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.
2017, English / Arabic
Softcover, 11.3 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$26.00 - Out of stock
With Sundry Modernism, Oraib Toukan presents an informal register of modernist Palestinian architecture—an assemblage of images and stories collected from 2013 to 2015 in the cities of Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jericho. Using her photographs as conversation prompts with various residents, historians, and architects, Toukan places the anecdotes collected thereby into political and historical context, weaving together narrative and critique. Sundry Modernism sets out to be a gesture, a nod, a salutation to, and a critique of, the lines and angles of Palestinian modernism. It is a provocation on the act of looking, and, in particular, it is a proposal for reading apolitical forms in politicized contexts.
Oraib Toukan is an artist and Clarendon Scholar at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. This bilingual English and Arabic publication follows Toukan’s participation in the 5th Riwaq Biennale (2014–16), and has been produced with support from Mophradat.
Design by Ala Younis
2018, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 15 x 19 cm
Published by
Imperfect Publishing / Point Reyes
$34.00 - Out of stock
Artists do myriad things. Six of these things are discussed in this modest book. This limited sampling is intended to emphasise how, in totality, the work of artists is different in substance, spirit, and methodology from that of most other professions. Highlights from the lives and work of seven seminal New York-based artists [Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Donald Judd, On Kawara, and Richard Serra] are used to illustrate these six things.
2018, English
Softcover, 280 pages
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
Casco / Utrecht
If I Can’t Dance / Amsterdam
$42.00 - Out of stock
To Become Two: Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice offers a narrative of artist Alex Martinis Roe’s research into a genealogy of feminist political practices in Europe and Australia from the seventies until today. These practices include those of the Milan Women’s Bookstore co-operative; Psychanalyse et Politique, Paris; Gender Studies (formerly Women’s Studies) at Utrecht University; a network in Sydney including people involved in the Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative, Feminist Film Workers, Working Papers Collective, and the Department of General Philosophy at Sydney University; and Duoda – Women’s Research Centre and Ca la Dona, a women’s documentation centre and encounter space in Barcelona. Drawing from their practices and experiences, Martinis Roe’s research forms a proposal for a transgenerational approach to feminist politics. This is further developed as a practical handbook of twenty new propositions for feminist collective practice, which were formed in collaboration with a network of contributors through experiments with these historical practices.
2019, English / German
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
For the latest issue no. 113, TEXTE ZUR KUNST investigates the structures within the arts and cultural spheres where racism and discrimination are practiced, performed, and reproduced. This special issue concentrates specifically on the context of Germany, and includes discussions and texts from artists and theorists throughout the country who have dedicated special attention to current and ongoing political and social crises; specifically the challenges these crises pose for the language and terms of art criticism. How can criticism mount an appropriate response to the discrimination and injustices that pervade all levels of society?
ISSUE NO. 113 / MARCH 2019 "DISKRIMINIERUNG/DISCRIMINATION"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
SABETH BUCHMANN AND ISABELLE GRAW - THE CRITIQUE OF ART CRITICISM
COMMON GROUND / Colin Lang in Conversation with Julia Grosse, Suza Husse, and Max Czollek
ÇIĞDEM INAN
NON-RECOGNITION / The Other Side of the Critique of Racism
VIOLENT MEDIATIONS / Jenny Nachtigall in Conversation with Hannah Black
NAMING RACISM / Sven Beckstette in Conversation with Veronika Fuechtner and Oliver Hardt
HELMUT DRAXLER - THE ART OF DISCRIMINATION
ROTATION
INTENTIONALE BEGEGNUNGEN / Hanna Magauer über Christian Kravagnas „Transmoderne. Eine Kunstgeschichte des Kontakts“
SITUIERTE SENSIBILITÄT! / Michaela Ott über „Sensibilität der Gegenwart“ von Burkhard Liebsch (Hg.)
LIEBE ARBEIT KINO
PARTICLE ACCELERATOR / Daniel Horn on the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, Geneva
REVIEWS
COURS, CAMARADE / Tom McDonough on “The Most Dangerous Game” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
BAUHAUS IM GLOBALEN SÜDEN / Tobi Maier über „bauhaus imaginista: Learning From“ im SESC Pompéia, São Paulo
FULLY IMMERSED / Megan R. Luke on Heidi Bucher at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London
DOPPELBELASTUNG / Sophie Goltz über „Medea muckt auf. Radikale Künstlerinnen hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang“ in der Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden
AUDIENZ BEIM MALERFÜRSTEN / Ulrich Pfisterer über Jörg Immendorff im Haus der Kunst, München
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS / SOFTCORE INSURRECTION / Kari Rittenbach on Tobias Kaspar at the Kunsthalle Bern
THROWAWAY INVENTIVENESS / Mirjam Thomann über Cady Noland im Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
REBEL REBEL / Saim Demircan on Sarah Lucas at the New Museum, New York
AUFGELADENE FRACHT / Nadja Abt über Ulrike Müller im Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf
EVENTUALLY, EVERYTHING BECOMES LIQUID / Luisa Lorenza Corna on Metahaven at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
EVENING JOE / Robert Müller über Ed Ruscha in der Secession, Wien
CIRCUMSTANCES OF SOCIAL WORK / Eric Golo Stone on Laurie Parsons at the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
AT LAST, WARHOL COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET / Jonathan D. Katz on Andy Warhol at the Whitney Museum of American Art
OBITUARY
ROBERT MORRIS (1931−2018)
FERDINAND KRIWET (1942–2018)
LOTHAR BAUMGARTEN (1944–2018)
EDITION
ARTURO HERRERA
ALICJA KWADE
1971, German
Softcover, 464 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
DuMont / Köln
$85.00 - Out of stock
Huge, densely-illustrated volume compiled by German publisher/editor/essayist/curator Walter Aue, who worked closely with conceptual and performance artists in the 1960s-1970s. Laid-out by Aue himself, the book feels like a very natural scrap-book compendium of artist contributions, reproducing artworks, documentation of happenings, texts, photographs, diagrams, collages, news-clippings, instructions, etc. across over 450 pages, with Aue's type-written opening essay and cataloguing throughout. Features the most notable conceptual, actionist and performance artists of the period, spanning Fluxus, Arte Povera, radical architecture, Nouveau Realisme, etc. including Dieter Rot, Joseph Beuys, Robert Smithson, Pino Pascali, Stanley Brouwn, Jannis Kounellis, Klaus Rinke, Ben Vautier, Al Hansen, Walter Pichler, Hilla and Bernhard Becher, Giuseppe Penone, Ettore Sottsass, Gilbert and George, Walter De Maria, Wolf Vostell, Hans Hollein, Imi Knoebel, Barry Flanagan, Allan Kaprow, Carolee Schneemann, Hamish Fulton, Christo, Elfriede Jelinek, Dennis Oppenheim, Urs Lüthi, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Rühm, Blink Palermo, Lawrence Weiner, Ed Ruscha, HA Schult, Hermann Nitsch, James Lee Byars, Jan Dibbets, Jochen Gerz, Mauricio Kagel, Nam June Paik, Otto Mühl, Arnulf Rainer, Jan Voss, George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Franz Erhard Walther, Timm Ulrichs, Daniel Spoerri, Erich Reusch, Paul Pechter, Rainer Giese, Jörg Immendorff, Henning Christiansen, Gilberto Zorio, Panamarenko, Joseph Kosuth, Dan Graham, Dick Higgins, Ian Baxter, Mel Bochner, Haus-Rucker-Co, Markus Raetz, Sottsass, Nam June Paik, Hans Haacke, Tetsumi Kudo, Bruce Mclean, On Kawara, and so many more.
Depending on the artist, texts are in English, German, Dutch, etc. Opening essay in German.
Very Good, light wear/tear to top spine.
2013, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
$45.00 - Out of stock
Essays, an interview, and a roundtable discussion on the work of one of the most influential American artists of the postwar period.
This October Files volume gathers essays, an interview, and a roundtable discussion on the work of Robert Morris, one of the most influential American artists of the postwar period. It includes a little-known text on dance by Morris himself and a never-before-anthologized but influential catalog essay by Annette Michelson. Often associated with minimalism, Morris (b. 1931) also created important works that involved dance, process art, and conceptualism. The texts in this volume focus on Morris's early work and include an examination of a 1971 Tate retrospective by Jon Bird, an interview with the artist by Benjamin Buchloh, a conversation from a 1994 issue of October about resistance to 1960s art, and an essay by this volume's editor, Julia Bryan-Wilson, on the labor involved in installing the massive works in Morris's 1970 solo exhibition at the Whitney. Spanning 1965 to 2009, these writings map the evolution of critical thought on Morris over more than four decades.
October Files is a series of inexpensive paperback books edited by the editors of October journal. Each book addresses a body of work by an artist of the postwar period who has altered our understanding of art in significant ways and prompted a critical literature that is sophisticated and sustained. Each book in this series traces not only the development of an important oeuvre but also the construction of the critical discourse inspired by it. Series Editors are George Baker, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh and Leah Dickerman.
2018, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 21.5 x 13 cm
Published by
Paper Monument / New York
$34.00 - Out of stock
In light of recent political shifts across the globe, have you sensed a change in the position of the art institution vis-à-vis political activism?
Can an art institution go from being an object of critique to a site for organizing? How? Should the art institution play this kind of role? What other roles can or should it play?
What other institutions, curators, or publics do you look to in formulating your own institution’s position?
Recent controversies over curatorial choices have foregrounded the different ways in which institutions envision their audience(s). In your experience, is this process changing? How should it proceed?
How can an institution address the dichotomy between art as cultural entertainment and art as political inquiry? What is the role of the curator in mediating this? How does this compare to the artist’s role?
How can art institutions be better?
With contributions by: Regine Basha, Chloë Bass, Dena Beard, Zachary Cahill, Ken Chen, Lori Cole, Anne Ellegood, Anthony Elms, Deborah Fisher, Zanna Gilbert, Namita Gupta Wiggers, Larissa Harris, Pablo Helguera, Megan Heuer, Kemi Ilesanmi, Mary Jane Jacob, Alhena Katsof, Kristan Kennedy, Alex Klein, Jordan Martins, Amanda Parmer, Risa Puleo, Laura Raicovich, Sara Reisman, Chris Reitz, Nicolás Rodríguez Melo, Stephen Squibb, Elizabeth Thomas, Gilbert Vicario, and Anuradha Vikram
2016, English
Softcover, 544 pages, 21.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Paper Monument / New York
$49.00 - Out of stock
edited by Jennifer Liese
Since the turn of the millennium, artists have been writing, and circulating their writing, like never before. The seventy-five texts gathered here — essays, criticism, manifestos, fiction, diaries, scripts, blog posts, and tweets — chart a complex era in the art world and the world at large, weighing in on the exigencies of our times in unexpected and inventive ways.
With Contributions By:
Greg Allen, Rasheed Araeen, Tauba Auerbach, Fia Backström, Fiona Banner, Bill Beckley, Caroline Bergvall, Bernadette Corporation, Xu Bing, Gregg Bordowitz, James Bridle, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Tania Bruguera, Paul Chan, Mel Chin, Molly Crabapple, Critical Art Ensemble, Moyra Davey, Tacita Dean, David Diao, Jimmie Durham, Shannon Ebner, Harrell Fletcher, Andrea Fraser, Coco Fusco, Rainer Ganahl, Ryan Gander, Mariam Ghani, Renée Green, Deanna Havas, Pablo Helguera, Karl Holmqvist, Ashley Hunt, Juliana Huxtable, Emily Jacir, Helen Johnson, Ronald Jones, Nina Katchadourian, Mike Kelley, John Kelsey, Jutta Koether, Glenn Ligon, Yve Lomax, LTTR, Jill Magid, Josiah Mcelheny, John Miller, Naeem Mohaiemen, Nástio Mosquito, Takashi Murakami, Jayson Musson, Olu Oguibe, Marisa Olson, Şener Özmen, Katrina Palmer, Adam Pendleton, Mai-Thu Perret, Adrian Piper, Pope.L, Seth Price, Raqs Media Collective, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Kay Rosen, Peter Rostovsky/David Geers, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Mira Schor, Karin Schneider and Nicolás Guagnini, Michael Schwab, Gregory Sholette, Slavs And Tatars, Cally Spooner, Frances Stark, Hito Steyerl, Koki Tanaka, Ryan Trecartin, Suzanne Treister, Dmitry Vilensky, W.A.G.E., Mary Walling Blackburn, Ai Weiwei, The Yes Men, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, and Qiu Zhijie
Praise for Social Medium:
"A thoroughly engrossing read ... entertaining as well as intellectually stimulating."
—Oliver Basciano, ArtReview
"The distinct textures of these individual voices together produce a larger portrait – not of a collective, but of art with a capital A: something far from prescription or cohesion, unable to be contained, requiring the work and words of many."
— Jennifer Krasinski, Frieze
“As this indispensable anthology so engagingly demonstrates, legions of artists armed with laptops have for the past fifteen years brilliantly hacked the ways we think about 21st-century culture and politics. Full of imaginative texts and revolutionary ideas, this is a user’s guide to the postinternet era.”
—Brian Wallis, editor of Blasted Allegories: An Anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists
“This is such a beautiful book because the real thought balloon of the art world is exactly these brainy and ecstatic citizens’ writings. Hang out a lot with them please — gain everything and miss nothing. Watch ‘democracy’ get palped and monitored, challenged and witnessed here. I’d call Social Medium a deep vacation into the present, which we totally need.”
— Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls
1974, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 30.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio International / London
$50.00 - In stock -
February 1974 issue of Studio International with specially designed covers by Robert Natkin. Includes articles : "The situation of the artist in Yugoslavia since 1945" by Cyril Barrett, "'Art-Language' at the Lisson Gallery" by Paul Wood, "Ivan Karp on Marcel Duchamp / an interview with Moira Roth", "Definition and theory 'Of the current avant garde / materialist / structural film" by Peter Gidal, "Edvard Munch: scene, symbol and allegory" by Frank Whitford, "Profile : Hans Haacke", "The shape of colour" by Patrick Heron, and the first of a three-part major article series on the work of Robert Ryman titles "Unfinished 1 (Materials)" by Barbara Reise. Reviews section. Correspondence. Much more.
An issue from the great Peter Townsend as editor years.
As editor of Studio International magazine from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Peter Townsend oversaw its transformation from a mainstream Britain-centric publication into a vanguard journal chronicling some of the most radical artistic endeavours in the UK and internationally.
Robert Natkin (November 7, 1930 – April 20, 2010) was an American born abstract painter whose work is associated with Abstract expressionism, Colour field painting, and Lyrical Abstraction.
Very Good copy, with light general wear.
1974, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 30.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Studio International /
Studio International / London
$100.00 - Out of stock
The special "Belgian Issue" of Studio International, with famous front and back covers designed by Marcel Broodthaers, with text by Broodthaers on page 114 ("Wiertz Museum"). Also includes a long and rich essay entitled "'Incredible' Belgium : Impressions" by Barbara Reise, focussing on the years 1973-1974 and reviews the important events that marked the contemporary art scene in galleries or private collections, plus articles on Pol Bury and André Balthazar's "The Daily Bul" by André Balthazar, "Museums, Collectors, Policies" by Karl Geirlandt, "Some Notes on Hyper-realists" by Karl Geirlandt and Jean-Pierre van Tieghem, Panamarenko by Irmaline Lebeer, "Construction and Structure in Form and Colour" by Phil Mertens, "Aspects of the Avant-Garde in Belgium" by Michael Baudson and Yves Gevaert, and much more. Artist pages by Younger Belgian Artists: Paul De Gobert, Guy Mees, Maurice Roquet, Malcolm Lauder, Krokus, Jan Dries, Group Cap. Belgian comics. Reviews section.
A now very collectable issue from the great Peter Townsend as editor years.
As editor of Studio International magazine from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Peter Townsend oversaw its transformation from a mainstream Britain-centric publication into a vanguard journal chronicling some of the most radical artistic endeavours in the UK and internationally.
Marcel Broodthaers (28 January 1924 – 28 January 1976) was a Belgian a polymorphic artist, poet, visual artist, filmmaker, photographer, who anticipated the reflection on the relationship between the artwork, the museum and the public.
Good copy, but with previous owner inscription on cover and decent age/rubbing to covers.
2018, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 13.5 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Harvard University Graduate School of Design / Cambridge
$32.00 - Out of stock
How do you tell the story of a friendship? How do you trace the roots of one of the most significant cross-disciplinary unions in fashion today? Artist Sterling Ruby and fashion designer Raf Simons did just that when they sat on stage with curator Jessica Morgan at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Offering complimentary perspectives on a bond that has matured over the span of a decade, and a body of work that transcends boundaries, Ruby and Simons spoke with mutual respect, trust, and a deep investment in the future. This is a story, and an exchange, that is beyond collaboration.
The Incidents is a book series based on uncommon events at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1936 to tomorrow.
Edited by Jennifer Sigler, Leah Whitman-Salkin
Contribution by Jessica Morgan. Copublished with the Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Book series designed by Åbäke
2018, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 13.5 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Harvard University Graduate School of Design / Cambridge
$24.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Jennifer Sigler and Leah Whitman-Salkin
“What’s my DNA?” Virgil Abloh asks to an overflowing auditorium at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Abloh goes on to provide his audience with a “cheat code”—advice he wishes he had received as a student. He then unpacks a series of “shortcuts” for cultivating a “personal design language.” Trained as an architect and engineer, Abloh has translated the tools and techniques of his student days into the world of fashion, product design, and music. His label, Off-White, works in seeming contradictions, marrying streetwear with couture, collaborating with brands like Nike, Ikea, and the Red Cross; musicians like Lil Uzi Vert and Rihanna; and “mentors” like Rem Koolhaas. Impervious to hurdles (“They literally don’t exist.”), Abloh takes us behind the scenes of his design process, sharing the essentials of editing, problem-solving, and storytelling. He paints a picture of his DNA, and then flips the question: What’s your DNA?
Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1980, Virgil Abloh is an artist, architect, engineer, creative director, and designer. After earning a degree in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he completed a master’s degree in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. It was there that he learned not only about design principles but also about the concept of collaborative working.
Virgil Abloh’s brand Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh™ was started in 2012 as an artwork titled PYREX VISION. In 2013, the brand premiered a seasonal men’s and women’s fashion label and moved into the production of furniture. Abloh has also curated exhibitions of his work, and in 2019 will have a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. In 2018, Abloh was named artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection.
The Incidents is a series of publications based on events that occured at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design between 1936 and tomorrow.
Copublished with the Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Book series designed by Åbäke
2019, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 14.6 x 21 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$28.00 - Out of stock
Contributors: Antoine Bousquet, Shane Brighton, James Der Derian, Mark Fisher, John Gerrard, Mark Hansen, Stepan Kment, Eivind Røssaak, Anne-Françoise Schmid, McKenzie Wark, Eyal Weizman
This collection of wide-ranging interventions and discussions on the status of the moving image in an age of advanced simulation explores the contemporary links between power, simulation, and warfare.
Today, technological simulation has become an integral part of military training and operations; and at the same time, media spectacle—often enabled by the same technologies—has become integrated with military power. Trained in virtual environments, army personnel are increasingly enhanced by augmented reality technologies that bring combat into conformity with its simulation. Equally, the seductions of media and entertainment have become crucial weapons for ‘information dominance’. At the same time as the infosphere demands that war takes on the properties of a game, hyper-realistic videogames evolved from military technology become a kind of virtual distributed training camp, as the lines between simulation and action, combatant and civilian, become blurred.
Based on a round table discussion prompted by the work of artist John Gerrard, Simulation, Exercise, Operations assembles thinkers from philosophy, media, and military theory to examine the powers of simulation in the contemporary world.
2019, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 14.6 x 21 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$28.00 - Out of stock
Contributors: Amanda Beech, Ray Brassier, Mark Fisher, Robin Mackay, Benedict Singleton, Nick Srnicek, James Trafford, Tom Trevatt, Alex Williams, Ben Woodard
An examination of the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the planetary media network and of the aesthetic as an enabler of new modes of knowledge.
This series of interventions on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics ranges from contemporary art's relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design.
From varied perspectives of philosophy, art, and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices.
Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a reconfigured aesthetics that is inseparable from its sociotechnical conditions.
2015, English
Softcover, 332 pages, 14.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$48.00 - Out of stock
The critical concept of site-specificity once seemed to harbour the potential for disruption. But site-specific work has become increasingly assimilated into the capitalist logic of regeneration and value creation. The materialist critique of the art object has been shortcircuited by the franchised idiosyncrasies of international nomad flaneurs. Meanwhile, on a planet whose entire surface is mapped and apped, the concept of "site" itself becomes ever more problematic.How can we do justice to the particularity of local sites while unearthing their material conditions? What do a contemporary "geo-philosophy" and the historical legacy of site-specific art have to offer each other? Can we develop methods for the controlled unpacking of the local into the global, avoiding trivial reconciliations between local sites and their global conditions? When Site Lost the Plot charts some of the ways in which site continues to be a concern for contemporary practice; and introduces the concept of "plot" as an alternative, richer way in which to approach these questions.Alongside artists discussing their practice and their approach to site and plot, contributors from various disciplines introduce concepts from cartography, mathematics, film, fiction, design, and philosophy that may help us to think otherwise the relation between local and global, between specific sites and their material conditions.
Publication supported by the Graduate School, Goldsmiths University of London.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Site
ROMAN VASSEUR - Site and Materiality
YVES METTLER - Europe Squared
NICK FERGUSON - Speedscaping
JOHN GERRARD - Remote-Control Site (Interview)
ANDREA PHILLIPS - Making the Public
MATTHEW POOLE - Specificities of Sitedness
Plot
BENEDICT SINGLETON - The Long Con
ILONA GAYNOR - Chaos and Black Carpets
PAUL CHANEY - Fieldwork
SHAUN LEWIN - A Brief History of Transcendence in Maps
REZA NEGARESTANI - Where is the Concept?
ROBIN MACKAY - The Barker Topos
Unplace
JUSTIN BARTON AND MARK FISHER - On Vanishing Land
JUSTIN BARTON AND MARK FISHER - Outsights (Interview)
DAN FOX - Silent Running
Notes on Contributors
2011 / 2015, English
Softcover, 78 pages, 14.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$28.00 - Out of stock
Why has the concept of contingency taken on a marked importance both in contemporary philosophy and in contemporary art practice? And if this simultaneity derives from parallel problems met within the two different fields, what are their common roots? Beyond acknowledging the contingent nature of tradition, institutions, and practices, recent speculative philosophies of 'absolute contingency' demand a radical revision of the ways in which we conceive of our interaction with unknowable materialities, and pose a challenge to both probabilistic management and process-driven affirmation of contingency.The book documents the event held at Thomas Dane Gallery in February of 2011 that coincided with the show entitled New York to London and Back. The show featured work by Kristen Alvanson, Hans Bellmer, Liz Deschenes, Thomas Eggerer, Rachel Harrison, Gareth James, Alison Knowles, Sam Lewitt, Scott Lyall, R. H. Quaytman, Eileen Quinlan, Raha Raissnia, Jimmy Raskin, Blake Rayne, Pamela Rosenkranz, Pieter Schoolwerth, Amy Sillman and Cheyney Thompson.
In an unprecedented overlapping of the contexts of philosophical, financial, and art worlds, The Medium of Contingency event brought together in discussion Robin Mackay, Reza Negarestani, Elie Ayache, Matthew Poole, Miguel Abreu and Scott Lyall. This publication includes presentations by each of the participants and an edited transcript of the discussion.
Contents
ROBIN MACKAY - Introduction: Three Figures of Contingency
REZA NEGARESTANI - Contingency and Complicity
ELIE AYACHE - In The Middle of The Event
MATTHEW POOLE - Art, Human Capital, and the Medium of Contingency
MIGUEL ABREU, ELIE AYACHE, SCOTT LYALL, ROBIN MACKAY, REZA NEGARESTANI, MATTHEW POOLE - Discussion
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
NEW YORK TO LONDON AND BACK: LIST OF WORKS
2019, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 14.6 x 21 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$28.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Éric Alliez, Maurizio Lazzarato, Amanda Beech, Robin Mackay, Christine Wertheim, Brian Evenson, Reza Negarestani, Joshua Johnson, Patricia Reed
A multidisciplinary collection of essays reflecting on Cold War cultural tropes in film, fiction, and contemporary art, and the models of knowledge that they imply.
If the term "Cold World" describes a world of infinite complexity, algorithmic capital, and the technological sublime, in many ways the dread experienced during the Cold War, when clear oppositions were laid out between nation states, is echoed in the hall of mirrors of Cold World globalization, where our collective consciousness is overtaken by a flood of difference, uncertainty, and the dread of the incomputability of this alien yet constructed world.
But what is the crime scene of the Cold World? How is it to be decrypted? Where are its discontinuities, what is the nature of its violence? This is to say, what is our place in this alien world and how do we even compute the "we" that we describe ourselves to be?
Given the existential uncertainty unleashed for those who lived through the Cold War, but whose repercussions are in many ways amplified, relayed, and replayed in a new form for those who must now survive what has been called the "Cold World"-that of technological subjectivation, political malaise, cultural dysphoria, and ecological crisis-this terrain comprises an experiential and experimental horizon that prompts many to pose, and to stage in myriad forms, a fundamental question: "What will we of make of ourselves?"
Cold War/Cold World documents a research project in progress that attempts to evaluate and respond to this fundamental shock to the system, examining attempts to render knowable, representable, or figurable the looming threats of both Cold War and Cold World-the common denominator being a distressed attempt to inquire into the dynamics of a real that seems in excess over understanding and the means of politics traditionally conceived; and a concomitant temptation to abandon any intelligent collective engagement in favour of a pragmatics that limits itself to wrestling with local contingencies, or an aesthetics mesmerised by a global sublime.
Edited by Robin MacKay and Amanda Beech
Contributions by Brian Evenson , Contributions by Joshua Johnson , Contributions by Patricia Reed
2019, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$33.00 - Out of stock
The increasingly chaotic rhythm of our respiration, and the sense of suffocation that grows everywhere: an essay on poetical therapy.
Since the hopeful days of the Occupy movement, many things have changed in the respiration of the world, and we have entered a cycle of spasm, despair, and chaos. Breathing is a book about the increasingly chaotic rhythm of our respiration, about the sense of suffocation that grows everywhere. “I can't breathe.” These words panted by Eric Garner before dying, strangled by a police officer on the streets of Staten Island, capture perfectly catching the overall sentiment of our time. In Breathing, Franco "Bifo" Berardi comes back to the subject that was the core of his 2011 book, The Uprising: the place of poetry in the relations between language, capital, and possibility. In The Uprising, he focuses on poetry as an anticipation of the trend toward abstraction that led to the present form of financial capitalism. In Breathing, he tries to envision poetry as the excess of the field of signification, as the premonition of a possible harmony inscribed in the present chaos.
The Uprising was a genealogical diagnosis. Breathing is an essay on poetical therapy. How we deal with chaos, as we know that those who fight against chaos will be defeated, because chaos feeds upon war? How do we deal with suffocation? Is there a way out from the corpse of financial capitalism?
2009, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 152 x 229 mm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$25.00 - In stock -
Virilio himself referred to his 1980 work The Aesthetics of Disappearance as a “juncture” in his thinking, one at which he brought his focus onto the logistics of perception—a logistics he would soon come to refer to as the “vision machine.” If Speed and Politics established Virilio as the inaugural—and still consummate—theorist of “dromology” (the theory of speed and the society it defines), The Aesthetics of Disappearance introduced his understanding of “picnolepsy”—the epileptic state of consciousness produced by speed, or rather, the consciousness invented by the subject through its very absence: the gaps, glitches, and speed bumps lacing through and defining it. Speed and Politics defined the society of speed; The Aesthetics of Disappearance defines what it feels like to live in the society of speed.
“I always write with images,” Virilio has claimed, and this statement is nowhere better illustrated than with The Aesthetics of Disappearance. Moving from the movie theater to the freeway, and from Craig Breedlove’s attainment of terrifying speed in a rocket-power car to the immobility of Howard Hughes in his dark room atop the Desert Inn, Virilio himself jump cuts from such disparate reference points as Fred Astaire, Franz Liszt, and Adolf Loos to Dostoyevsky, Paul Morand, and Aldous Huxley. In its extension of the “aesthetics of disappearance” to war, film, and politics, this book paved the way to Virilio’s follow-up: the celebrated study, War and Cinema.
This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Crary, one of the leading theorists of modern visual culture.
Paul Virilio has published twenty-five books, including Pure War (1988) (his first in English) and The Accident of Art (2005), both written with Sylvère Lotringer, as well as Speed and Politics and Lost Dimension, all published by Semiotext(e).
2012, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 15 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$35.00 - Out of stock
Originally written in French in 1983, Lost Dimension remains a cornerstone book in the work of Paul Virilio: the one most closely tied to his background as an urban planner and architect, and the one that most clearly anticipates the technologically wired urban space we live in today: a city of permanent transit and internalized borders, where time has overtaken space, and where telecommunications has replaced both our living and our working environments. We are living in the realm of the lost dimension, where the three-dimensional public square of our urban past has collapsed into the two-dimensional interface of the various screens that function as gateways to home, office, and public spaces, be they the flat-screen televisions on our walls, the computer screens on our desktops, or the smartphones in our pockets.
In this multidisciplinary tapestry of contemporary physics, architecture, aesthetic theory, and sociology, Virilio describes the effects of today’s hyperreality on our understanding of space. Having long since passed the opposition of city and country, and city and suburb, the speed-ridden city and space of today are an opposition between the nomadic and the sedentary: a web of interactive, informational networks that turn our world into a prison-house of illusory transcendence.
Paul Virilio was born in 1932 and has published a wide range of books, essays, and interviews grappling with the question of speed and technology, including Speed and Politics, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, and The Accident of Art, all published by Semiotext(e). Jean-Louis Violeau is a sociologist and researcher at the 'Architecture-Culture-Société' laboratory of the Ecole d'architecture de Paris-Malaquais in Paris. His most recent book is Les Architectes et Mai 68.
2005, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 15 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$28.00 - Out of stock
There is a catastrophe within contemporary art. What I call the "optically correct" is at stake. The vision machine and the motor have triggered it, but the visual arts haven't learned from it. Instead, they've masked this failure with commercial success. This "accident" is provoking a reversal of values. In my view, this is positive: the accident reveals something important we would not otherwise know how to perceive.-- Paul Virilio, The Accident of Art
Urbanist and technological theorist Paul Virilio trained as a painter, studying under Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Bazaine and de Stael. In The Accident of Art, his third extended conversation with Sylvere Lotringer, Virilio addresses the situation of art within technological society for the first time. This book completes a collaborative trilogy the two began in 1982 with Pure War and continued with Crepuscular Dawn, their 2002 work on architecture and biotechnology.In The Accident of Art, Virilio and Lotringer argue that a direct relation exists between war trauma and art. Why has art failed to reinvent itself in the face of technology, unlike performing art? Why has art simply retreated into painting, or surrendered to digital technology? Accidents, Virilio claims, can free us from speed's inertia. As technological catastrophes, accidents are inventions in their own right.
2007, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$30.00 - In stock -
Ranging from reflections on the Enlightenment and revolution to a consideration of the Frankfurt School, this collection offers insight into the topics preoccupying Foucault as he worked on what would be his last body of published work, the three-volume History of Sexuality.
In 1784, the German newspaper Berlinische Monatsschrift asked its audience to reply to the question "What is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant took the opportunity to investigate the purported truths and assumptions of his age. Two hundred years later, Michel Foucault wrote a response to Kant's initial essay, positioning Kant as the initiator of the discourse and critique of modernity. The Politics of Truth takes this initial encounter between Foucault and Kant, as a framework for its selection of unpublished essays and transcripts of lectures Foucault gave in America and France between 1978 and 1984, the year of his death. Ranging from reflections on the Enlightenment and revolution to a consideration of the Frankfurt School, this collection offers insight into the topics preoccupying Foucault as he worked on what would be his last body of published work, the three-volume History of Sexuality. It also offers what is in a sense the most "American" moment of Foucault's thinking, for it was in America that he realized the necessity of tying his own thought to that of the Frankfurt School.
Edited by Sylvere Lotringer
Michel Foucault (1926–84) is widely considered to be one of the most influential academic voices of the twentieth century and has proven influential across disciplines.
Sylvère Lotringer is Jean Baudrillard Chair at the European Graduate School, Switzerland, and Professor Emeritus of French literature and philosophy at Columbia University.
2014, English
Hardcover, 447 pages
Published by
IMA / Brisbane
$60.00 - In stock -
Wystan Curnow is New Zealand’s longest-serving and, arguably, most important art critic. This edited collection brings together a selection of his art writings from 1971 to 2013, to provide the first comprehensive overview of his work. It includes long-form essays that investigate the stakes for ‘high culture in a small province’, monographic essays on canonical artists (including Len Lye, Colin McCahon, Billy Apple, Stephen Bambury, Max Gimblett, and Imants Tillers), vivid reports on the contemporary art scene, catalogue essays, and short reviews.
Both a map of contemporary theory and practice and a cogent agenda for thinking through the implications and challenges of making art in the antipodes, this compilation is an essential companion for anyone interested in New Zealand art as it has unfolded since 1970. The book includes introductory essays by Robert Leonard on Curnow as an ‘antipodean internationalist’ and analysis of his approach as a writer by Christina Barton, plus a chronology and bibliography.
1989, English
Softcover (french-folds), 160 pages, 34 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Terrazzo / Milan
$100.00 - Out of stock
TERRAZZO was a very special biannual publication on architecture and design, edited and published between 1988–1995 by Barbara Radice, a prominent Italian author, design critic and member of the Memphis Milano design group. In conjunction with Ettore Sottsass, Christoph Radl, Anna Wagner and Santi Caleca, Radice created a unique and thoughtful periodical that focused on contemporary works of design and architecture, within Italy and abroad, touching on a vast array of disciplines in each issue, including photography, literature, poetry, history, science, philosophy, art and anthropology.
TERRAZZO 2
Spring 1989
ANDREA BRANZI
Architecture in shadow
FRANK GEHRY
Detailing by Frank Gehry
photographs by Santi Caleca
PAUL LUBOWICKI SUSAN LANIER projects
FRANCESCO CLEMENTE
on architecture
ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE
glass
DESIGN FOR HEROES
TRAVEL NOTES
by Ettore Sottsass
on light
photographs by Ettore Sottsass
GREEK TEMPLES: THE POLYCHROMY
by Joseph Rykwert
FRAN LEBOWITZ ON ARCHITECTS
interview
PLANS (No. 2)
Islamic, the Middle Ages