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:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2017, English
Softcover, 248 pages, 15 x 22 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$64.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Natasha Ginwala
The Contour Biennale 8, “Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium,” curated by Natasha Ginwala, brings together twenty-five international and local artists and art collectives working in lens-based media, sound, performance, drawing, and installation, to address questions related to the nation-state system and the realm of justice today. Taking place in Mechelen, Belgium, “Polyphonic Worlds” embraces the communal spirit of the biennale by including the many-sided voices that assemble in collective formations as well as discrete, individual creative positions.
This reader proposes a series of beginnings—it is a polyphonic approach that borrows from juridical and musical spheres. Launched as the online journal of the biennial, Hearings pairs texts or image-based contributions, allowing for a sense of tension and affinity to develop in the feedback loop of the two voices. Relationships around the artwork as site of evidence and testimony are thus reoriented. The multidimensional readings are not restricted to the active apparatus of law and discipline, but instead seek to unravel the synchronies of our times—the mesh of injustice in our midst.
Featuring texts and illustrated contributions by Agency, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Eric Baudelaire, Rossella Biscotti, Hunter Braithwaite and Trevor Paglen, Filipa César, Cooking Sections, Council, T. J. Demos, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Rana Hamadeh, Louis Henderson, Adelita Husni-Bey, Ho Tzu Nyen, inhabitants, Arvo Leo, Sven Lütticken, Basir Mahmood, Samuel Mareel, Dirk de Meyer, Otobong Nkanga, Pallavi Paul and Anish Ahluwalia, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Judy Radul, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, Madonna Staunton, Ana Torfs, Trinh Thi Nguyen, Susanne M. Winterling and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Ghassan Zaqtan.
Copublished with Contour Biennale on the occasion of Contour Biennale 8: “Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium” (March 11–May 21, 2017).
Design by Studio Remco van Bladel
2016, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 352 pages, 28.7 x 20 cm
Published by
Fundación Alumnos47Cosentino / Mexico City
$50.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Karen Marta. Text by Patrick Charpenel, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Teodoro González de León, Graciela Iturbide, Esquivel!, Santiago Genovés, Carlos Fuentes, Margo Glantz, Elena Poniatowska, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Leonora Carrington, Felipe Ehrenberg, Pedro Friedeberg, Juan Soriano and Eduardo Terrazas
In 2002 Hans Ulrich Obrist began his conversation with a diverse and influential group of Mexican pioneers during an exhibition at Luis Barragán's house in Mexico City. Over a decade in the making, Conversations in Mexico beautifully captures how the Mexican cultural scene has pivoted several times--perhaps most importantly around the student protests at the 1968 Olympic Games--to cultivate a wholly radical and innovative aesthetic, one that is illuminated in the iconic buildings of Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Teodoro González de León; the people and landscapes photographed by Graciela Iturbide; the music of Esquivel!; the incredible voyages of Santiago Genovés; the utopian politics and literature of Carlos Fuentes, Margo Glantz and Elena Poniatowska; the singular vision of Alejandro Jodorowsky; and the uncompromising art of Leonora Carrington, Felipe Ehrenberg, Pedro Friedeberg, Juan Soriano and Eduardo Terrazas.
Published by Fundación Alumnos47Cosentino, Mexico City
2017, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 21 x 23 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
Whitechapel / London
$50.00 - Out of stock
Without boredom, arguably there is no modernity. The current sense of the word emerged simultaneously with industrialization, mass politics, and consumerism. From Manet onwards, when art represents the everyday within modern life, encounters with tedium are inevitable. And starting with modernism’s retreat into abstraction through subsequent demands placed on audiences, from the late 1960s to the present, the viewer’s endurance of repetition, slowness or other forms of monotony has become an anticipated feature of gallery-going.
In contemporary art, boredom is no longer viewed as a singular experience; rather, it is contingent on diverse social identifications and cultural positions, and exists along a spectrum stretching from a malign condition to be struggled against to an something to be embraced or explored as a site of resistance. This anthology contextualizes the range of boredoms associated with our neoliberal moment, taking a long view that encompasses the political critique of boredom in 1960s France; the simultaneous aesthetic embrace in the United States of silence, repetition, or indifference in Fluxus, Pop, Minimalism and conceptual art; the development of feminist diagnoses of malaise in art, performance, and film; punk’s social critique and its influence on theories of the postmodern; and the recognition, beginning at the end of the 1980s, of a specific form of ennui experienced in former communist states. Today, with the emergence of new forms of labor alienation and personal intrusion, deadening forces extend even further into subjective experience, making the divide between a critical and an aesthetic use of boredom ever more tenuous.
Artists surveyed include:
Chantal Akerman, Francis Alÿs, John Baldessari, Vanessa Beecroft, Bernadette Corporation, John Cage, Critical Art Ensemble, Merce Cunningham, Marcel Duchamp, Fischli & Weiss, Claire Fontaine, Dick Higgins, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Ilya Kabakov, Boris Mikhailov, Robert Morris, John Pilson, Sigmar Polke, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Gerhard Richter, Situationist International, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andy Warhol, Faith Wilding, Janet Zweig
Writers include:
Ina Blom, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jennifer Doyle, Alla Efimova, Jonathan Flatley, Julian Jason Haladyn, The Invisible Committee, Jonathan D. Katz, Chris Kraus, Tan Lin, Sven Lütticken, John Miller, Agné Narušyté, Sianne Ngai, Peter Osborne, Patrice Petro, Christine Ross, Moira Roth, David Foster Wallace, Aleksandr Zinovyev
About the Author
Tom McDonough is Associate Professor of Art History at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of “The Beautiful Language of My Century”: Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945–1968 (MIT Press)
From the "Documents of Contemporary Art" series.
2016, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 10.6 x 16 cm
Published by
Portikus / Frankfurt
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$18.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Fabian Schöneich
Contributions by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Emily Apter, Giovanni Carmine, Omar Kholeif, Fabian Schöneich
A “politics of listening” is an intervention into and a reorganization of forms that listening takes rather than a call for free speech or for a platform for voices to be heard. Listening is a political act, a pedagogical process, and an activity that can lead to the development of an organized protocol for engagement.
In his art and research, Beirut-based artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan explores the perception of language, sound, and listening. National identity, human rights, and the administration of justice are recurrent themes in his work. The techniques used in his audio-aesthetic practice have been used to conduct forensic audio analysis for several legal investigations. This monograph includes a series of transcripts of live speech from sermons, monologues, testimonies, and interviews made over the course of the last five years.
Copublished with Kunsthalle St. Gallen and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main
Design by David Bennewith, Colophon
2016, English / German
Softcover, 540 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$70.00 - Out of stock
Having represented Beuys, Richter and Polke, German gallery owner , art publisher, art collector and curator René Block (born 1942) ranks among the central figures of the 1960s avant-garde. This publication collects writings by and interviews with Block, scanned from their original publications and organized chronologically, as well as an illustrated published history, artist portraits (taken by Block), performance ephemera, bibliography, and more. An enormous book that, via Block, encompasses the work of so many important movements and figures of 1960s - 1990s art.
Although primarily a German language publication, many of the original articles are in English. Regardless of language, the valuable historical listings translate.
1984, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 342 pages, 270 x 280 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
U.M.I. Research Press / Michigan
$150.00 - Out of stock
First, hardcover edition of "LOOKING CRITICALLY: 21 YEARS OF ARTFORUM MAGAZINE", the heavy 342 page volume anthology of the first 21 years of the world's most important modern and art journal. An incredibly valuable collection of art theory.
Edited by Amy Baker Sandback, designed by Roger Gorman and Mary Beath and published in 1984 by U.M.I. Research Press, this dense volume, bound in hardcover to the dimensions of a copy of ARTFORUM, begins with an Ed Kienholz review at the Ferus Gallery from ARTFORUM's June 1962 inaugural issue, and ends with Barbara Kruger reviewing the film "TRON" for the November 1982 issue. An amazing compendium of articles and reviews from the magazine's important first 21 years, featuring contributions by the likes of John Cage, Robert Morris, Kate Steinitz, Henry T. Hopkins, Don Factor, Robert Pincus-Witten, Dennis Adrian, John Coplans, Hilton Kramer, Harold Rosenberg, Henry Geldzahler, John Cage, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rosenblum, Dan Flavin, Boris Groys, Sam Wagstaff, Billy Kluver, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Rosenblum, Roger Shattuck, Ad Reinhardt, Mel Bochner, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Rose, Manny Farber, Michael Fried, Robert Morris, Philip Leider, Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Kruger, Jane Livingston, Lizzie Borden, Kenneth Baker, Laurie Anderson, Agnes Martin, Cindy Nemser, Sidney Tillim, Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Roberta Smith, Peter Plagens, Peter Schjeldahl, J. Hoberman, Hal Foster, Richard Flood, Carter Ratcliff, Stuart Morgan, Max Kozloff, Donald Kuspit, Dan Graham, Walter De Maria, Komar & Melamid, Edit De Ak, Lawrence Weiner, Kathy Acker, Robert Mapplethorpe, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas McEvilley, Louise Bourgeois, Ingrid Sischy, and too many more to list. Artists featured include: Josef Albers, Richard Tuttle, Jo Baer, Carl Andre, Ant Farm, Hans Arp, Max Bill, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Lee Bontecou, Constantin Brancusi, Bertholt Brecht, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Diane Arbus, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Lynda Beglis, Larry Bell, Terry Fox, James Byers, Rober Barry, Marcel Breuer, AA Bronson, Luis Buñel, Daniel Buren, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Anthony Caro, Marcel Broodthaers, John Chamberlain, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Merce Cunningham, Sonia Delauney, Walter de Maria, Bruce Connor, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Walker Evans, Dan Flavin, Marcel Duchamp, Albrecht Dürer, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Alberto Giacometti, Eva Hesse, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, John Cage, Nancy Graves, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Nancy Grossman, Walter Gropius, Hans Haacke, Hairy Who, David Hockney, Douglas Huebler, Jorg Immendorff, Donald Judd, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Keinholz, Paul Klee, Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Barbara Kruger, Jannis Kounellis, Markus Lüpertz, El Lissitzky, Rene Magritte, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Ree Morton, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzio, A. R. Penck, Irving Penn, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Larry Poons, Ken Price, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Roman Polanski, Jackson Pollock, Steve Reich, Gerrit Rietveld, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dorothae Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Lucas Samaras, Kurt Schwitters, Oscar Schlemmer, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Robert Venturi, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Saul Steinberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Taut, Jean Tinguely, Anne Truitt, Paul Wunderlich, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Alfred Hitchcock, and so many more.
Very uncommon hardcover edition, with dust jacket.
2015, English / German
Softcover, 96 pages, 13 x 19.5 cm
Published by
Kunsthalle Wien / Vienna
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$22.00 - In stock -
Edited by Gareth Long, Nicolaus Schafhausen
Texts by Jonathan Walley, Tony Conrad, Diedrich Diederichsen
Tony Conrad, who can be described as an artist, composer, musician, filmmaker, and performer, might be considered the first true “crossover artist.” Two Degrees of Separation accompanies the eponymous exhibition by Tony Conrad at Kunsthalle Wien. In his essay “A Show That’s Almost Invisible,” the critic Jonathan Walley discusses how the main works in this exhibition relate to Conrad’s interest in the subgenre referred to as the woman-in-prison film, silent music, and the idea of perspective developed during the Italian Renaissance. A conversation between Tony Conrad and Diedrich Diederichsen provides insight into the thinking of the multitalented artist and his unique position in the field of contemporary art.
Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien
2014, English
Paperback (french-folds w. DVD), 80 pages, 28 x 24 cm
Published by
80WSE Gallery / New York
$75.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
Tony Conrad: Doing the City is the first monograph printed to cover this pioneering film, video, music and installation artist's oeuvre of the last 50 years. The copiously illustrated, full-color catalogue includes essays by noted Columbia University art historian and Conrad scholar Branden Joseph; Whitney Museum Performance Curator and 2012 Whitney Biennial Curator Jay Sanders; filmmaker and Anthology Film Archives Curator Andrew Lampert; Swiss digital archivist Tabea Lurke; as well as an in-depth interview between Conrad and exhibition curator Michael Cohen examining Conrad's life and career.
The catalogue also includes a bonus DVD disc, Tony Conrad: Live at 80wse. This disc includes live performances of Conrad's classic minimalist works "Chant" and "Early Minimalism: May 1965," as well as a lengthy video conversation with Conrad as he walks through his old haunts in the Lower East Side. This volume is a distillation, documentation and expansion of the acclaimed exhibition and series of concerts and educational lectures of the same name which was held at NYU's 80WSE Gallery in 2012.
2016, English / German
Softcover, 264 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
TZK #103 addresses "poetry," a language form central to the recent shift toward affect in contemporary critical writing. Seeing the “artist-poet” as a vital site for the intersection of politics, affect, and digitality, we consider her voice and her currency from various perspectives, pro and con, across generations, analyzing her rising success, also asking what is gained and lost in this move from "rational" thought to what one feels? Scanning populist poetry, anarchist poetry, post-millennial net-poetry, the poetry of surplus-language and social media, the art historical poetic/poet-turned-object, and shades of fading Poesie, this issue, conceived by the editors with John Kelsey and Isabelle Graw explores how the seeming immediacy of #poetry and the suggestion of a hyper-personal voice correlates with current economic demand to claim visibility.
ISSUE NO. 103 / SEPTEMBER 2016 “POETRY”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
TIM GRIFFIN
WHAT IS POETRY?
JOSHUA CLOVER
OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING / Remarks on Subjectivity and Poetry
ISABELLE GRAW
THE POET'S SEDUCTION / Six Theses on Marcel Broodthaers’s Contemporary Relevance
LIZ KOTZ
WORD PIECES, EVENT SCORES, COMPOSITIONS
MONIKA RINCK
THE PROMISE OF POETIC LANGUAGE
ADA O'HIGGINS
IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE REFLECTION. DON’T LOOK IN THE MIRROR. I DON’T CARE.
CHRIS KRAUS AND ARIANA REINES
THE FEELINGS I FAIL TO CAPITALIZE, I FAIL / Chris Kraus and Ariana Reines in conversation on auto-fiction and biography
FELIX BERNSTEIN
THE IRREPROACHABLE ESSAY / On the Amazon Discourse of Hybrid Literature
DANIELA SEEL
IMMEDIACY, I MEET WITH SKEPTICISM / Three questions for Daniela Seel
MICAELA DURAND
DEVIL SHIT
KAROLIN MEUNIER
HEARING VOICES / On the reading and performance of poetry
DENA YAGO
EMPIRE POETRY
SHORT CUT
FOUR THESES ON BRANDING / David Joselit on Berlin Biennale 9
MANTRAS DER GEGENWART / Hanna Magauer über die Berlin Biennale 9
ROTATION
SEHNSUCHT NACH DER VERLORENEN STADT / Johannes Paul Raether über "spiritus" von Honey-Suckle Company
BENJAMIN BUCHLOH, ART HISTORIAN / Christine Mehring on Benjamin H. D. Buchloh’s “Formalism and Historicity: Models and Methods in Twentieth-Century Art”
ES WAR ZWEIMAL SAGTE SIE / Vojin Sasa Vukadinovic über Eva Meyers „Legende sein“
LESS IS MORE? / John Miller on Justin Lieberman’s “The Corrector’s Custom Pre-Fab House”
SO MACHEN WIR'S / Eva Geulen über „The Use of Bodies“ (Homo Sacer IV.2) von Giorgio Agamben
SHORT WAVES
Gunter Reski über Victor Man bei MD 72, Berlin / Harry Burke on Dean Blunt at Arcadia Missa, London / Rhea Dall on Stephen G. Rhodes at Eden Eden, Berlin / Tobias Vogt über Thea Djordjadze bei Sprüth Magers, Berlin / Deanna Havas on Marc Kokopeli at Lomex, New York / Martin Herbert on Fredrik Værslev at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway
REVIEWS
HABEAS CORPUS / Simon Baier über Francis Picabia im Kunsthaus Zürich
MARCEL BROODTHAERS, ART HISTORIAN’S ARTIST / Trevor Stark on Marcel Broodthaers at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
MALEREI ALS SOZIALES HANDELN? / Christian Spies über Fernand Léger im Museum Ludwig, Köln
SIMULIERTE MUSEALISIERUNG / Philipp Kleinmichel über Isa Genzken im Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
ELEGANCE IS RESISTANCE / Stephanie LaCava on Lukas Duwenhögger at Artists Space, New York
NACHRUFE / OBITUARIES
TONY CONRAD (1940–2016)
by Diedrich Diederichsen
by Jay Sanders
EDITION
MARTHA ROSLER
AMY SILLMAN
AMY SILLMAN
2016, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 24 x 29.7 cm
Published by
Walker Art Centre / Minneapolis
$95.00 - Out of stock
Published by Walker Art Center
Edited with text by Andrew Blauvelt. Text by Greg Castillo, Esther Choi, Alison Clarke, Hugh Dubberly, Ross Elfline, Craig Peariso, Tina Rivers Ryan, Catharine Rossi, Simon Sadler, Felicity Scott, Lorraine Wild with David Karwan. Interviews by Adam Gildar, Susan Snodgrass, Elizabeth Glass.
"Hippie Modernism" examines the art, architecture and design of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. The catalogue surveys the radical experiments that challenged societal norms while proposing new kinds of technological, ecological and political utopia. It includes the counter-design proposals of Victor Papanek and the anti-design polemics of Global Tools; the radical architectural visions of Archigram, Superstudio, Haus-Rucker-Co and ONYX; the installations of Ken Isaacs, Joan Hills, Mark Boyle, Hélio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida; the experimental films of Jordan Belson, Bruce Conner and John Whitney; posters and prints by Emory Douglas, Corita Kent and Victor Moscoso; documentation of performances by the Diggers and the Cockettes; publications such as "Oz" and "The Whole Earth Catalog"; books by Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller; and much more. While the turbulent social history of the 1960s is well known, its cultural production remains comparatively under-examined. In this substantial volume, scholars explore a range of practices such as radical architectural and anti-design movements emerging in Europe and North America; the print revolution in the graphic design of books, posters and magazines; and new forms of cultural practice that merged street theater and radical politics. Through a profusion of illustrations, interviews with figures including: Gerd Stern of USCO; Ken Isaacs; Gunther Zamp Kelp of Haus-Rucker-Co; Ron Williams and Woody Rainey of ONYX; Franco Raggi of Global Tools; Tony Martin; Clark Richert and Richard Kallweit of Drop City; as well as new scholarly writings, this book explores the conjunction of the countercultural ethos and the modernist desire to fuse art and life.
Huge, generous and vividly illustrated volume!
2013, English
Hardcover, 400 pages, 25.4 x 30.6 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$140.00 - Out of stock
From the mid-1970s, Mike Kelley assembled an incredibly diverse and often controversial body of work. A multi-disciplinary impresario, he created works on paper, paintings, sculpture, video, installation, and performance art that managed to be at once shocking yet humorous, and complex yet accessible. This companion volume to the much-anticipated 2013 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) brings a fresh understanding to the artist's work by seeking to address the more poetic aspects of Kelley's work through Eva Meyer-Hermann's unique curatorial approach. Here she presents individual works in new combinations that cross the boundaries of chronology, bodies of work, and former artistic project groups. Identifying themes such as architecture, language, identity, Informe, power, modernisms, nostalgia, and religion, the book represents ideas that have informed Kelley's work throughout his career. As a result, the overarching lines of his oeuvre become visible and accessible. This book features essays (by John C. Welchman, Eva Meyer-Hermann, Branden W. Joseph, and George Baker), a fully annotated plate section of abundant full-colour images of Kelley's history of work, and a newly researched and revised biography and bibliography of Kelley's work.
The publication promises to be the definitive work on the artist.
A huge publication! Extra shipping charges may apply.
1976, German
Hardcover (tri-fold w. 2 x inlaid books), 130 pages + 25 page chronology, 28 x 21 cm
1st German edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Adolf Wölfli-Stiftung / Bern
Kunstmuseum Bern / Bern
$50.00 - Out of stock
Very good copy in original illustrated boards of this handsome Adolf Wölfli catalogue published by the Fondation Adolf Wölfli, Bern, 1976.
This catalog was prepared for the major exhibition on the work of Adolf Wölfli at the Kunstmuseum Bern in 1976, organized by Elka Spoerri and a team of scholars including Harald Szeemann, Markus Ratz, Peter Bichsel, among others.
Illustrated throughout with Wölfli's drawings, writings, diagrams, music compositions, letters, etc, plus a Chronological Presentation of his life and work juxtaposed with his imaginary biographical details (adapted by Elka Spoerri and translated by Anne-Marie Thalmann); the catalogue is meticulously designed and presented in an illustrated heavy card folder which opens out into a tryptic housing both books and centred with a photograph of Wölfli. Essays by Elka Spoerri, Peter Bichsel, Jakob Wyrsch, Alfred Bader, Harald Szeemann, Theodor Spoerri and more (in German); catalogue edited by Elka Spoerri and Jurgen Glaesemer.
"Mrs. Spoerri, who sometimes jokingly referred to herself as ''Mrs. Wölfli,'' was a legend in the world of outsider art. She spent more than 20 years deciphering, transcribing, translating and indexing the often densely interwoven writing, iconography and musical scores of Wölfli, a prolific schizophrenic Swiss laborer. Consigned to Waldau, a psychiatric hospital in Bern, from the age of 30 to his death at 66 in 1930, Wölfli created thousands of drawings and 45 large illustrated books containing a total of nearly 25,000 pages. He was known in Switzerland during his lifetime but subsequently slipped into near oblivion. Mrs. Spoerri came to Wölfli's work through her husband, Theodor, a psychiatrist at Waldau who, at the invitation of the Swiss curator Harald Szeemann, helped reintroduce Wölfli's work to the art world at Documenta 5 in 1972. But Theodor, a cousin of the artist Daniel Spoerri, died in 1973, and Mrs. Spoerri became the chief guardian and interpreter of Wölfli's art". (from Spoerri's obituary, in the Times, written by Roberta Smith).
2016, English
Hardcover, 80 pages, 25 x 32.5 cm
Published by
Kunsthalle Wien / Vienna
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Witte de With / Rotterdam
$64.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Luca Lo Pinto, Samuel Saelemakers
Contributions by Defne Ayas & Nicolaus Schafhausen, Luca Lo Pinto, Charlemagne Palestine, Samuel Saelemakers, Jay Sanders
Charlemagne Palestine works from a highly personal universe of ritual, intoxication, and shamanism. Over the last four decades the artist has created an extensive body of experimental musical compositions, bodily performances, and, in later years, visual artworks inhabited by stuffed animals. To Palestine, teddy bears figure as powerful shamanic totems, which he fondly calls “divinities.”
Central to “GesammttkkunnsttMeshuggahhLaandtttt,” Palestine’s solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, is a grand piano as the sounding heart, and a new large-scale version of God-Bear Museum Model, a proposal for a new kind of museum where music and performance find a home just as easily as a painting would. Also part of the exhibition are Palestine’s extraordinary music and sound annotations, and a vast collection of works on paper, which aim to translate sound into image.
This catalogue visually documents this exhibition and features an interview between Charlemagne Palestine and Luca Lo Pinto, curator at Kunsthalle Wien, as well as an essay on Palestine’s work by Jay Sanders, curator of performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien and Witte de With
Design by Izet Sheshivari
2016, English
Softcover, 382 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Distanz / Berlin
$50.00 - Out of stock
The Present in Drag is published as a companion volume to the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, which was curated by New York collective DIS. Providing information on the works shown in the exhibition, it also includes contributions by Roe Ethridge, Simon und Daniel Fujiwara, Boris Groys, Katja Novitskova, Chus Martinez, Bjarne Melgaard, Sean Patrick Monahan, Sabine Reitmaier, McKenzie Wark, and others.
The 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art features the work and contributions of: 69, Antoni Abad, Halil Altindere, Ei Arakawa (in collaboration with Dan Poston, Stefan Tcherepnin), Korakrit Arunanondchai/Alex Gvojic, atelier le balto, Armen Avanessian/Alexander Martos (in collaboration with Christopher Roth), åyr, Will Benedict, Julien Ceccaldi, Centre for Style
(in collaboration with Anna-Sophie Berger; Burkhard Beschow & Anne Fellner; Max Brand; Rare Candy with Alden Epp, Spencer Lai, Natasha Madden, Misty Pollen, Ander Rennick & Amber Wright; Susan Cianciolo; Marlie Mul; Liam Osborne; H.B. Peace & Kate Meakin; Joshua Petherick; Lin May Saeed; Eirik Sæther), Brody Condon, CUSS Group (in collaboration with ANGEL-HO, FAKA, Megan Mace, NTU), Kathleen Daniel, Debora Delmar Corp., Simon Denny with Linda Kantchev, Cécile B. Evans, Nicolás Fernández, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Simon Fujiwara, GCC, GUAN Xiao, Calla Henkel/Max Pitegoff, Camille Henrot, Yngve Holen, Alexa Karolinski/Ingo Niermann, Kartenrecht, Josh Kline, Korpys/Löffler, Nik Kosmas, M/L Artspace, Shawn Maximo, Ashland Mines, Katja Novitskova, Trevor Paglen/Jacob Appelbaum, Juan Sebastián Peláez, Adrian Piper, Alexandra Pirici, Josephine Pryde, Puppies Puppies, Babak Radboy, Jon Rafman, Timur Si-Qin, Lucie Stahl, Hito Steyerl, TELFAR, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Wu Tsang, Anna Uddenberg, Amalia Ulman, Anne de Vries, Abu Hajar, Halil Altindere, Math Bass, Lizzi Bougatsos & Brian DeGraw, Elysia Crampton, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Isa Genzken, Juliana Huxtable, Kelela, Nguzunguzu, PATRICIA (Patricia Satterwhite, Jacolby Satterwhite, Nick Weiss), Adrian Piper, Fatima Al Qadiri, Carles Santos, Hito Steyerl, Total Freedom, Amalia Ulman, Antoni Abad, åyr/Rem Koolhaas/Hans Ulrich Obrist, Kathleen Daniel, Cécile B. Evans and Andrew Snyder-Beattie, Oleg Fonaryov and Oleksiy Radynski, Simon & Daniel Fujiwara, GCC, Boris Groys, Rob Horning, Izabella Kaminska and Simon Denny, Chus Martínez, Meredith Meredith, Sean Monahan, New Scenario, Ingo Niermann, Alexandra Pirici, Puppies Puppies, Sean Raspet, Natasha Stagg, Amalia Ulman, Sencer Vardarman, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Déborah Danowski in conversation with Michelle Sommer and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, McKenzie Wark, Will Benedict, Dora Budor, Cao Fei, Roe Ethridge, Hood by Air, Bjarne Melgaard, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Zanele Muholi, Johannes Paul Raether, Torbjørn Rødland, Akeem Smith, Martine Syms, Stewart Uoo, Nina Cristante, Sabine Gottfried, Nik Kosmas, Lesley Moon, Helga Wretman, Frank Benson, Asger Carlsen, DIS, Casey Jane Ellison, Roe Ethridge, Avena Gallagher, Saemundur Thor Helgason, Tilman Hornig, Benjamin Alexander Huseby, Chris Kraus, Bjarne Melgaard, Jason Nocito, Babak Radboy, Sean Raspet, Sabine Reitmaier, Aaron David Ross, Andrew Norman Wilson, Anonymous, Anonymous, Anonymous and others.
2015, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 17 x 23 cm
Published by
MUMA / Victoria
$20.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published to accompany the exhibition Technologism, at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) in Melbourne, 3 Oct - 12 Dec 2015, curated by Charlotte Day.
Artists: Cory Arcangel (US), Dara Birnbaum (US), Chris Burden (US), Ian Burn (AU), Antoinette J. Citizen (AU), Simon Denny (NZ), Jan Dibbets (NL), Aleksandra Domanović (SI/DE), Harun Farocki (DE), Benjamin Forster (AU), Isa Genzken (DE), Greatest Hits (AU), Martijn Hendriks (NL), Lynn Hershman Leeson (US), Matt Hinkley (AU), Jenny Holzer (US), Edward Kienholz & Nancy Reddin Kienholz (US), Oliver Laric (AT), Mark Leckey (UK), Scott Mitchell (AU), Rabih Mroué (LB), Henrik Olesen (DK), Nam June Paik (KR/US), Nam June Paik & John Godfrey (US), Joshua Petherick (AU), Matte Rochford (AU), Jill Scott (AU), Richard Serra (US), John F. Simon Jr. (US), Brian Springer (US), Hito Steyerl (DE), Ricky Swallow (AU), Jeff Thompson (US), Pia van Gelder (AU), Ulla Wiggen (US) and Dennis Wilcox (AU)
MUMA concludes its three-part series on watershed moments in art history — Reinventing the Wheel: the readymade century and Art as a Verb — with Technologism, a major group exhibition bringing together forty-three historical and contemporary artworks, including several new commissions from Australian practitioners. Technologism wrestles with the profound cultural, social and political impact technology has made on art since the 1960s.
Conservative cul-de-sac's of the community are often sceptical of technology and its ever increasing presence in our lives. However many artists — with a natural propensity for constant upheaval — have whole-heartedly embraced radical changes in technology over the last sixty years. Featuring artworks that engage both physically and conceptually with electronic systems — television, computers, the internet, smartphones — Technologism focuses on the ways artists critique and disrupt official uses of the media, or construct their own machines and data systems.
Riffing off both the aesthetic and conceptual characteristics of technology, artists in Technologism document technology's advancement in a plethora of ways: Ulla Wiggen's intricate paintings of circuit boards from the mid 1960s, see the development of an aesthetic inspired by the complex intersection of electrical wires, connectors and components, working to manipulate and rewire the physicality of technology; some thirty years later, John F. Simon's Art Appliances series of the 1990s uses the circuitry of small LCD screens to disrupt pictures and patterns, recreating them over; in Matte Rochford's video Progressively Degrading Test Pattern 2013, humble VHS tapes are copied and recopied, in a process of metaphysical reduction; while in Joshua Petherick's new work, one technology is employed to record another soon to be superseded, revealing new visual dimensions and the 'ghosts in the machine'.
A story of advancement inevitably turns into obsolescence, and Technologism seeks to document the early use of broadcast technology as a way of bridging the gap (and finding a space) between the image on the screen, the physical presence of the viewer, and the broader community. Jan Dibbet's TV as a Fireplace 1968, documents television as a collective experience — even if viewers were separated physically, they were united through time and space like pre-historic cave-dwellers by a communal broadcast. However with the advent of the internet, personal computer devices and streaming services, technology has again changed the relationship we have with the world around us to a more singular yet proliferating existence.
A history of DIY jamming and hacking presents the way artists have continued to subvert conventional uses of technology and challenge the status-quo, from the internet as militarily-designed, to corporately-exploited, civilian-employed, artistically-manipulated, and back again. For instance, Lynn Hershman Leeson's work investigates how media is used as a tool for censorship and political repression, while Simon Denny's work co-opts the aesthetic and rhetoric of language of multinational corporations in order to question their power. In presenting these works and others, Technologism seeks to consider what is the value of such subversion, or is it merely a perpetuation of the problem?
Artist Hito Steyerl asks, 'is the internet dead?' Although, hyperbolic in its prognosis, Technologism recognises that sceptical questions such as this are an important part of how artistic practice negotiates technological advancement. Technologism proceeds from the idea that technology in all its forms, physical and immaterial, needs to be interrogated in order to be perpetually remade.
Technologism considers changes in infrastructure, such as telecommunication networks and the internet, and the cultural implications of technological innovation and considers from the position of the developers of these technologies as well as from the end user. Technologism asks 'how does technology effect artistic practice?' As well as, 'how can artistic practice effect technology?'
Fully illustrated catalogue features texts by Charlotte Day, Philip Brophy, Bridget Crone and Sean Dockray. Designed by Yanni Florence.
2016, English / Albanian
12“ vinyl LP and catalogue in gatefold cover,24 pages, 31 x 31 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$30.00 $10.00 - In stock -
I Have Left You the Mountain
Edited by Simon Battisti, Leah Whitman-Salkin, Åbäke
With contributions by Etel Adnan, Mourid Barghouti, Michel Butor, Claire Fontaine, Yona Friedman, Anri Sala, Michael Taussig, Yanis Varoufakis, Ornela Vorpsi, Finn Williams; the singers of Fier, Vlorë, Himarë, and Tirana
“I Have Left You the Mountain,” published on the occasion of the Albanian Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presents ten new texts written by contemporary writers and thinkers on the architecture of displacement. These texts have been set to music and sung by some of the last remaining groups of Albanian iso-polyphonic singers, an art form now protected as “intangible cultural heritage” by UNESCO.
A living art form in step with the generations of migration and transition, “singing migration” has been a core part of processing departure, longing, and return. The Albanian Pavilion is a space of collective listening; of “individuals in company.”
“I Have Left You The Mountain” initiates a conversation about the urbanism of displacement, projecting the Albanian case onto an international stage, with the express intention to transmit that dialogue and its speculations back into Albania.
The singers of Fier: Petrit Canaj, Llazar Dumi, Kastriot Halihoxha, Nesim Meno, Muharrem Mezani, Guri Rrokaj, Fatmir Tahiraj, Shaban Zeneli; the singers of Vlorë: Adriatik Cenko, Viktor Gjoka, Sinan Gjoleka, Vendim Kapaj, Piro Latifaj, Dejrim Mustafaraj, Trifon Malaj; the singers of Himarë: Luljeta Çipa, Valentina Gerdhuqi, Violeta Gerdhuqi, Zaharulla Koka, Polite Merkuri, Eglanda Prifti, Vojsava Zenelaj; the singers of Tirana: Dhurim Ballo, Sotir Ballo, Nazo Celaj, Trifon Golemi, Hyso Xhaferraj
Published on the occasion of the Albanian Pavilion at the15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Design by Åbäke
2015, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 135 x 203 cm
1st edition,
Published by
Dey Street Books / New York
$42.00 - Out of stock
"There are few artists who inspire such reverence as Kim Gordon. In Girl in a Band she tells with complete openness the story of her family, her work in the visual arts, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music and her band. It is a rich and beautifully written memoir, taking us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave birth to and nurtured Sonic Youth and the alternative revolution in popular music they spearheaded. But at its core, Girl in a Band is an examination of what partnership means - and what happens when it dissolves."
2000, English
1st Edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Purple Books / Paris
$160.00 - Out of stock
The great Kim Gordon hardcover book and CD from Purple Books, published in 2000 to accompany the exhibition 'Kim's Bedroom', curated by Kim Gordon at Mu - De Witte Dame, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Superbly balanced range of work from Gordon herself, along with Mike Kelley, Raymond Pettibon, Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola, Jutta Koether, Susan Cianciolo, Rita Ackermann, Sadie Benning, Thurston Moore, Tamra Davis, Mark Gonzalez, Kathleen Hanna, Cameron Jamie, Richard Kern, Dave Markey, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Tony Oursler and many more.
CD is included with the book/catalogue "Kim's Bedroom" published for the exhibition 'Kim's Bedroom', curated by Kim Gordon at Mu - De Witte Dame, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
From the press release: "In Kim's Bedroom, conceptualizer and guest curator Kim Gordon introduces the spectator to an extraordinary, personal world in which visual arts, photography, film/video, fashion and music have come together. The project included an exhibition, a music performance, and a film night. During the opening of the exhibition, a publication designed by the Paris-based 'Purple' was presented. This publication contains works by most of the artists participating in Kim's Bedroom, plus a CD."
CD includes tracks by: Mike Kelley, John Fahey, Laetitia Sadier, Kim Gordon, Ikue Mori, DJ Olive, Cat Power, Raymond Pettibon, Andrew Tull, Raymond Pettibon, Jutta Koether, Jim O'Rourke, Ikue Mori, Adris Hoyos, Tom Verlaine, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Yoshimi P. We, Rita Ackermann, Atari (Boredoms), David Nuss (No Neck Blues Band), Yoshida (Psycho Ba Ba) and Shoji (Japan Overseas).
2016, English / German
Softcover, 176 pages, 17.5 x 26 cm
ed. of 1600,
Published by
Präsens Editionen / Luzern
$18.00 - In stock -
zweikommasieben is a Swiss magazine that has been devoted to the documentation of contemporary club culture since the summer of 2011.
zweikommasieben #13 deals with questions about the professional and social proximity of the featured artists (among many other things). Featured are Aïsha Devi & Tianzhuo Chen, Helm, Heatsick, Dean Blunt, Lumisokea, Thug Entrancer, Mathew Dryhurst, Nick Klein, Lane Stewart & Rabit, Butter Sessions, Don’t DJ, Felix Kubin, Phase Fatale, Lustmord, etc. Co-published with Motto Books.
1997, English
Softcover, 157 pages, 21.5 x 26 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
MACBA / Barcelona
$150.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this late 1990s, long out-of-print, comprehensive catalogue/artist monograph on the great Mike Kelley, published in conjunction with a substantial 1997 Mike Kelley retrospective held at the Museu D'Art Contemporani De Barcelona (MACBA).
Profusely illustrated with a history of sculptures, paintings, videos, installations and performances by Mike Kelley, this book also features text contributions by Jose Lebrero Stals, Anthony Vidler, Elizabeth Sussman, Timothy Martin, and Mike Kelley himself (all texts in English), along with an exhibition checklist, exhibition history and bibliography.
A fantastic and generous book on one of the most important artists of our time.
2015, English
Hardcover, 220 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 24.4 x 30 cm
Published by
Black Inc / Melbourne
$60.00 - Out of stock
On the eve of All the World's Futures at the 2015 Venice Biennale, Schwartz City is pleased to announce the publication of Let's Destroy Work, the first major monograph on Marco Fusinato. A comprehensive overview of the past two decades of Fusinato's projects in art and music, featured projects include FREE (1998–2004), a series of guerrilla performances in unsuspecting music stores around the world; Mass Black Implosion (2007–), an ongoing series of propositional scores; Aetheric Plexus (2009–2013), a viewer-triggered installation of white noise and white light; and TM/MF (2000), a collaborative project with Thurston Moore.
Included is new writing by Branden W. Joseph, Professor in Art History at Columbia University; a text by US-based music critic Byron Coley; and essays from insurrectional anarchist writer Alfredo M. Bonanno's publication 'Let's Destroy Work, Let's Destroy the Economy'. The book is rich in colour and mono illustrations of Fusinato's works, and a selection of reference images.
Marco Fusinato's practice references the rhetoric of radical politics (its ambitions and failures), noise as music and the conditions and conventions of conceptual art. Through wide-ranging forms of work in gallery contexts and performances, he foregrounds moments of disruption and impact in which lie the possibility of a shift in perception or change in the course of events. Fusinato performs regularly in the international experimental music underground, obliterating the guitar into improvised noise-spit tsunamis.
2008, English
Hardcover, 367 pages, 22.3 x 17.2 cm
Published by
Gertrude Contemporary / Melbourne
MONA / Hobart
$40.00 - Out of stock
“When we separate music from life we get art.” John Cage
This catalogue presents the exhibition which was part of the 2008 Melbourne International Arts Festival, 21:100:100 featured 100 works by 100 sound artists produced in the 21st Century. This exhibition was the first significant survey to explore and chronicle the extraordinary developments that have occurred in contemporary sound art in the 21st century.
Curated by Alexie Glass, Emily Cormack, Marco Fusinato, Oren Ambarchi
Collaborators: Fabio Ongarato, Jared Davis, Kristy Edmunds
Today, Sound Art and Experimental Music enjoy an infrastructure all of their own, with journals, labels, music festivals and websites devoted to its critical and creative discussion. This ambitious concept was developed with the premise that the foundations of both sound art and contemporary art share a similar spirit of enquiry and experimentation, and whilst the discussion of their relationship is a lively one, this exhibition proved the first to present such a breadth of sound work to Australian audiences within a gallery context.
21:100:100 was developed by Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in collaboration with internationally acclaimed Australian artists Oren Ambarchi and Marco Fusinato. It included work made in the preceding eight years chronicling new directions and innovations in sound art. These works were played on 100 headphones suspended within the gallery, creating a space for the visitor to pick their way through sound art’s many and varied aural and conceptual evolutions.
As co-curator Alexie Glass has stated “Melbourne has always enjoyed an incredibly lively sound art community and has been a central site in the investigation and presentation of sound art in a music festival context. 21:100:100 provides a truly unique and crucial opportunity to fully engage with sound art, and to trace it’s varied thematic threads, and innovative stylistic developments. It is the first exhibition of its kind and is one of the most important sound art exhibitions in Australian history.”
The exhibition spanned a range of threads and styles within the art form, featuring work by a diverse selection of the worlds leading practitioners with artists including: ¾ Had Been Eliminated [Italy] Lucas Abela [Australia] Oren Ambarchi [Australia] Natasha Anderson [Australia] Thomas Brinkmann Philip Brophy [Australia] Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood [Australia] Neil Campbell [UK] Eugene Carchesio [Australia] Andrew Chalk [UK] Chicks On Speed [Europe] Rod Cooper [Australia] Corrupted [Japan] Martin Creed (Owada) [UK] Alvin Curran Dead C [New Zealand] Jim Denley [Australia] The Donkey's Tail [Australia] Kevin Drumm [USA] Fennesz [Austria] Robin Fox [Australia] Cor Fuhler [Netherlands] Ellen Fullman [USA] Marco Fusinato [Australia] Alistair Galbraith [New Zealand] Bernhard Gunter [Germany] Will Guthrie [Australia] Keiji Haino [Japan] Florian Hecker [Germany] Joyce Hinterding [Australia] Kanta Horio [Japan] Ryoji Ikeda [Japan] Incapacitants [Japan] Jandek [Usa] Philip Jeck [UK] Rolf Julius [Germany] Junko [Japan] Kemialliset Ystavat [Finland] Christina Kubisch [Germany] Kuupuu [Finland] Alan Lamb [Australia] Graham Lambkin [UK] Annea Lockwood [Europe/Nz/USA] Francisco Lopez [Spain] Alvin Lucier [USA] Sachiko M [Japan] Lionel Marchetti [France] Christian Marclay [USA] Masonna [Japan] Maher Shalal Hash Baz [Japan] Mattin (Basque) Merzbow [Japan] Gordon Mumma Muura [Australia] Toshimaru Nakamura [Japan] New Blockaders [UK] Phill Niblock [USA] Hermann Nitsch No Neck Blues Band [USA] Jerome Noetinger [France] Jim O’rourke [USA] Optrum [Japan] Paeces [Australia] Charlemagne Palestine [USA] Paul Panhuysen [Netherlands] Pateras/Baxter/Brown Pita [Austria] Francis Plagne [Australia] Stephen Prina [USA] Eliane Radigue [France] Tom Recchion [USA] Rizili [Australia] Steve Roden [USA] Keith Rowe [UK] Runzelstirn + Gurgelstock [Switzerland] Philip Samartzis [Australia] Marcus Schmickler [Germany] David Shea [Australia/USA] Skaters [USA] Snawklor Michael Snow [Canada] Sonic Youth [Usa] Ssl (Robbie Avenaim/Dale Gorfinkel) [Australia] Striborg [Australia] Taku Sugimoto [Japan] Sun City Girls [USA] Sunn O))) [USA] Akio Suzuki [Japan] Yasunao Tone [Japan/USA] Toshiya Tsunoda [Japan] Voice Crack [Switzerland] Brendan Walls [Australia] Scott Walker [UK] Chris Watson [UK] Ralf Wehowsky [USA] Whitehouse [UK] Otomo Yoshihide [Japan] Richard Youngs (UK) Z'ev (USA)
2013, English
Hardcover (cloth-bound), 208 pages (193 b/w ills.) + photograph insert, 219 x 313 mm
Edition of 25 (signed and numbered),
Published by
Rainoff / Sydney / New York
$200.00 - Out of stock
Mass Black Implosion (Treatise, Cornelius Cardew) by Marco Fusinato has been published by Rainoff to coincide with the exhibition of the same title held at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, 9th October – 16th November, 2013.
In his ongoing series Mass Black Implosion (2007–) Marco Fusinato takes scores by avant-garde composers, drawing lines from every original note to an arbitrarily chosen point as propositions for new noise compositions, or moments of extreme consolidation and intensity, as if every note were played at once.
Mass Black Implosion (Treatise, Cornelius Cardew) is a large-scale work based on seminal composition Treatise by the English experimental music composer Cornelius Cardew (1936 – 1981). This canonical work of modern Western music comprises 193 pages of graphic score: lines, symbols, and various geometric shapes that eschew conventional musical notation. It has been described as the most significant graphic score of the Twentieth Century.
This limited hardcover publication has been produced in an edition of 25 copies (signed and numbered) and presents all 193 parts of this monumental work by Marco Fusinato. Each score has been reproduced at 65% of its original size and is accompanied by a loose colour photograph documenting the installation.
Mass Black Implosion (Treatise, Cornelius Cardew) will be launched on 8th October, 2013 to coincide with the exhibition opening at Anna Schwartz Gallery and is available directly from Rainoff and World Food Books.
2012, English
Softcover (concertina fold-out), 6 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Artspace / Sydney
IMA / Brisbane
$5.00 - In stock -
Published on the occasion of Marco Fusinato’s The Color of the Sky Has Melted, a major solo exhibition of the artist’s recent projects at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and Artspace, Sydney in 2012.