with a small scuff/knick to the bottom of the front cover, light cover marking.
From the collection of Australian artist (and performer during the event) Bernhard Sachs (1954—2022), whose name is penned to the top of the first blank page, date "'80".
1978, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 64 pages, 29.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
ANU Arts Centre / Canberra
$250.00 - In stock -
Rare catalogue published on the occasion of Act 1: an exhibition of performance and participatory art, 4—12 November 1978, spanning the ANU Arts Centre, Commonwealth Gardens and Civic Centre, Canberra. Organised by the ANU Arts Centre, Act I drew Australian artists to Canberra for the "first of a series of exhibitions directed towards specific aspects of recent and experimental art". Profusely illustrated artist pages throughout with photo documentation, collage, drawings, and artist's texts. Artists include Mike Parr, Ian Hamilton, Terry Smith and Media Action Group (Ian Burn, Nigel Lendon, Terry Smith, Michael Dolk, Kieren Finnane, Mary Kinney, Ian Milliss, Anne Sutherland...), Leigh Hobba, Kevin Mortensen, John Nixon, John Davis, Marr Grounds, Ken Unsworth, John Fisher, Liz Honybun, David Kerr, Richard and Pat Larter, Tony Twigg, Lesley Savage, Terry Smith, Tony Twigg, Bob Ramsay, Noel Sheridan, Arthur Wicks, Jillian Orr, Richard Tipping, Jim Cowley, Donald Walters... Includes critical essays by Paul McGillick and Terry Smith on performance art and private and public work, plus further texts by organisers Ingo Kleinert, Diana Ashcroft Johnson, Mildred Kirk. The catalogue also operates in as a document of the exchanges between the organisers and the artists, laying bare the operations and budget, reproducing the open letter to the invited artists along with a selection of the signed responses outlining the artistic concepts, all reproduced in full facsimile. Signatures and transcribed concept responses of contributing artists also make up the wrap-around cover design. Also of particular interest for the contribution by Terry Smith and Media Action Group, who formed in 1977 at Sydney University around the Australian members of the Art & Language group, who had recently returned to Australia. The group produced slide shows on the ideological bias in media treatment of advertising, uranium mining, new technology and the history of May Day. This work is stamped "withdrawn because titled 'performance'" in the contents.
Very Good copy with light wear to cover extremities/light spine pinching. Toned pages from age.
2009, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 360 pages, 21 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Ediciones Polígrafa / Barcelona
$140.00 - In stock -
Since the mind-1960s, Dan Graham (Urbana, Illinois 1942) has produced an important body of art and theory that engages in a highly analytical discourse on the historial, social and ideological functions of contemporary cultural systems. He is a highly influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both as a practitioner of conceptual art and a well-versed art critic and theorist. Graham s work questions the relationship between people and architecture and the psychological effects it has on us. His work highlights the awkwardness that occurs when intimate moments or details are rudimentarily broadcast in an impersonal manner, as he continues to investigate the voyeuristic act of seening onself reflected, whilst at the same time watching others. This monograph analyzes his main works and collects some of seminal writings by the artist.
With a text by Alexander Alberro.
First English hardcover edition, now out-of-print.
2020, English
Hardcover, 504 pages, 30 x 22 cm
Ed. of 500 copies,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Haallicht / Germany
$45.00 - In stock -
Second volume of Haallicht Black/Death Metal "zine" featuring 72 interviews (written in English) and photography/art spanning 504 pages bound in hardcover in an edition of 500 copies. Features 13th Moon, Abysmal Lord, Adversarial, Altar Stomper, Antediluvian, Antiversum, Baxaxaxa, Black Curse, Black Majesty, Black Witchery, Blasphemy, Blood Chalice, Blood Rites, Caveman Cult, Chaos Cascade, Charnel Altar, Cntmpt, Conqueror, Dakhma, Dead Congregation, Death. Void. Terror., Death Worship, Dsknt, Diocletian, Dodenbezweerder, Doomed And Disgusting, Dysangelium, Funereal Presence, Genocide Shrines, Grave Miasma, Gut, Hellfire Deathcult, Hetroertzen, Horna, I I, Incantation, Irkallian Oracle, Karloff,– Knokkelklang, Kringa, Kvr, Malthusian, Mare, Nortfalke, Nuclearhammer, Nyogthaeblisz, Occvlta, Of Feather And Bone, Qrixkuor, Sadistik Exekution, Sepulchral Zeal, Slagmaur, Spectral Voice, Temple Desecration, Tetragrammacide, The Ruins Of Beverast, Thorybos, Verdunkeln, Void Rot, Voreus,–
Witchcraft, Witches Brew, Wrathprayer, Iron Bonehead Productions, Ván Records, Alexander Kavtea, Black Arts Of Mine, Lichtlaerm Audio, A Sinister Purpose, House Of The Holy, Compilation Of Death, Feed The Beast...
As New copy.
2017, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 44 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$30.00 - In stock -
Gabi Losoncy is a young woman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who makes various decisions with outer consequences based on how she feels, and to the end of expressing how she feels.
Generally working in unlayered, linear audio since her time as a member of Good Area, she expands her practice on a case-by-case basis, making great effort not to do anything unnecessary.
She has released and has relationships with Alien Passengers, c a d u c., Impulsive Habitat, Recital, and Kye, and her book, Second Person, is now available & was recently described as a "self-help book from hell".
1999, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 17 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Black Dog Publishing Ltd / London
$220.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first 1999 edition of this definitive resource on the work of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle.
"These people are the wreckers of civilisation", exclaimed the Conservative Member of Parliament Nicholas Fairbairn in 1976. His outburst was meant to describe four artists and musicians: Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter - members of the seminal band Throbbing Gristle. What "these people" had done to deserve such an epithet, and what they were about to do, is the subject of this book.
Throbbing Gristle are widely lauded as the band that invented industrial music, and their influence can be observed across today's musical landscape: from house and techno to industrial death metal. Wherever experimental electronic music is being made, Throbbing Gristle's influence can be felt.
"Wreckers of Civilisation recalls a time which despite volumes of print remains occluded, obdurate, even intimidating: that moment before the conservative reconstruction. To be awake in London in the late 1970s was to be plunged into turmoil: externally manifest in riot, internally within various forms of damage and depression and, if one felt brave or driven, extreme aesthetics. COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle mark the furthest reach of that impulse: even more so than Punk, they plunged into a technological and personal examination of the dark side - the forbidden, the taboo, the dystopian future on the doorstep. Today this might seem like science fiction or deliberate shock tactics, but then it seemed like reportage, front line dispatches from a convulsed country."
Heavily illustrated and complete with a chronological list of actions, concerts and exhibitions, discography, filmography, bibliography and much more, this heavy volume has become an invaluable and sought after resource on TG, COUM Transmissions, and Industrial Records.
Simon Ford is a freelance writer and art historian. He was previously Research Associate in Craft and Design and Curator of the Design Council Slide Collection at Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as being a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He received his PhD in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2000. He is the author of Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle (1999, 2017, Black Dog Publishing). His most recent book is The Situationist International: A User's Guide (2006, Black Dog).
Very Good copy.
2018, English
Hardcover, 152 pages, 32 x 25 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Timeless Edition / Paris
$200.00 - In stock -
First 2018 regular hardcover edition of NEKROPHILE – “Archives & Documents” by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Culled from Genesis’s private, mostly unpublished archives, “Archives and Documents” presents 152 full color pages of crucial early art terrorism from h/er little seen Nekrophile zine, reproduced here in full. Nekrophile magazine was conceived in 1968 by GPO as a single issue. The collages, drawings, poems and texts gathered in it deal with the themes that later prevailed in the iconography of Industrial Music. This volume also displays ultra rare and previously unseen TG and PTV documents selected by GPO. Edited by Nicolas Ballet with personal explanations and insights added by GPO, this volume is an essential visual document of Gen’s contributions to art and culture from the mid 1960s onwards with a strong emphasis on that most controversial and rewarding period of the late ’70s and early ’80s.
Edition of 500 copies, out-of-print.
1991, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket + obi), 128 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heibonsha / Tokyo
$65.00 - In stock -
Wonderful photo-book chronology of the world of Shūji Terayama (1935—1983) and his experimental theatre troupe Tenjō Sajiki (with Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, Fumiko Takagi, ...), a major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene of the 1960s and 70s. Terayama's activities encompass a who's-who of the Japanese avant-garde arts and literature of the time. This book visually documents it all; the filmography, performances, installations, happenings, exhibitions, posters, publications, and all else that resonated from Japan’s most revered and provocative avant-garde film-maker and his collaborators. Profusely illustrated with hundreds of illustrations in colour, duo and b/w with Japanese commentary, biographies and chronology. A wonderful, visually mind-blowing reference for anyone interested in the work of Terayama, Tenjō Sajiki, Surrealist performance, or Japanese avant-garde underground (Angura) theatre.
Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. In 1967 Terayama founded Tenjō Sajiki with Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi, a Japanese experimental theater troupe. A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.
Very Good—Near Fine
2025, English
Softcover, 100 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Ed. of 600 copies,
Published by
Noise Receptor / Melbourne
$17.00 - In stock -
Noise Receptor Journal Issue no.13 features long-form and details interviews with: The Black Maghreb, Born Erased, Old Tower, Wilt, Xn Recordings. Essay: Trading in the Currency of Culture: a post-industrial underground perspective. Dominion of Flesh 10 Years of Cloister Recordings Festival Report + photos. Reviews: 50+ detailed reviews. Artwork: cover and 10+ pages of original artwork by James P. Keeler (aka WILT).
Limited to 600 copies.
2024, English
Softcover, 100 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Ed. of 600,
Published by
Noise Receptor / Melbourne
$17.00 - In stock -
Noise Receptor Journal Issue no.12 features long-form and details interviews with: BJ Nilsen, Innere Front, No Guard, TeHÔM, Tone Generator & The Body Without Organs. The Society of Control: in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Tone Generator (aka Dominic Guerin). Hospital Festival Osaka show report + photos. CLUTCH 2 show report + photos. Reviews: 50 detailed reviews. Artwork: cover and 9 pages of artwork by Tone Generator (aka Dominic Guerin).
Limited to 600 copies.
1992, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 238 pages, 22 x16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seikyūsha / Tokyo
$200.00 - Out of stock
MB, Negativland, SPK, Nocturnal Emissions, Werkbund, Asmus Tietchens, Monte Cazazza, Throbbing Gristle, William S. Burroughs, Aleister Crowley, COME, Whitehouse, Esplendor Geometico, Lustmord, Ramleh, Club Moral, Mail Music, The Hafler Trio, Organum, The New Blockaders, Etant Donnes, Pirate Radios, P16.D4, S.B.O.T.H.I., Anti Records, Gum, Trax, MC5, Gordon Mumma, Boyd Rice / NON, Vagina Dentata Organ, The Haters, RRR Records, Schimpfluch, Entre Vifs, Moholy Nagy, Luigi Russolo, Carcass....
First (only) hardcover edition of the seldom seen and highly coveted "Noise War", written by Merzbow's Masami Akita and published only in Japan in 1992. Long out-of-print, "Noise War" surveys 10 years of noise, tracing developments and interests in the work of Burroughs and Crowley into the the birth of industrial music, power electronics, experimental noise and noise art/performance, bionic noise, metal alchemy, noise electronics, anti-information and avant-garde radio, mail art, noise collage/exchange music, media attack, record destruction, ambient noise, and much more, delving into the work of keys artists and record labels from all over the world within the survey period, but also influential historical figures. Heavily illustrated throughout in black and white with record sleeves, posters, photographs, and finishes with Akita's compiled noise record list.
Merzbow is a noise project created in Tokyo, Japan in 1979 under the direction of noise technician Masami Akita. As well as a legendary underground noise artist, Akita is a prolific writer in Japan and frequently writes on the arts, music, erotica, esoterica, modern architecture, and animal rights, with articles on emerging subcultures and underground extreme cultures appearing in publications like SM Sniper, Studio Voice and Fool's Mate. His development of the Merzbow aesthetic ran parallel with a series of investigative books in which he catalogued and introduced a vast amount of hermetic types of music, sexual practices and autonomous creativity to a fairly conservative (but not close-minded) Japanese audience. "Noise War" is the most sought after of these very books.
Japanese text, fine copy with fine metallic endpapers, metallic illustrated hardcovers, and illustrated dust jacket. Tight with little-to-no wear.
1999, English
Softcover, 186 pages, 15.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cityful Press / Seattle
$200.00 - In stock -
First, only edition of "Think of The Self Speaking : Harry Smith — Selected Interviews", published in 1998 by Cityful Press and long out-of-print. In this incredible collection you will find the flavour and texture of experimental filmmaker, music anthologist, and enigmatic polymath Harry Smith’s conversation, his rambling, obscure, luminous, cantankerous genius. This collection of interviews spans Harry Smith's long and influential life in American arts and letters. They cover a quarter-century, touching on the full range of Smith's activity as a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker, obsessive collector, folk music anthologist, visionary painter, student of Native American lore, anthropologist, cosmographer, alchemist, hermetic scholar, occultist, autodidact, classic American eccentric, and all-around explorer of the possibilities of human consciousness and creativity. Jordan Belson writes, "THINK OF THE SELF SPEAKING is the next best thing to being with Harry himself-perhaps better, certainly safer. The interviews are remarkably similar to his collage films. A brilliant mind unhinged." Includes an introduction by Allen Ginsberg.
Very Good copy with only light shelf wear.