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
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
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.
2021, English
Softcover, 368 pages, 14 x 21.1 cm
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$36.00 - In stock -
In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century.
Funny Weather brings together a career's worth of Laing's writing about art and culture, examining their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O'Keeffe, reads Maggie Nelson and Sally Rooney, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, she celebrates art as a force of resistance and repair, an antidote to a frightening political time.
We're often told that art can't change anything. Laing argues that it can. Art changes how we see the world. It makes plain inequalities and it offers fertile new ways of living.
1997, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 30.5 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Federico Motta Editore / Milan
$750.00 - Out of stock
The best book on Enzo Mari that barely exists! Published in a limited edition in 1997 and immediately out-of-print, this beautifully produced, comprehensive monograph on the work of Italian designer Enzo Mari (1932—2020) is an in-depth authoritative survey of his entire oeuvre and theory, profusely illustrated throughout with photographs and drawings of all of his designs, accompanied by essays, reflections, texts by Mari, comprehensive index and a wonderful interview with Enzo Mari himself, all in bi-lingual English and Italian. An important, and extremely collectible reference book on one of the most important designers of the 20th century. Edited by theorist, historian and critic of architecture and design François Burkhardt, who was editor-in-chief of Domus magazine at the time of publishing this book.
"Enzo Mari is an unusual person, an artist, an impassioned humanist. His unusual ability to combine idea and form makes him an exceptional presence on the international design scenario. He has managed to elaborate a coherent theoretical corpus, particular attention being dedicated to social and political problems. At the same time, he has succeeded in creating a magnificent collection of designs, all different, rational and sincere; this includes some true works of art and of great beauty, without doubt as many points of reference for the history of twentieth century design. Mari is radical in his ideas and subtle in his designs. but irreprehensible in both cases, standing apart from post modern kitsch as too from pseudo functionalist orthodoxy, not creating a style but assenting a philosophy. He is a non-conformist and has tried to use his work to change the environment, introducing a percentage of Utopia into every project." — from the book jacket.
Enzo Mari (1932-2020) was an Italian designer, graphic designer, illustrator and artist. His works range from design to painting, from graphics to gallery displays. He was both a teacher and a political activist. Today he is considered one of the greatest theorists of design.
Very Good copy, only light cover wear. Includes inserted colour invite/fold-out card brochure for the exhibition Enzo Mari "Le Travail Au Centre" at the University of Montréal, Canada, as part of Les Conférences Internationals, École de Design Industriel, held in 1999.
2013, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 11.5 x 16.5 cm
Edition of 1000,
Published by
Surpllus / Melbourne
$24.00 - Out of stock
Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction is an anthology of new texts by artists, curators, art historians and writers who are self-confessed science fiction fans. The linking point is the idea of science fiction as a platform for the building of alternate art histories. This collection is concerned with the ways in which science fiction might be performed, materialised or enacted within a contemporary context.
Edited by Amelia Barikin and Helen Hughes, with contributions by: Adrian Martin, Amelia Barikin, Andrew Frost, Anthony White, Arlo Mountford, Brendan Lee, Charles Green, Chris McAuliffe, Chronox, Damiano Bertoli, Darren Jorgensen, Dylan Martorell, Edward Colless, Helen Hughes, Helen Johnson, Justin Clemens, Lauren Bliss, Matthew Shannon, Nathan Gray, Nick Selenitsch, OSW, Patrick Pound, Philip Brophy, Rex Butler, Ryan Johnston, and Soda_Jerk.
Designed by Brad Haylock.
2021, English
Hardcover, 350 pages, 27.4 x 13.6 cm
Published by
Repeater Books / London
$40.00 - In stock -
A selection of Repeater authors choose their favourite horror stories for this new anthology, with each writing a critical introduction for the story of their choice.
Edited by novelist and Repeater publisher Tariq Goddard and “horror philosopher” Eugene Thacker, The Repeater Book of the Occult is a new anthology of horror stories that explores the ever-shifting boundaries between the natural and supernatural, between the real and the unreal. As the editors note, “In the grey zone between what appears and what is, lies horror. But horror writing is also a certain disposition, a way of thinking based on a suspicion regarding the world as it is given to us, and a doubt regarding the accepted ways of explaining that world to us – and for us.”
The Repeater Book of the Occult includes introductions by Repeater authors such as Leila Taylor, Carl Neville, Rhian E Jones, and Elvia Wilk, and features horror classics by Algernon Blackwood, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as forgotten gems by authors such as W.W. Jacobs, Mark Twain, and Sheridan Le Fanu.
Eugene Thacker is the author of several books, including In The Dust Of This Planet (Zero Books, 2011), and Cosmic Pessimism (Univocal, 2015). He is Professor at The New School in New York City.
Tariq Goddard was born in London in 1975. He read Philosophy at King’s College London. His first three novels were shortlisted for various awards including Whitbread (Costa) First Novel Award, Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. His fourth and fifth books won the Independent Publishers Gold medal for Horror Writing and Silver medal for Literary Fiction respectively. He lives on a farm in Wiltshire with his wife and children.
2011, English
Softcover, 179 pages, 14.3 x 22.2 cm
Published by
Zero Books / UK
$39.00 - In stock -
"Thacker's discourse on the intersection of horror and philosophy is utterly original and utterly captivating..." Thomas Ligotti, author of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
The world is increasingly unthinkable, a world of planetary disasters, emerging pandemics, and the looming threat of extinction. In this best-selling book Eugene Thacker suggests that we look to the genre of horror as offering a way of thinking about the unthinkable world. To confront this idea is to confront the limit of our ability to understand the world in which we live - a central motif of the horror genre. In the Dust of This Planet explores these relationships between philosophy and horror. In Thacker's hands, philosophy is not academic logic-chopping; instead, it is the thought of the limit of all thought, especially as it dovetails into occultism, demonology, and mysticism. Likewise, Thacker takes horror to mean something beyond the focus on gore and scare tactics, but as the under-appreciated genre of supernatural horror in fiction, film, comics, and music.
2021, English
Softcover, 456 pages, 21.6 x 14 cm
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$89.00 - Out of stock
A groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France's inhumane treatment of prisoners.
Authors: Michel Foucault and Prisons Information Group
Edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn
Translated by Perry Zurn and Erik Beranek
Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970–71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet.
These archival documents — public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions — trace the GIP's establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault's concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish.
Presenting the account of France's most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today.
2021, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 13 x 20 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
Intermedia and Expanded Cinema, both as critical approach and artistic practice, left an indelible mark in a period of Japanese art history that is broadly considered to be one of its most dynamic moments in the wake of its postwar reemergence.
Despite the burgeoning interest in academic and curatorial circles in this segment of Japanese art history, the paucity of readily available material in a language other that Japanese has meant the local context, particularly the ways in which the terms were critically debated, was relatively neglected.
Rather than assuming the interpretations of the terms were the same as their counterparts abroad, we decided to commission translations of a selection of key texts that we felt were instrumental in shaping the specific discourse around these terms.
Through these translations, our hope is that Japanese debates on intermedia can contribute to international discourse, and that works of Japanese Expanded cinema can be preserved, reenacted and analyzed with these discussions in mind.
Contributors: Go Hirasawa, Ann Adachi-Tasch, Julian Ross, Adachi Masao, Iimura Takahiko, Ishiko Junzō, Ishizaki Kōichirō, Jōnouchi Matoharu, Manabe Hiroshi, Matsuda Masao (a.k.a. Hirosawa Mina), Miyai Rikurō, Ōe Masanori, Satō Jūshin (Shigechika), Tone Yasunao.
Produced by Collaborative Cataloging Japan. Edited by Ann Adachi-Tasch, Go Hirasawa, Julian Ross.
2010, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 112 x 178 mm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$45.00 $15.00 - In stock -
“As for the more long-term solutions, this is certainly a job for the avant-garde, be it in the shape of architects, supercilious tourist intellectuals, secret societies or some other semi-conspiratorial cluster... This demands an avantgarde a little more proactive ... and responsive than a Brechtian Villa Aurora… It’s hardly a surprise that, over time, most Americans have become suspicious of people sympathetic to avant-gardism, assuming them all to be fascist hyena pigs, ipso facto no less. But in point of fact, America offers a rich tradition of politicized avant-garde conspiracies, the Black Panthers being only the most impressive recent example to have caught the public eye. To be honest, anything in my own book was long tucked away in their laundry list already.”
Solution 168–185: America is the fourth book in the Solution series. Opting for the United States of America, “still the most proficiently colonial place I know,” Zolghadr provides a compilation of highly entertaining “solutions,” where the objective is not the education of America so much as the pleasure of a text that purports to be just that.
Tirdad Zolghadr is an independent writer/curator based in Berlin. He writes for frieze and other publications, and is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine. Zolghadr most recently organized the national pavilion of the United Arab Emirates, Venice Biennale 2009, and the long-term project Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie (with Nav Haq). He’s a curatorial advisor to the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Zolghadr currently teaches at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Design by Zak Kyes
2012, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 10.8 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$39.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
With an introduction by Boris Groys and essays by Claire Bishop, Keti Chukhrov, Ekaterina Degot, Jörg Heiser, Terry Smith, Anton Vidokle, and Sarah Wilson
Beyond the view that multiple, globally dispersed conceptual art practices provide a heterogeneity of cultural references, Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions propose much more: other dimensions altogether, other spatiotemporal politics, other timescales, other understandings of matter, other forms of life—not only as works, but as a basic condition for being able to perceive artworks in the first place. Could it be that the Moscow Conceptualists were so elusive or saturated with the particularities of life in a specific economic and intellectual culture that they precluded integration into a broader art historical narrative? If so, then their simultaneously modest and radical approach to form may present a key to understanding the resilience and flexibility of a more general sphere of global conceptualisms that anticipate, surpass, or even bend around their purported origins in canonical European and American regimes of representation, as well as what we currently understand to be the horizon of artistic practice.
Design by Jeff Ramsey, cover design by Liam Gillick
2012, English
Hardcover, 88 pages, 66 b/w ill., 11 x 18 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$30.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Joan Sallas, a virtuoso of the fold, has meticulously researched and mastered the history and techniques of the art of the fold. With the banquet table as setting, his expertise and philosophy pour forth in the form of splendid, folded linen.
In this precious book, Sallas shares his folding wisdom, which Charlotte Birnbaum contextualizes in two essays on the history of napkin folding. The texts are accompanied by an illustrated catalogue of folding techniques.
2017, English
Hardcover, 176 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$30.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
People have used honey, dates, and fruits to sweeten their dishes since time immemorial, but with the introduction of sugar—“white gold”—into cooking and baking, a whole array of delightful flavors and culinary possibilities was unearthed. Sugar was the building block for edible sculptures and model palaces made for festivals and celebrations thousands of years ago, and the main ingredient in lavish creations for Rococo and Baroque banquets. A life without cakes, pastries, tarts, soufflés, meringues, petits fours, or marzipan would be unimaginable! In Bon! Bon!, Charlotte Birnbaum uncovers the wonderful world of all things sugary through surprising anecdotes and historical accounts, each accompanied by delectable recipes that are sure to satisfy any sweet tooth.
On the Table is a series of publications edited by Charlotte Birnbaum that explores the encounter between food and art.
With illustrations by Christa Näher
Translated by Nicholas Grindell
Design by Harald Pridgar
2018, English
Hardcover, 68 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$32.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Gilbert & George never cook and always eat out. Back in 1969, however, the artist duo hosted The Meal, an elaborate dinner party that included thirteen guests, Princess Margaret’s butler, a chef who prepared a meal from a Victorian cookery manual, and the guest of honor, artist David Hockney. While the art world of the time was largely characterized by Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptual art, Gilbert & George developed an entirely unique philosophy and combined their daily lives with their artistic vision; in short, their art and life are one! Charlotte Birnbaum took a trip to London’s East End to visit the immaculately dressed pair to discuss The Meal and other curious projects from their fifty-year collaboration. Also included here are photos and memorabilia from the singular event.
On the Table is a series of publications edited by Charlotte Birnbaum that explores the encounter between food and art.
Design by Harald Pridgar
2014, English
Hardcover, 228 pages (10 b/w and 12 color ill.), 11 x 18 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$56.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Charlotte Birnbaum
Illustrations by Jan Hietala
Apart from the legendary and widely extolled exceptions, humans up to this point have fed themselves like ants, mice, cats and oxen. With us, the Futurists, the first human cuisine is born—that is to say, the art of feeding. Like all the arts, it excludes plagiarism and demands creative originality. It is no accident that this work is being published in the midst of a world financial crisis, the development and outcome of which apparently cannot be determined; what can be determined, however, is the dangerous and dispiriting panic it engenders. This panic we counter with a Futurist cuisine: in other words, optimism at the table.
In 1932, F. T. Marinetti and his collaborator Fillìa published The Futurist Cookbook, a manifesto-as-culinary-innovation. Replete with experimental recipes (the founder of Futurism, Marinetti, is known to have ranted about the social dangers of pasta eating), the book is a multilayered exploration of cultural metabolisms, with the dining table as its centerpiece, of course!
Translated by Barbara McGilvray
Design by Harald Pridgar
2019, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 10.8 x 18 cm
Published by
Bergen Kunsthall / Norway
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$44.00 $15.00 - In stock -
Jill Johnston—cultural critic, auto/biographer, and lesbian icon—was renowned as a writer on dance, especially on the developments around Judson Dance and the 1960s downtown New York City scene, and later as the author of the radical-feminist classic Lesbian Nation (1973). This book collects thirty texts by Jill Johnston that were initially published in her weekly column for The Village Voice between 1960 and 1974. The column provided a format in which Johnston could dissolve distinctions between the personal, the critical, and the political. Her writing took turns and loops, reflecting its times and contexts, and set a stage for the emergence of Johnston as a public figure and self-proclaimed radical lesbian that defied any prescribed position.
Johnston’s original texts are accompanied by three new contributions by Ingrid Nyeboe, Bruce Hainley, and Jennifer Krasinski, as well as an appendix with archival material related to a panel Johnston organized in 1969, titled “The Disintegration of a Critic: An Analysis of Jill Johnston.”
Edited by Fiona McGovern, Megan Francis Sullivan, Axel Wieder
Texts by Jill Johnston; contributions by Bruce Hainley, Jennifer Krasinski, Ingrid Nyeboe
Design by HIT
2017, English
Softcover, 292 pages, 11.2 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$62.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Santiago Alba Rico, Heather Anderson, Ann Cotten, Fiona Duncan, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Boris Groys, Elfriede Jelinek, Georgy Mamedov and Oksana Shatalova, Metahaven, Momus, Ingo Niermann, David Pearce, Frank Ruda, Georgia Sagri, Joshua Simon, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Timotheus Vermeulen
The members of Communists Anonymous (COMA) share an extreme sense of empathy and justice, and therefore detest more or less any form of private property. COMA members restrain themselves from any effort to overcome capitalism before there is a new convincing model at hand of how to actually implement communism. The speculative self-help of COMA understands the historical incarnations of communism as substantially incomplete in thought and practice, and places communism where it originated—in the realm of fiction. Only as fiction can communism manifest itself again beyond doubt.
Solution 275–294: Communists Anonymous is a document of some imageries of communism and a testament to the current predicament of our political imagination. Atomized, privatized, and deprived of any infrastructure for solidarity—without any internationalist project, with moralizations compensating for the disappearance of political organization, with micro-politics replacing macro-politics—communists can only be anonymous in this world of ours. Edited by writer Ingo Niermann and curator Joshua Simon, this collection of essays and stories—written from the fields of art, literature, law, philosophy, activism, design, and science—proposes resolutions to current social contradictions, covering topics such as bacteria, bliss, immortality, queerness, interculturality, poetry, transportation, childhood and motherhood, and all-encompassing sensual love.
Design by Zak Group
2001, English
Softcover, 86 pages, 20.8 x 29.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Pataphysics Books / Melbourne
$45.00 - Out of stock
Out of print 2001 issue of the great Pataphysics magazine from Melbourne, the Pirate issue.
Interviews with Dave Hickey, Bruce LaBruce, Barney Rosset on Grove Press and living in a house designed by Pierre Chareau, Doing Theory by Sylvère Lotringer, 10 business cards and 5 Poems by Tony Towle, Rifle Range Drive by Jennifer McCamley, Burning Interior by David Shapiro, Rudi Ketz on Peter Lindbergh, Area Man Found Crucified by Joyce Carol Oates.
Published and edited by Leo Edelstein and Yanni Florence in Melbourne, with Judith Elliston, 2001, and long out of print. Fine copy.
2002, English
Softcover, 70 pages, 20.8 x 29.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Pataphysics Books / Melbourne
$45.00 - Out of stock
Out of print 2002 issue of the great Pataphysics magazine from Melbourne, the Psychomilitary issue.
Interviews with Paul Virilio & Sylvère Lotringer on The Genetic Bomb, Karl Jansen on the near-death experience via ketamine, Teddy Goldsmith on ecological fascism, The Empire of Disorder by Alain Joxe, Lemurs, Survivor by Chris Kraus, The Man and a Man with His Mule by Brian Aldiss, The Secret Mirror by Joyce Carol Oates, Execution I & II by David Miller, Facing the Camera by Sylvère Lotringer, Orangewash: An Amazonian Jungle Beauty by Rudi Ketz, 337,000, December, 2000 by Aaron Fogel, Rise of the Spirit of Independence by David Shapiro.
Published and edited by Leo Edelstein and Yanni Florence in Melbourne, with Judith Elliston, 2002, and long out of print. Fine copy.
2006, English
Softcover, 70 pages, 20.8 x 29.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Pataphysics Books / Melbourne
$45.00 - Out of stock
Out of print 2006 issue of the great Pataphysics magazine from Melbourne, the Into-Gal issue.
Includes J.G. Ballard quotes and conversations, an interview with with Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson), “In Praise of the Jews” by Sylvère Lotringer, interview with John Geiger on Brion Gysin, interview with Brian Aldiss, an unpublished 1989 Abbie Hoffman interview, ancient Mesopotamian poetry, interview with Paul Violi, a project by Terry Winters, Judith Elliston, and more.
Published and edited by Leo Edelstein and Judith Elliston, 2006, and long out of print. Fine copy.
2009, English
Softcover, 70 pages, 20.8 x 29.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Pataphysics Books / Melbourne
$45.00 - Out of stock
Out of print 2009 issue of the great Pataphysics magazine from Melbourne, the System Access issue.
Contributors and interviews include: Sylvère Lotringer, Hakim Bey, Valery Larbaud, William S. Lyon, John Geiger, William S. Burroughs, David Pinder, Bernard Heidsieck, Brian Aldiss, Jim Dolot, Dennis McKenna, Chris Kraus, Harry Mathews, Terry Winters, John Cage, Judith Elliston, Chris North, and more.
Published and edited by Leo Edelstein and Judith Elliston, 2009, and long out of print. Fine copy.
2011, English
Softcover, 90 pages, 20.8 x 29.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Pataphysics Books / Melbourne
$45.00 - Out of stock
Out of print 2011 issue of the great Pataphysics magazine from Melbourne (this issue published out of Beverly Hills, LA), the Program issue.
Contributors and interviews include: Lawrence Weiner, Martin Kippenberger, Christopher Wool, Lukas Baumewerd, Sylvère Lotringer, Jack Hirschman (Antonin Artaud), Terry Wilson & Ian MacFadyen, Aaron Fogel, Barney Rosset (Robbe-Grillet and Beckett), Ron Padgett, Chris Kraus, Jean Nichten, Judith Elliston, Cameron Stallones, and Bruce LaBruce.
Published and edited by Leo Edelstein and Judith Elliston, 2011, and long out of print. Fine copy.
2016, English
Softcover, 220 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$64.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Beatrice von Bismarck, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer (Eds.)Cultures of the Curatorial 3
Hospitality: Hosting Relations in Exhibitions
Texts by Beatrice von Bismarck, Nanne Buurman, Maja Ćirić, Alice Creischer, Andrea Fraser, Lorenzo Fusi, Wiebke Gronemeyer, Erik Hagoort, Anthony Huberman, Thomas Locher, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer, Dieter Roelstraete, Stefan Römer, Jörn Schafaff, Andreas Siekmann, Ruth Sonderegger
A curatorial situation is always one of hospitality. It implies invitations to artists, artworks, curators, audiences, and institutions; people and objects are received, welcomed, and temporarily brought together. It offers resources for material and physical support while also responding to a need for recognition, respect, or attention. Finally, and very importantly, a curatorial situation operates in the space between an unconditional acceptance of the other and exclusions legitimized through various rules and regulations.
This publication analyzes, from the perspective of hospitality, the curatorial within the current sociopolitical context through key topics concerning immigration, conditions along borders, and accommodations for refugees. The contributions in this volume, by international curators, artists, critics, and theoreticians, deal with conditions of decontextualization and displacement, encounters between the local and the foreign, as well as the satisfaction of basic human needs. Hospitality: Hosting Relations in Exhibitions is the third volume in the Cultures of the Curatorial book series.
Copublished with Kulturen des Kuratorischen, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
Design by Surface
2014, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$55.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Since the 1960s, Leatrice and Melvin Eagle have acquired decorative arts of the highest quality, beginning with contemporary ceramics and then expanding to works in other mediums produced from the 1940s to the present. Although primarily American in scope, their collection also encompasses significant pieces by acclaimed international artists. This book presents, for the first time, key highlights from the Eagle collection, which was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2010. At the core of the collection are stunning examples of ceramics by groundbreaking California-based artists, such as Robert Arneson, Ralph Bacerra, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Ron Nagle, Ken Price, Adrian Saxe, and Peter Voulkos. Also included is furniture by Wendell Castle and Sam Maloof; textile and fiber art by Olga de Amaral, John Garrett, John McQueen, and Cynthia Schira; and jewelry and metalwork by William Harper, Albert Paley, Earl Pardon, and Joyce J. Scott. This catalogue features works by about 40 key artists and an illustrated checklist of about 170 objects in the collection.
As New copy.
2016, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 202 pages, 10.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$49.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Nikolaus Hirsch, Carin Kuoni, Hesse McGraw, Markus Miessen
Contributions by Leonardo Díaz Borioli, Nikolaus Hirsch, David Kim, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Daniel McClean, Hesse McGraw, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Ines Weizman
The eighth volume of the Critical Spatial Practice series focuses on Jill Magid’s “The Barragán Archives,” a multiyear project that examines the legacy of Pritzker Prize–winning architect Luis Barragán (1902–1988), and questions forms of power, public access, and copyright that construct artistic legacy. The archive of Barragán was split in two after his death—the personal archive is kept in his home in Mexico, which is now a museum and UNESCO World Heritage Site; while his professional archive was purchased in 1995 by Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of the Swiss furniture company Vitra, from a New York gallerist. It is said that Fehlbaum bought it as a gift for his then fiancée, Federica Zanco. She is the director of the Barragan Foundation, which also holds rights to Barragán’s name. For the past twenty years the archive, housed below the Vitra headquarters, has been inaccessible to the public.
With The Proposal Magid attempts to bring together Barragán’s professional and personal archives by probing the architect’s official and private selves, and the interests of various individuals and governmental and corporate entities who have become the archives’ guardians. Magid, with permission of the Barragán family, commissioned a small amount of Barragán’s cremated remains to be transformed into a diamond. The stone, set in a gold ring, was offered to Zanco in exchange for the return of the professional archive to Mexico. Magid’s artwork directly engages the intersections of the psychological and the judicial, national identity and repatriation, international property rights and copyright law, authorship and ownership, the human body and the body of work.
Design by Zak Group
2009, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 10.8 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$42.00 $5.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood and Anton Vidokle.
Contributions by Michael Baers, Luis Camnitzer, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Tom Holert, Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza, Marion von Osten, Raqs Media Collective, Dieter Roelstraete, Irit Rogoff, Sean Snyder, Hito Steyerl, Monika Szewczyk
Since conceptualism, the field of art has become increasingly accustomed to playing host to its own critique, and recent decades have found institutions engaged in self-critique as if by mandate. Important notions of legibility, autonomy, and critical engagement that were once necessary to carve out a space for a critic or critical art publication have transposed themselves onto artistic production proper, and are now considered to be of equal importance to artist, curator, institution, and engaged audience member alike.
This climate of disciplinary reconfiguration and geographic dispersal has made the art world a highly complex place—the objective position that once defined the role of a critic has been effectively replaced by a need to understand just how large and varied the whole thing has become. The urgent task has now become to engage the new intellectual territories in a way that can revitalize the critical vocabulary of contemporary art. Perhaps the most productive way of doing this is through a fresh approach to the function of an art journal as something that situates the multitude of what is currently available, and makes that available back to the multitude. The selection of essays included in this book seeks to highlight an ongoing topical thread that ran throughout the first eight issues of e-flux journal—a sequence of overlapping concerns passed on from one contribution to the next.
e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle
Design by Jeff Ramsey, cover artwork by Liam Gillick