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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
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
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.
1982, English
Softcover, 108 pages, 20.2 x 13.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
New Directions / New York
$70.00 - Out of stock
Rare first New Directions 1982 edition of Rasa, or Knowledge of the Self, by early 20th-century French spiritual para-surrealist writer, critic, poet, and early, outspoken practitioner of pataphysics, René Daumal (1908-1944). Translated with an introduction by Louise Landes Levi.
Rasa, or Knowledge of the Self; is the remarkable, and now very scarce, first gathering in English translation of essays and review articles on Hindu aesthetics and translations from the Sanskrit by the French writer Rene Daumal. A member of the Simplist group associated from 1928 to 1932 with the journal Le Grand feu ("The Great Game"), he began cultivating his East Indian studies as an extension of his active pursuit of the avant-garde. In 1932, he made the acquaintance of Uday Shankar, becoming secretary to the latter's Hindu dance troupe and accompanying it that year on its premier American tour. In his efforts to make Shankar's music and dance comprehensible to Western audiences, Daumal developed into a passionate spokesman for Indian culture, and his subsequent writings on the subject are far removed from the usual dry philological speculations of academic Orientalists. "To Approach the Hindu Poetic Art" differentiates between the Indian and European views of aesthetic experience, with special emphasis on the concept of rasa—that is, "taste" or "savor"—which Daumal sees at the heart of all Hindu art. Two essays—"On Indian Music" and "Concerning Uday Shankar"—were written at the time of Shankar's Western tour, while the selection of Daumal's "Oriental Book Reviews" deals with topics, such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which were only to spark general interest in the West decades later. The remaining sections of the collection are translations from the Sanskrit that attempt to resonate against language's deepest core.
Good copy with insect nibbles to cover edges.
1995, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 23.2 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
State University of New York Press / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Agamben's Idea of Prose published by SUNY in 1995. This book consists of prose pieces that find a new form of expression for philosophy, an expression showing the inseparability of idea and prose the very form of truth.
Good copy with corner bumping, general light wear, edge wear.
1999, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 30.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fine Arts Gallery - University of Maryland / Baltimore
$150.00 - In stock -
Scarce first extensive monographic catalogue published in conjunction with Adrian Piper's major survey exhibition held at the Fine Arts Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore, October 14, 1999 - January 15, 2000. Traveled to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, October 4, 2001 - January 13, 2002. Profusely illustrated in black-and-white and colour, alongside accompanying texts by Piper, Maurice Berger, Jean Fisher, Kobena Mercer, Laura Cottingham, and Dara Meyers-Kingsley. With illustrated checklist and bibliography. Cover features her "Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features" (1981) work.
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper (b. 1948) is an American conceptual artist and philosopher. Her work addresses ostracism, otherness, racial passing and racism by using various traditional and non-traditional media. The only African American in the early conceptual art movement of the 1960s, she has profoundly influenced the language and form of Conceptual art in America and is widely recognised today through her equally important writings.
Very Good-Fine first edition. Light tanning to edges and light bump to top-right corner.
2022, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 19.9 x 13.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Continuum / London
$50.00 - In stock -
From the preface by Alain Badiou: It is no exaggeration to say that Quentin Meillassoux has opened up a new path in the history of philosophy, understood here as the history of what it is to know ... This remarkable "critique of critique" is introduced here without embellishment, cutting straight to the heart of the matter in a particularly clear and logical manner. It allows the destiny of thought to be the absolute once more.
"This work is one of the most important to appear in continental philosophy in recent years and deserves a wide readership at the earliest possible date ... Apres la finitude is an important book of philosophy by an authnted emerging voices in continental thought. Quentin Meillassoux deserves our close attention in the years to come and his book deserves rapid translation and widespread discussion in the English-speaking world. There is nothing like it."—Graham Harman in Philosophy Today
Quentin Meillassoux's remarkable debut makes a strikingly original contribution to contemporary French philosophy and is set to have a significant impact on the future of continental philosophy. Written in a style that marries great clarity of expression with argumentative rigour, After Finitude provides bold readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a devastating critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy.
The exceptional lucidity and the centrality of argument in Meillassoux's writing should appeal to analytic as well as continental philosophers, while his critique of fideism will be of interest to anyone preoccupied by the relation between philosophy, theology and religion.
Meillassoux introduces a startlingly novel philosophical alternative to the forced choice between dogmatism and critique. After Finitude proposes a new alliance between philosophy and science and calls for an unequivocal halt to the creeping return of religiosity in contemporary philosophical discourse.
"Rarely do we encounter a book which not only meets the highest standards of thinking, but sets up itself new standards, transforming the entire field into which it intervenes. Quentin Meillassoux does exactly this."—Slavoj Zizek
Fine copy of first 2008 edition.
2023, English
Hardcover, 432 pages, 25 x 16.8 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$89.00 - In stock -
How artists in twentieth-century Germany adapted the idea of the medical or legal case as an artistic strategy to push to the fore sexualities, scandals, and crimes that were otherwise concealed.
In early twentieth-century Germany, the artistic avant-garde borrowed procedures from the medical and juridical realms to expose and debate matters that society preferred remain hidden and unspoken. Frederic J. Schwartz explores how the evocation or creation of a “case” provided artists with a means to engage themes that ranged from blasphemy to Lustmord, or sexual murder. Shedding light on the case as a cultural form, Schwartz shows its profound effect on artists and the ways it dovetailed with methods used by these figures to exploit fundamental changes taking place across the mass media of their time.
As Schwartz shows, the case was a common denominator that connected seemingly disparate works. George Grosz and Rudolf Schlichter drew on it for their violent visual art, as did architect Adolf Loos when he equated ornament with crime. Expressionists, meanwhile, approached the question of whether the so-called “mad” shared a right of public expression with those deemed sane, and examined medical and legal approaches to what society labeled as insanity. The case also took on a personal dimension when artists found themselves confronted with, or chose to engage with, the legal system. German courts prosecuted John Heartfield and others for their provocative works, while Bertolt Brecht created publicity for himself by suing the firm to whom he sold the film rights to The Threepenny Opera. Provocative and insightful, The Culture of the Case offers a privileged view of the spaces of representation in which images—in some instances, as cases—functioned at a key moment of modernity.
Frederic J. Schwartz is Emeritus Professor of History of Art at University College London. His books include The Werkbund- Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War and Blind Spots- Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany.
1986 / 2023, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$33.00 - In stock -
Named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time by the Modern Library. Anne Carson’s remarkable first book about the paradoxical nature of romantic love.
Since it was first published in 1986, Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson’s lyrical meditation on love in ancient Greek literature and philosophy, has established itself as a favourite among an unusually broad audience, including classicists, essayists, poets, and general readers. Beginning with the poet Sappho’s invention of the word “bittersweet” to describe Eros, Carson’s original and beautifully written book is a wide-ranging reflection on the conflicted nature of romantic love, which is both “miserable” and “one of the greatest pleasures we have.”
Originally published in 1986.
1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$110.00 - Out of stock
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 2 includes photographic features by Yasuhiro Yoshioka and Yoshihiro Tatsuki, the artwork of French decorator of department store mannequins and surrealist Sunday painter Clovis Trouille, Venus in Furs erotic photo shoot by Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Yokoo Tadanori, Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Alberto Martini, Félicien Rops, Rene Magritte, an incredible feature "Machine for Murder" with art by Hiroshi Nakamura, Tomi Ungerer, Koichi Tanigawa, Osamu Tsukasa, Tatsuo Ikeda, Marcel Duchamp, Seiichi Horiuchi, and others, an article on the erotica of Ukiyo-e with a fold-out colour three panel poster, the fully illustrated museum supplement on Demonology by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history, texts by Apollinaire, Burroughs, Mutsuo Takahashi, articles on laws pertaining to homosexuality, Kama Sutra, shoe fetishism, and much more.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.
1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 232 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$110.00 - Out of stock
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 3 (with cover by Bronzino, 1554) includes full-colour photographic feature by Kishin Shinoyama ("Virgin In Uniform" featuring models/artists Angela Asaoka, Akaji Maro, Yoko Ashikawa) and beautiful Shomei Tomatsu photo feature ("Scoptophilia"), the artwork of the great French cross-dressing painter-photographer Pierre Molinier, texts by Jirō Kawamura, Yumiko Kurahashi, Taruho Inagaki ("Memories of Hemorrhoids or "New Tsurezuregusa"), Akiyuki Nosaka ("Dear Penis, Goodbye"), Minoru Minamihara ("The Mystic Thought of Love in the Case of Jakob Böhme"), Takiji Kobayashi, The Fictitious Garden of Babylon by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Tsunekazu Murata ("Witch's Ax : Concerning Heresy in Medieval Europe"), translation of Franz Kafka "Metamorphosis" illustrated by Franco Gentilini, recent research on homosexuality by film critic Jin'ichi Uekusa, Kama Sutra, more Gay (Danshoku) Japanese Theater history, Marquise de Blancvilliers by Koji Nakata, and much more.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.
1969, Japanese
Softcover, 286 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$140.00 - Out of stock
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose was a groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and this, the fourth final issue, and rarest of the four, edited by critic Masaaki Hiraoka and especially designed by self-taught painter, graphic designer and political activist, Kiyoshi Awazu (!)
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. Much like an instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design as principally to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 4 includes photographic features by cinematographer Yasuhiro Yoshioka (Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidan, The Face of Another, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief), work by pioneering, self-taught visual artist and designer, Kiyoshi Awazu, Hans Bellmer, illustrations by the incredible Hiroshi Nakamura, sadomasochism in cinema, Ukiyo-e and Shunga art (erotic Japanese prints), writings by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Yukio Mishima, Taruho Inagaki, Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki, Kôichi Iijima, Jûrô Kara, Ikuya Kato, Minoru Yoshioka, Masaaki Hiraoka, Tadanori Yokoo, and Ryûichi Tamura. Much more....
Very Good copy.
2010, English
Softcover, 275 pages, 14 x 21.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Palgrave Macmillan / UK
$140.00 - In stock -
This book pushes nihilism to its ultimate conclusion by linking revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy with anti-phenomenological realism in French philosophy. Contrary to the 'post-analytic' consensus uniting Heidegger and Wittgenstein against scientism and scepticism, this book links eliminative materialism and speculative realism.
Very Good—Fine copy, previous owner's name to front endpaper, otherwise As New.
2013, English
Softcover, 344 pages, 19.8 x 12.9 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Bloomsbury Academic / London
$65.00 - In stock -
Principles of Non-Philosophy is a treatise on the method, axioms and objectives of non-philosophy and represents François Laruelle's mature philosophy.
As well as presenting the method and principles of non-philosophy, it includes a history of the development of non-philosophy, a novel conception of science, a discussion of non-philosophical causality and new theories of the subject and object of thought. Providing an introduction to Laruelle's novel theory of 'non-epistemology' or 'unified theory of thought', this volumes challenges the way we think about the traditional philosophical problems.
Bringing together all the elements of his thought developed over twenty years and laying the foundations for his later work, Principles of Non-Philosophy is arguably Laruelle's magnum opus.
Translated by Nicola Rubczak and Anthony Paul Smith
Fine—As New copy, first editon.
2013 / 2017, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Bloomsbury Academic / London
$45.00 - In stock -
A major new work by Francois Laruelle, in which he confronts another of the most radical thinkers at work in France today, Alain Badiou.
This compelling and highly original book represents a confrontation between two of the most radical thinkers at work in France today- Alain Badiou and the author, Francois Laruelle. At face value, the two have much in common- both espouse a position of absolute immanence; both argue that philosophy is conditioned by science; and both command a pluralism of thought. Anti-Badiou relates the parallel stories of Badiou's Maoist 'ontology of the void' and Laruelle's own performative practice of 'non-philosophy' and explains why the two are in fact radically different. Badiou's entire project aims to re-educate philosophy through one science- mathematics. Laruelle carefully examines Badiou's Being and Event and shows how Badiou has created a new aristocracy that crowns his own philosophy as the master of an entire theoretical universe. In turn, Laruelle explains the contrast with his own non-philosophy as a true democracy of thought that breaks philosophy's continual enthrall with mathematics and instead opens up a myriad of 'non-standard' places where thinking can be found and practised.
The two most important living French theorists finally meet head to head, Badiou the best known and Laruelle the least. What results is a true disagreement, the first in a very long time. But don't expect the usual insults: Badiou as anachronistic Maoist, or Badiou as unrepentant Platonist. Laruelle's dagger is sharper and more deadly, for his target is Badiou the philosopher!—Alexander R. Galloway, Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University
2015, English
Softcover, 296 pages, 23 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
$45.00 - In stock -
First 2015 edition.
François Laruelle's lifelong project of "nonphilosophy," or "nonstandard philosophy," thinks past the theoretical limits of Western philosophy to realize new relations between religion, science, politics, and art. In Christo-Fiction Laruelle targets the rigid, self-sustaining arguments of metaphysics, rooted in Judaic and Greek thought, and the radical potential of Christ, whose "crossing" disrupts their circular discourse.
Laruelle's Christ is not the authoritative figure conjured by academic theology, the Apostles, or the Catholic Church. He is the embodiment of generic man, founder of a science of humans, and the herald of a gnostic messianism that calls forth an immanent faith. Explicitly inserting quantum science into religion, Laruelle recasts the temporality of the cross, the entombment, and the resurrection, arguing that it is God who is sacrificed on the cross so equals in faith may be born. Positioning itself against orthodox religion and naive atheism alike, Christo-Fiction is a daring, heretical experiment that ties religion to the human experience and the lived world.
Translated by Robin Mackay.
François Laruelle is emeritus professor at the University of Paris Ouest, Nanterre la Défense (Paris X), and a lecturer at the Collège International de Philosophie. He is the author of more than twenty works of philosophy, including Principles of Non-Philosophy, Philosophies of Difference, Future Christ, and The Concept of Non-Photography.
Robin Mackay is a philosopher and editor and publisher of Collapse Journal of Philosophical Research and Development.
2010, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 12.9 x 19.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
$90.00 - Out of stock
First 2010 hardcover edition of a crucial text in the development of François Laruelle's oeuvre and an excellent starting point for understanding his broader project, Philosophies of Difference offers a theoretical and critical analysis of the philosophers of difference after Hegel and Nietzsche. Laruelle then uses this analysis to introduce a new theoretical practice of non-philosophical thought.
Rather than presenting a narrative historical overview, Laruelle provides a series of rigorous critiques of the various interpretations of difference in Hegel, Nietzsche and Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida. From Laruelle's innovative theoretical perspective, the forms of philosophical difference that emerge appear as variations upon a unique, highly abstract structure of philosophical decision, the self-posing and self-legitimating essence of philosophy itself. Reconceived in terms of philosophical decision, the seemingly radical concept of philosophical difference is shown to configure rather the identity of philosophy as such, which thus becomes manifest as a contingent and no longer absolute form of thinking. The way is thereby opened for initiating a new form of thought, anticipated here with the development of a key notion of non-philosophy, the Vision-in-One.
Fine—As New copy.
2003, English
Softcover, 234 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Routledge / London
$50.00 - Out of stock
Bogue provides a systematic overview and introduction to Deleuze's writings on music and painting, and an assessment of their position within his aesthetics as a whole. Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts breaks new ground in the scholarship on Deleuze's aesthetics, while providing a clear and accessible guide to his often overlooked writings in the fields of music and painting.
"After these books are published, there will be no need for anyone else to write a how-to-understand-Deleuze book. The clarity of the prose, the careful explanation of each difficult and important concept, and the lack of any jargon whatsoever make this the definitive commentary on Deleuze." — Dorothea Olkowski, University of Colorado
First edition. As New.
1992, English
Softcover, 188 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Ottawa Press / Canada
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1992 edition. This book provides an unconventional introduction to core philosophical issues by considering and contrasting two brief and accessible but highly influential and representative philosophical works: Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy and Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: works which, in their respective styles and methods offer the most widely divergent paradigms of philosophizing on questions of epistemology.
VG copy with tanning to spine and cover top edge.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 416 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Random House / New York
$59.00 - Out of stock
The first English-language translation of an essential, early work key to understanding the French philosopher's later thought.
In the decade prior to the publication of Inner Experience (L'experience interieure), the twentieth-century French philosopher Georges Bataille produced a nascent masterwork containing some of his most original and extensive reflections on a range of subjects. With thoughts on ritual sacrifice and military conquest, the nature of laughter, and the mechanisms of capitalism, The Limit of the Useful, as Bataille had planned to title the work, illuminates the philosopher's later corpus, yet it remained unfinished and unpublished in his lifetime, and untranslated until now.
This is the first English-language translation of what Cory Austin Knudson and Tomas Elliott argue is one of Bataille's most structurally consistent works. Paired with draft essays and plans for The Accursed Share, along with over a hundred pages of appendixes and notes, the volume distinctively elaborates Bataille's thought. The Limit of the Useful spans a decade of rich intellectual ferment in Bataille's life as he first formulated his challenge to capitalism, engaging with concepts and ideas in ways not seen in his other published works. The volume bridges the gap between Bataille's surrealist literary writings and later scientific pretensions, drawing attention to, and filling in, an overlooked lacuna in his oeuvre.
1994, English
Softcover, 388 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Duke University Press / North Carolina
$55.00 - In stock -
Queering the Renaissance offers a major reassessment of the field of Renaissance studies. Gathering essays by sixteen critics working within the perspective of gay and lesbian studies, this collection redraws the map of sexuality and gender studies in the Renaissance. Taken together, these essays move beyond limiting notions of identity politics by locating historically forms of same-sex desire that are not organized in terms of modern definitions of homosexual and heterosexual.
The presence of contemporary history can be felt throughout the volume, beginning with an investigation of the uses of Renaissance precedents in the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision Bowers v. Hardwick, to a piece on the foundations of 'our' national imaginary, and an afterword that addresses how identity politics has shaped the work of early modern historians. The volume examines canonical and noncanonical texts, including highly coded poems of the fifteenth-century Italian poet Burchiello, a tale from Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, and Erasmus's letters to a young male acolyte. English texts provide a central focus, including works by Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Donne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Crashaw, and Dryden. Broad suveys of the complex terrains of friendship and sodomy are explored in one essay, while another offers a cross-cultural reading of the discursive sites of lesbian desire.
Accessibly written, boldly interdisciplinary, Queering the Renaissance will be indispensable for literary critics, historians, and theorists seeking to understand the representation of same-sex desire in the early modern period.
Contributors. Alan Bray, Marcie Frank, Carla Freccero, Jonathan Goldberg, Janet Halley, Graham Hammill, Margaret Hunt, Donald N. Mager, Jeff Masten, Elizabeth Pittenger, Richard Rambuss, Alan K. Smith, Dorothy Stephens, Forrest Tyler Stevens, Valerie Traub, Michael Warner
Industry Reviews
"An outstanding collection . . . Not only does it contribute importantly to emerging areas of gay/lesbian studies and the history of sexuality by historicizing what has been for the most part a relentlessly presentist field; it makes significant scholarly contributions to traditional fields in Renaissance studies."-Karen Newman, Brown University
English / German
Softcover (+ CD), 188 pages, 18 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Errant Bodies / Berlin
Smart Art Press / Michigan
$70.00 - Out of stock
First English edition, long out-of-print. CD included.
Site of Sound is an anthology focusing on current trends in experimental music, sound art and audio theories, featuring writings, visual works, interviews and artist projects by leading experimental composers, sound-artists, and architects whose work concerns itself with architectural and acoustic space, sound sculpture, field/environmental investigation and recording, and site-specificity. Complementing this are theoretical, fictional and diaristic writings by contemporary authors, cartographers and ecologists."—publisher's statement.
Edited by Brandon LaBelle and Steve Roden. Artists and contributors include Alison Knowles, Achim Wollscheid, Jalal Toufic, Hildegard Westerkamp, Phillip Corner, Christina Kubisch, Giancarlo Toniutti, Jake Tilson, Brandon LaBelle, Rolf Julius, Leif Elggren, CM von Hausswolff, Steve Peters, Ralf Wehowsky, David Dunn, Christof Migone, Loren Chasse, Moniek Darge, Michael Brewster, Max Eastley, Tim Robinson, Steve Roden, Rupert Loydell, Tom Marioni, Pierre Koenig, the Stalacpipe Organ at Luray Caverns, WrK, Minoru Sato, Toshiya Tsunoda, and Jio Shimizu. Includes audio CD featuring many of the featured works.
As New.
1991, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
“Since the end of the last century,” Walter Benjamin wrote, “philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of the ‘true’ experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized, denatured life of the civilized masses. It is customary to classify these efforts under the heading of a philosophy of life. Towering above this literature is Henri Bergson’s early monumental work Matter and Memory.”
Along with Husserl’s Ideas and Heidegger’s Being and Time, Bergson’s work represents one of the great twentieth-century investigations into perception and memory, movement and time, matter and mind. Arguably Bergson’s most significant book, Matter and Memory is essential to an understanding of his philosophy and its legacy.
“It would greatly distort Bergson to minimize the amazing description of perceived being given in Matter and Memory. Never before had anyone thus described the brute being of the perceived world. In unveiling it along with nascent duration, Bergson rediscovers in the heart of man a pre-Socratic and ‘prehuman’ sense of the world.”—Maurice Merleau-Ponty
"Matter and Memory was the diagnosis of a crisis in psychology. Movement, as physical reality in the external world, and the image, as psychic reality in consciousness, could no longer be opposed. The Bergsonian discovery of a movement-image, and more profoundly, of a time-image, still retains such richness today that it is not certain that all its consequences have been drawn."—Gilles Deleuze
"Since the end of the Last century, philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of the 'true' experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized, denatured life of the civilized masses. It is customary to classify these efforts under the heading of a philosophy of life. Towering above this literature is Bergson's early monumental work, Matter and Memory."—Walter Benjamin
Translated by N.M. Paul, W.S.
Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1927. His works include Time and Free Will, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Creative Evolution, and The Creative Mind.
1988, English
Softcover, 78 pages, 30.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
KLF Publications / UK
$550.00 - In stock -
Extremely rare first 1988 edition of The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), the legendary cult publication by "The Timelords" ("Time Boy" and "Lord Rock", aliases of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, better known as The KLF). The Manual is a 'Zenarchistic' step-by-step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No. 1 "Doctorin' the Tardis". The Manual is an unparalleled expose of the reality behind the pop-music business and while names may have changed since its first issue, the mechanics of financing, producing and promoting a hit set out here remain absolutely relevant.
"Firstly, you must be skint and on the dole. Anybody with a proper job or tied up with full time education will not have the time to devote to see it through... Being on the dole gives you a clearer perspective on how much of society is run... having no money sharpens the wits. Forces you never to make the wrong decision. There is no safety net to catch you when you fall."
Very collectible in this first, self-published large format edition (KLF009B). The following editions (also very hard to find) were much smaller in format.
Very Good, clean copy, with only light wear to stiff covers and corners.
1981, English
Softcover, 102 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Society for Education in Film and Television Ltd. / London
$14.00 - In stock -
Vol. 21 No. 4 of Screen, Independent Cinema, British TV - The Future, published by the Society for Education in Film and Television Ltd., London.
Contents : JOHN CAUGHIE: Because I am King and Independent Cinema; A discussion between Marc Karlin and Claire Johnston, Mark Nash and Paul Willemen: Problems of Independent Cinema; JOHN ELLIS: At the Fountainhead (of TV History); The Independent Film-makers' Association and the Fourth Channel; British TV Today; Channel Four and Innovation; PAUL KERR: Re-Inventing the Cinema; ALAN LOVELL: BFI Regional Conference; IAN CONNELL: Edinburgh TV Festival; MICHAEL O'PRAY: On Adrian Stokes and Film Aesthetics.
G—VG copy.
2015, English
Softcover (+ black staple-bound, silk-screened metallic-cover zine), 208 + 24 pages, 20 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$290.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition (Black cover) of the out-of-print first publication on the work of Experimental Jetset featuring almost two decades of graphic design praxis. Rather than a monolithic monograph, it is a very loose, personal archive, with essays by Linda van Deursen, Mark Owens, and Ian Svenonius, plus two photographic chapters with a selection of work by the studio, covering both printed matter and the documentation of site-specific pieces and installations. To conclude is a glossary-like anthology of texts (fragments of interviews, lectures, correspondence, etc.) previously written by Experimental Jetset, selected, edited, and structured by Jon Sueda. Combined with the zine 'Automatically Arranged Alphabets'. Stapled in a screenprinted silver cardboard cover, the zine contains a typographic experiment involving software-generated compositions (part of a series of sketches made between 2014-2015).
Both publications designed by Experimental Jetset.
As New copy of the first (black) print (book was re-printed multiple times in changing cover colours).
1981, English
Softcover, 260 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Indiana University Press / Indiana
$30.00 - Out of stock
1981 first edition of Questions of Cinema by Stephen Heath, published by Indiana University Press. Stephen Heath's approach to the study of film, drawing on developments in psycho-analysis, semiotics and Marxism, is massively influential not only among cinema specialists, but also for students of art, literature and the sociology of culture. His own writings continue to be the most approachable in a notoriously difficult field.
For Questions of Cinema he has collected together a representative range of pieces, many of which are unpublished or not easily available to English readers, presenting film as a signifying practice and the cinema as a social institution of meanings. Topics treated include: the construction of space in film, narrative, the terms of the presence of people in film, relations of viewer to film, cinema and language, technology, political and avant-garde film practice ... Directors' work considered runs from Orson Welles through Hitchcock to Oshima and a number of British and American "independents."
Stephen Heath is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He is the author of The Nouveau Roman and Vertige du deplacement and has recently edited with Teresa de Lauretis The Cinematic Apparatus. He has taught and lectured on film in Europe and the United States.
Good copy general wear split to bottom spine cover edge. Erasable marginalia in pencil.