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.
1987, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 168 pages, 24 x 25 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Trefoil / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this reference compilation of biographies of the most famous type designers of the 20th century. A must for every type book collection.
Since its first publication in 1987, Twentieth Century Type Designers has become a standard reference work for typographers, designers and students alike.
This book serves as an introduction to the concept of typefaces and to some of the personalities who have created them--Goudy, Rogers, Koch, Gill, Morison, Van Krimpen, Trump, Tschichold, Frutiger, Zapf and others--and places them in the context of the enormous changes that have occurred in typography.
The introduction in the 1880s of the Linotype and Monotype hot-metal composing machines, and in particular the Benton pantographic punchcutter, revolutionized the manufacture of type, and caused a flood of new typefaces. More recently, filmsetting and digital typesetting have brought new opportunities--as well as new disciplines. This book examines the conflicts arising from these technological advances, which have pitted craftsmanship against commercial interests, and forced designers to come to terms with the new creative opportunities.
Whatever motivates type designers--whether it is the practical need to create new faces for machines, the ideal of producing the perfect letter-form for our age, or whether type is designed as an offshoot of other artistic activities--their work has had a far-reaching impact on our culture.
Designers featured:
Frederic Goudy, Bruce Rogers, Rudolf Koch, William Addison Dwiggins, Eric Gill, Victor Hammer, Stanley Morison, Hans (Giovanni) Mardersteig, Jan van Krimpen, Georg Trump, Joseph Blumenthal, Robert Hunter Middleton, Jan Tschichold, Berthold Wolpe, Roger Excoffon, Herman Zapf, Adrian Frutiger.
2017, English
Softcover (4 x newspapers), 16 pages each, 29 x 40 cm
Published by
Mode and Mode / Melbourne
$10.00 - In stock -
The HRD / CF Newsletter is a periodical publication produced within the exhibition ‘Hi$h Risk Dressing / Critical Fashion’ at RMIT Design Hub. The exhibition centres on the local fashion organisation active in Melbourne between the years 1983-1993, the Fashion Design Council. The FDC (as they are often shortened to), founded by Robert Buckingham, Kate Durham and Robert Pearce, were a self―organised group set up to foster independent designers and artists dealing with fashion. Influenced by the post―punk scene of Northern fashion capitals, the FDC put on shows in clubs and venues, as well as organising exhibitions, and eventually setting up a shop serving as a platform for alternative fashion in Melbourne. Throughout their active period, the FDC were prolific self―publishers. Print collateral was central to their success as an organisation. Postcards, invites, catalogues, business cards and other ephemera were shared with members and the broader public, promoting their officialdom. Particularly significant was the FDC newsletter, designed by co-founder Robert Pearce, disseminating a manifesto as well as news and events with its members. The newsletters were ad hoc; informal in language and design but expressed the energy and creative spirit of both the FDC community and available technology.
Using the model of the FDC newsletter, the HRD / CF Newsletter is a take―away publication released each week of the exhibition program. Each of the issues is framed around an emerging aspect of the FDC captured in the exhibition ― the archive, the bar, the shop and the office ― with texts, interviews and contributions from local and international practitioners. The ‘HRD / CF Newsletter also includes facsimiles of print ephemera from the FDC archive, which was donated to the RMIT Design Archives in 1998 by co-founder Robert Buckingham. This new newsletter functions as a platform for disseminating ideas about the FDC then, and critical fashion now, allowing for new dialogues to emerge from the legacy of FDC.
Edited by Laura Gardner
Designed by Ziga Testen
Edition of 500
Contributors include: Agniezska Chabros, Annie Wu, Blake Barns/HB Peace, Christopher LG Hill, Clare Wohlnick, Jessie Kiely/Monica's Gallery, Kate Meakin, Matthew Linde, Sasha Geyer, Winnie Ha Mitford, Bryan Collins, D&K (Ricarda Bigolin and Nella Themelios), James Deutsher, Lewis Fidock, Brighid Fitzgerald, Amanda Horowitz, Chantal Kirby, Jessie Kiely and Monica’s Gallery (Spencer Lai and Jake Swinson), Christopher LG Hill, Matthew Linde, Kate Meakin, Olivia O’Donnell, Yair Oelbaum, Virginia Overell, Sean Peoples, Joshua Petherick, Jen Shear, Flannery Silva, Adele Varcoe, Alex Vivian and more.
2016, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 352 pages, 28.7 x 20 cm
Published by
Fundación Alumnos47Cosentino / Mexico City
$50.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Karen Marta. Text by Patrick Charpenel, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Teodoro González de León, Graciela Iturbide, Esquivel!, Santiago Genovés, Carlos Fuentes, Margo Glantz, Elena Poniatowska, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Leonora Carrington, Felipe Ehrenberg, Pedro Friedeberg, Juan Soriano and Eduardo Terrazas
In 2002 Hans Ulrich Obrist began his conversation with a diverse and influential group of Mexican pioneers during an exhibition at Luis Barragán's house in Mexico City. Over a decade in the making, Conversations in Mexico beautifully captures how the Mexican cultural scene has pivoted several times--perhaps most importantly around the student protests at the 1968 Olympic Games--to cultivate a wholly radical and innovative aesthetic, one that is illuminated in the iconic buildings of Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Teodoro González de León; the people and landscapes photographed by Graciela Iturbide; the music of Esquivel!; the incredible voyages of Santiago Genovés; the utopian politics and literature of Carlos Fuentes, Margo Glantz and Elena Poniatowska; the singular vision of Alejandro Jodorowsky; and the uncompromising art of Leonora Carrington, Felipe Ehrenberg, Pedro Friedeberg, Juan Soriano and Eduardo Terrazas.
Published by Fundación Alumnos47Cosentino, Mexico City
2014, English
Softcover, 372 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Published by
M HKA / Antwerp
Mousse Publishing / Milan
Walther König / Köln
$45.00 - Out of stock
Jimmie Durham, artist, poet and political activist, has been one of the most influential figures of recent decades.
This volume of writings comprise a selection of essays and conferences on art and society, critical reflections on ‘Eurasia’, the history of US-American Indian relations, and observations on the city and nature.
A recurrent theme is his interrogation of the ideological complicity between monumental architecture and scripture – ‘architexture’ – as the foundation of Eurocentric belief and tool of others’ disenfranchisement.
Here, words, like the stones and motley materials he gathers for his assemblages, are remobilised otherwise; they become agents for ‘interrupting’ received ideas through writings that both disturb and delight, but never cease to provoke questions about the forces that shape our world.
Jimmie Durham is a rare and liberating voice in the architextural wilderness of contemporary life.
2015, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 15 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Afterall / London
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$40.00 - Out of stock
One of the most influential artists of our time, Mike Kelley (1954–2012) produced a body of innovative work mining American popular culture as well as modernist and postmodernist art—relentless examinations of subjectivity and of society that are both sinister and ecstatic. With a wide range of media, Kelley’s work explores themes as varied as post-punk politics, religious systems, social class, and repressed memory. Using architectural models to represent schools he attended, his 1995 work,Educational Complex, presents forgotten spaces as frames for private trauma, real or imagined. The work’s implications are at once miniature and massive. In this book, John Miller offers an illustrated examination of this milestone work that marked a significant change in Kelley’s practice.
A “complex” can mean an architectural configuration, a psychological syndrome, or a political apparatus, and Miller approaches Educational Complex through corresponding lines of inquiry, considering the making of the work, examining it in terms of education and trauma (sexual or otherwise), and investigating how it tests the ideological horizon of art as an institution. Miller shows that in Educational Complex, Kelley expands his political and aesthetic focus, including not only such artifacts as generic forms of architecture but (inspired by the infamous McMartin Preschool case) popular fantasies associated with ritual sex abuse and false memory syndrome. Through this archaeology of the contemporary, Miller argues, Kelley examines the mandate for education and the liberal democratic premises underpinning it.
Author John Miller, Professor of Professional Practice in the Department of Art History at Barnard College, is an artist and critic whose work has been exhibited internationally. He was Mike Kelley’s friend and colleague from 1978 until Kelley’s death in 2012.
2017, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 14.5 x 20 cm
Published by
INCA Press / Seattle
$40.00 - Out of stock
"Three years ago, during a talk at a university, a student asked me, “What is the relationship between your work and your teaching?” I realized then that there was none. I might teach experimental forms and aesthetic vernaculars, but the way I taught it looked like any other art class from Mumbai to New York, part of that dominant sameness that is global art education. Also, my work happens neither in the studio nor through “research”, but in ways that I could not quite name back then. I usually would describe it, and sometimes still do, as “looking like ethnography from the outside” with important differences in purpose and method, observational, and then, Boalian or rooted in experimental histories of theater and film. It struck me that I could not teach all of this, in practice and in a way that encompassed all the surprise, boredom, hesitation, fear, improvisation and pleasure that the process can produce. I resolved to change the form and spirit of what and how I taught."
-Beatriz Santiago Munoz excerpt from her text The Third Teacher.
With texts, essays, and art by:
Gregory Sholette, Eunsong Kim, Pablo Helguera, Duba Sambolec, MFA no MFA, Shelly Asquith, Roee Rosen, Aurora Harris, Ted Heibert, Mohamed Ali Fadlabi, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Marjetica Potrč, Escuela de Garaje, Vancouver Institute for Social Research, Judy Chicago, Bisan Hussam Abu-Eisheh, Diego Bruno, Clare Butcher, Chus Martinez, Sezgin Boynik, Audun Mortensen, Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas, Irena Boric, Sondra Perry & Nicole Maloof, Robert Paul Wolff, Chris Kraus, Martha Rosler, Tadej Pogačar, and Walid Raad.
Editors: Aeron Bergman, Alejandra Salinas, Irena Borić
Advisor: Gregory Laynor
Copy-editing: Justen Waterhouse
Design by: Rafaela Dražić
2017, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 14.5 x 20 cm
Published by
Edition Fink / Zürich
$27.00 - Out of stock
A Catalogue about Conspiracy, Theft, Possession and Heritage.
Art Handling in Oblivion assembles five art collections that have been stolen during key historical events, either by regimes or organised individuals. Seizure of art is one of most hidden and underestimated objectives of war. Behind conquering campaigns lurk hidden stories of deprived cultural heritage and devastation of the enemy's cultural identity. Bringing home the enemy's treasures is first of all a tangible proof of victory. The booty entails an enrichment of the very own culture and shifts the composition of cultural heritage on a global scale. Some of the discussed collections have been found and restituted, others are still in hostile possession or missing.
Art Handling in Oblivion is published as Volume 1 (# 501) of the paperback series "fink twice" by Edition Fink, originally presented by Rob van Leijsen as his master thesis for the Spaces & Communication course at HEAD – Genève in 2012.
2017, English / German
Softcover, 180 pages, 21.7 x 28 cm
Published by
Spike / Berlin
$20.00 - Out of stock
Spike #51 raises the question of the social role of art, and many more, with: Grzegorz Kowalski; Bob Flanagan's Visiting Hours; Angela Bulloch on Damien Hirst; Cyprien Gaillard's Desniansky Raion; a roundtable with Chus Martínez, Michaela Meise and Dieter Lesage; Dorothea Von Hantelmann; Kenny Schachter; Daniel Baumann; the portraits of Dorothy Iannone, Tetsumi Kudo, and Marie Angeletti; an interview with Josef Strau; an essay by Jan Verwoert; the TV series The Crown; Andrew Berardini on Jimmie Durham's retrospective in LA…
The power of art and its social role are the subjects of a roundtable discussion with curator Chus Martínez, artist Michaela Meise and philosopher Dieter Lesage at Spike Berlin. Josef Strau talks about how art saved him, while Kenny Schachter finds it both a remedy and a defence. Daniel Baumann delves into the promise of form, and for the critic Jan Verwoert a key function of art is that it teaches forms of conduct. Profiles on the painter Dorothy Iannone and her connections to Fluxus, and the Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo and his “philosophy of impotence”, are joined by pieces taking on the decline of the supermodel, the Netflix series The Crown, Jimmie Durham's retrospective at the Hammer Museum, and much more.
Founded by the artist Rita Vitorelli in 2004, Spike Art Quarterly is a quarterly magazine on contemporary art published in English and German which aims at sustaining a vigorous, independent, and meaningful art criticism. At the heart of each issue are feature essays by leading critics and curators on artists making work that plays a significant role in current debates. Situated between art theory and practice and ranging far beyond its editorial base in Vienna and Berlin, Spike is both rigorously academic and stylishly essayistic. Spike's renowned pool of contributing writers, artists, collectors and gallerists observe and reflect on contemporary art and analyse international developments in contemporary culture, offering its readers both intimacy and immediacy through an unusually open editorial approach that is not afraid of controversy and provocation.
2017, English / Italian
Softcover, 296 pages, 24 x 35 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
This issue dedicated to documenta 14 addresses themes, artists, and projects spanning between Athens and Kassel. Including: Moyra Davey by Quinn Latimer; Vivian Suter & Elisabeth Sussman; Roee Rosen; “Preliminary notes for a Black manifesto” by Rasheed Araeen; Khvay Samnang “; The Globalised Museum?” by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung; articles by Kirsty Bell, Irena Haiduk, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Neni Panourgiá, Dieter Roelstraete, and more.
Mousse is a bimonthly magazine published in Italian and English. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format. Mousse keeps tabs on international trends in contemporary culture thanks to its city editors in major art capitals such as Berlin, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
Mousse (Mousse Publishing) is also publisher of catalogues, essays and curatorial projects, artist books and editions.
2017, English / Italian
Softcover, 296 pages, 24 x 35 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
Dean Daderko, Arthur Jafa and Sondra Perry on blackness, technology and Alien ontologies; Stefanie Hessler exchanges oceanic ideas with Heidi Ballet; Puppies Puppies talk to Tenzing Barshee; Hannah Black as seen by Rahel Aima; essays by Alexander Provan, Orit Gat and Jens Hoffmann; William Pope.L and Mia Locks; Sam Thorne with Marianna Simnett; Anna Gritz and Eric Baudelaire; Luke Willis Thompson; Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme; Raúl de Nieves, and more.
Mousse is a bimonthly magazine published in Italian and English. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format. Mousse keeps tabs on international trends in contemporary culture thanks to its city editors in major art capitals such as Berlin, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
Mousse (Mousse Publishing) is also publisher of catalogues, essays and curatorial projects, artist books and editions.
2017, English / Italian
Softcover, 440 pages, 18.5 x 26.5 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
10-year anniversary special issue: a selection of essays, interviews, conversations, and projects appeared in the first ten years of Mousse.
Featuring: Chantal Akerman, Cecilia Alemani, Jennifer Allen, Kai Althoff, Bruce Altshuler, Ed Atkins, Lutz Bacher, Darren Bader, Alex Bag, John Baldessari, Phyllida Barlow, Kirsty Bell, Andrew Berardini, Jonathan Berger, Michael Bracewell, Tom Burr, Maurizio Cattelan, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Stuart Comer, Lauren Cornell, Nicholas Cullinan, Roberto Cuoghi, Nick Currie, Massimo De Carlo, Gino De Dominicis, Gigiotto Del Vecchio, Simon Denny, Brian Dillon, Jimmie Durham, Dominic Eichler, Peter Eleey, Matias Faldbakken, Luigi Fassi, Elena Filipovic, Morgan Fisher, Isa Genzken, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, Liam Gillick, Massimiliano Gioni, Isabelle Graw, Ed Halter, Jens Hoffmann, Judith Hopf, William E. Jones, Omar Kholeif, Alexander Kluge, Jiří Kovanda, William Leavitt, Elisabeth Lebovici, Andrea Lissoni, Helen Marten, Chus Martínez, Nick Mauss, Lucy McKenzie, Fionn Meade, Simone Menegoi, John Menick, Ute Meta Bauer, Massimo Minini, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Trevor Paglen, Stefania Palumbo, Francesco Pedraglio, Otto Piene, Laura Poitras, Elizabeth Price, Seth Price, Laure Prouvost, Alessandro Rabottini, Carol Rama, Filipa Ramos, Jason Rhoades, Dieter Roelstraete, Esperanza Rosales, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Fender Schrade, Stuart Sherman, Frances Stark, Jamie Stevens, Hito Steyerl, Sturtevant, Sabrina Tarasoff, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Oscar Tuazon, Giorgio Verzotti, Jan Verwoert, Francesco Vezzoli, Adrián Villar Rojas, Peter Wächtler, Ian Wallace, Klaus Weber, Cathy Wilkes, Christopher Williams, Jordan Wolfson.
Mousse is a bimonthly magazine published in Italian and English. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format. Mousse keeps tabs on international trends in contemporary culture thanks to its city editors in major art capitals such as Berlin, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
Mousse (Mousse Publishing) is also publisher of catalogues, essays and curatorial projects, artist books and editions.
2016, English / German
Softcover, 136 pages, 20.5 x 26.8 cm
Published by
Starship / Berlin
$18.00 - Out of stock
Contributors to Starship 15: Nadja Abt, Tenzing Barshee, Gerry Bibby, Mercedes Bunz, Lou Cantor, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Jay Chung, Hans-Christian Dany, Helmut Draxler, Francesca Drechsler, Martin Ebner, Jana Euler, Julian Göthe, Toni Hildebrandt, Karl Holmqvist, Judith Hopf, Stephan Janitzky, Jakob Kolding, Robert McKenzie, Maria Loboda, Nick Mauss, Robert Meijer, Ariane Müller, Christopher Müller, Eileen Myles, Gunter Reski, Mandla Reuter, Cameron Rowland, Julia Scher, Mark von Schlegell, Eva Seufert, Diamond Stingily, Wolfgang Tillmans, Vera Tollmann, Haytham El-Wardany, Nicole Wermers, Amelie von Wulffen, Stephanie Wurster, Florian Zeyfang.
Editors: Nikola Dietrich, Martin Ebner, Ariane Müller, Henrik Olesen.
Layout concept: Starship and Dan Solbach.
Graphic Design: Philip Reinartz.
Cover: Gerry Bibby, Gina Folly.
Centerfold: Amelie von Wulffen.
Backcover: Martin Ebner
2017, English
Hardcover, 216 pages, 29.5 x 23.5 cm
Published by
ICA / Miami
Koenig Books / London
$70.00 - Out of stock
The publication I Stand, I Fall, a comprehensive survey of work by John Miller, coincides with the first American museum exhibition dedicated to the influential conceptual artist.
Through almost 150 images, this catalogue comprehensively traces Miller’s use of the figure throughout his career in order to incisively comment on the status of art and life in American culture.
The book features a range of media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, installation and video; never-before-seen works from the 1980s; new large-scale sculptures; and the artistʼs most ambitious architectural installation to date – a vast and immersive mirrored labyrinth that went on view at the ICA Miami’s Atrium Gallery.
I Stand, I Fall, surveys Miller’s use of the figure in order to examine themes of citizenship and politics, and the conventions of realism in contemporary art.
Organized chronologically, the exhibition begins with his drawings and paintings from 1982-1983, the majority of which have never been presented publicly.
Influenced by the pastoral genre of painting and American social realism of the 1920s and 30s, these deadpan, even grotesque, works explore issues of urban and suburban Americana, public space, and the human
Published retrospectively after the exhibition John Miller: I Stand, I Fall at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, 18 February – 12 June 2016.
2017, English / German
Softcover, 248 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 $10.00 - In stock -
ISSUE NO. 105 / MARCH 2017 “THEY ARE US / WIR SIND IHR”
With Issue #105, TZK considers the nationalist, conservative, and racist ideologies that have recently become more visible across Europe and the US, giving particular focus to questions of border politics and migration -- of humans, of data, of patrimony, of signs. Advised by Helmut Draxler, Isabelle Graw, and Susanne Leeb, this issue was conceived prior to the US presidential election as a cooler reflection on present political debates. And yet having been produced amid the chaos of the Trump administration's first weeks, it also necessarily stands as a reflection of political-aesthetic thinking during markedly volatile times: Wir sind Ihr? They are us? We are them?
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
FORWARD
PREFACE
ROUNDTABLE
BUT WHO IS “THEY”? / Roundtable discussion with Manuela Bojadžijev, Nikita Dhawan, and Christoph Menke, moderated by Helmut Draxler on Refugee and Migrant Flows as a Challenge for Political Thought
OVERCOMING MUTE RELATIONS, OR, THINKING WITH YOUR FEET / Angela Melitopoulos in conversation with Susanne Leeb
Daniel Keller
NEW DEVELOPMENT
HALFTIME VIBES / John Kelsey on Meditations in an Emergency
WEDER WOHNUNG NOCH WÄHRUNG / Diedrich Diederichsen über den Intendantenwechsel an der Berliner Volksbühne
BEGEHREN IN BETON / Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer über die Feuerle -Collection
LIEBE ARBEIT KINO
OF DREAMS, LIES, AND WIRES / Tom McDonough on Adam Curtis’s “HyperNormalisation”
MEDIALER GESTUS / Rainer Bellenbaum über Douglas Gordons Film
„I Had Nowhere to Go“
EU DESESPERO E ABRAÇO A TUA AUSÊNCIA:
“AQUARIUS” OR CINEMA AFTER NEO-FASCISM / Daniel R. Quiles on Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “Aquarius”
FAST UNANGENEHM DEUTLICH / Anke Dyes und Anna Voswinckel über Jill Soloways
Fernsehserie „I love Dick“
ROTATION
MACH ES NICHT SELBST / Daniel Loick über „Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene“ von Donna Haraway
(POST-)EMPIRE STATE OF MIND / Emily Segal on Cat Marnell’s “How to Murder Your Life”
RELEVANTE UPDATES / Christian Egger über Raymond Pettibon im
Museum der Moderne Salzburg
SHORT WAVES
Micaela Durand on Heji Shin at Real Fine Arts, New York / Arne Schmitt über Candida Höfer im Neuen Berliner Kunstverein / Hans-Jürgen Hafner über Peter Duka bei Zwinger Galerie / Ana Finel Honigman on Dan Attoe at Peres Projects, Berlin / Tina Schulz über Willem Oorebeek im Magazin 4 in Bregenz
REVIEWS
ZUCKER UND SHAME / Ulrike Bergermann über „Deutscher Kolonialismus“
im Deutschen Historischen Museum, Berlin
MODELS AND AGENCIES / Ben Caton on “The Ulm Model” at Raven Row, London
ART HISTORY, REMASTERED / Abbe Schriber on Kerry James Marshall at the Met Breuer, New York
AESTHETICIZED PLAY / Stefaan Vervoort on Ludger Gerdes at the Museum Haus Lange,
Krefeld, Germany
NACHRUFE / OBITUARIES
BARBARA WEISS (1960–2016)
by Monika Baer and John Miller
by Andreas Siekmann
JOHN BERGER (1926–2017)
by Tom Holert
by Svetlana Alpers
2017, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$38.00 - Out of stock
When it was first published in French in 1980, The Ordinary Man of Cinema signaled a shift from the French film criticism of the 1960s to a new breed of film philosophy that disregarded the semiotics and post-structuralism of the preceding decades. Schefer describes the schizophrenic subjectivity the cinema offers us: the film as a work projected without memory, viewed by (and thereby lived by) a subject scarred and shaped by memory. The Ordinary Man of Cinema delineates the phenomenology of movie-going and the fleeting, impalpable zone in which an individual’s personal memory confronts the cinema’s ideological images to create a new way of thinking.
It is also a book replete with mummies and vampires, tyrants and prostitutes, murderers and freaks—figures that are fundamental to Schefer’s conception of the cinema, because the worlds that cinema traverses (our worlds, interior and exterior) are worlds of pain, unconscious desire, decay, repressed violence, and the endless mystery of the body. Fear and pleasure breed monsters, and such are what Schefer’s emblematic “ordinary man” seeks and encounters when engaging in the disordering of the ordinary that the movie theater offers him. Among other things, Schefer considers “The Gods” in 31 brief essays on film stills and “The Criminal Life” with reflections on spectatorship and autobiography.
While Schefer’s book has long been standard reading in French film scholarship, until now it has been something of a missing link to the field (and more broadly, French theory) in English. It is one of the building blocks of more widely known and read translations of Gilles Deleuze (who cited this book as an influence on his own cinema books) and Jacques Rancière.
Translated by Max Cavitch, Noura Wedell and Paul Grant
About the Author
Jean Louis Schefer (born in 1938) is a prolific and influential scholar of art history, theology, philosophy, music, and linguistics, as well as an author of fiction.
2016, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 15 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$45.00 - In stock -
I read and wrote to invoke what seemed impossible -- relation itself -- in order to take part in a world that ceaselessly makes itself up, to "wake up" to the world, to recognize the world, to be convinced that the world exists, to take revenge on the world for not existing. -- from Communal Nude
Since cofounding San Francisco's influential New Narrative circle in 1979, Robert Gluck has been one of America's finest prose stylists of innovative fiction, bending narrative into the service of autobiography, politics, and gay writing. This collection brings together for the first time Gluck's nonfiction, a revelatory body of work that anchors his writing practice. Gluck's essays explore the ways that storytelling and selfhood are mutually embedded cultural forms, cohering a fractured social reality where generating narrative means generating identity means generating community. "I'd laugh at (make art from) any version of self," Gluck writes, "I write about these forms -- that are myself -- to dispense with them, to demonstrate how they disintegrate before the world, the body." For any body -- or text -- to know itself, it must first see how it sees the world, and understand itself as writing. Gluck's essays affirm this radical narratorial precept in rich spirals of reading, self-reflection, anecdote, escapade, and "metatext." These texts span the author's career and his creative affinities -- from lost manifestos theorizing the poetics of New Narrative; to encomia for literary and philosophic muses (Kathy Acker, the HOW(ever) poets, Frank O'Hara, Georges Bataille, and others); to narrative journalism, book reviews, criticism, and public talks. Many of the texts are culled from obscure little magazines and ephemeral online sources; others have never been published. As lucid as story, as lush as theory, and as irresistible as gossip, Gluck's essays are the quintessence of New Narrative theory in practice.
2017, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 20.3 x 25 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$94.00 - Out of stock
Offering an incisive rejoinder to traditional histories of modernism and postmodernism, this original book examines the 1960s performance work of three New York artists who adapted modernist approaches to form for the medium of the human body.
Finding parallels between the tactility of a drip of paint and a body's reflexive movements, Elise Archias argues convincingly that Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934), Carolee Schneemann (b. 1939), and Vito Acconci (b. 1940) forged a dialogue between modernist aesthetics and their own artistic community's embrace of all things ordinary through work that explored the abstraction born of the body's materiality. Rainer's task-like dances, Schneemann's sensuous appropriations of popular entertainment, and Acconci's behaviorist-inflected tests highlight the body's unintended movements as vital reminders of embodied struggle amid the constraining structures in contemporary culture. Archias also draws compelling comparisons between embodiment as performed in the work of these three artists and in the sit-ins and other nonviolent protests of the era.
2017, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 21 x 23 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
Whitechapel / London
$50.00 - Out of stock
Without boredom, arguably there is no modernity. The current sense of the word emerged simultaneously with industrialization, mass politics, and consumerism. From Manet onwards, when art represents the everyday within modern life, encounters with tedium are inevitable. And starting with modernism’s retreat into abstraction through subsequent demands placed on audiences, from the late 1960s to the present, the viewer’s endurance of repetition, slowness or other forms of monotony has become an anticipated feature of gallery-going.
In contemporary art, boredom is no longer viewed as a singular experience; rather, it is contingent on diverse social identifications and cultural positions, and exists along a spectrum stretching from a malign condition to be struggled against to an something to be embraced or explored as a site of resistance. This anthology contextualizes the range of boredoms associated with our neoliberal moment, taking a long view that encompasses the political critique of boredom in 1960s France; the simultaneous aesthetic embrace in the United States of silence, repetition, or indifference in Fluxus, Pop, Minimalism and conceptual art; the development of feminist diagnoses of malaise in art, performance, and film; punk’s social critique and its influence on theories of the postmodern; and the recognition, beginning at the end of the 1980s, of a specific form of ennui experienced in former communist states. Today, with the emergence of new forms of labor alienation and personal intrusion, deadening forces extend even further into subjective experience, making the divide between a critical and an aesthetic use of boredom ever more tenuous.
Artists surveyed include:
Chantal Akerman, Francis Alÿs, John Baldessari, Vanessa Beecroft, Bernadette Corporation, John Cage, Critical Art Ensemble, Merce Cunningham, Marcel Duchamp, Fischli & Weiss, Claire Fontaine, Dick Higgins, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Ilya Kabakov, Boris Mikhailov, Robert Morris, John Pilson, Sigmar Polke, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Gerhard Richter, Situationist International, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andy Warhol, Faith Wilding, Janet Zweig
Writers include:
Ina Blom, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jennifer Doyle, Alla Efimova, Jonathan Flatley, Julian Jason Haladyn, The Invisible Committee, Jonathan D. Katz, Chris Kraus, Tan Lin, Sven Lütticken, John Miller, Agné Narušyté, Sianne Ngai, Peter Osborne, Patrice Petro, Christine Ross, Moira Roth, David Foster Wallace, Aleksandr Zinovyev
About the Author
Tom McDonough is Associate Professor of Art History at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of “The Beautiful Language of My Century”: Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945–1968 (MIT Press)
From the "Documents of Contemporary Art" series.
2016, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 336 pages, 12.7 x 20.5 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$45.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Kārlis Bērziņš, Jurga Daubaraitė, Petras Išora, Ona Lozuraitytė, Niklāvs Paegle, Dagnija Smilga, Johan Tali, Laila Zariņa, Jonas Žukauskas
Contributions by Åbäke, Indrek Allmann, Reinis Āzis, Viesturs Celmiņš, Nancy Couling, Tom Crosshill, Muriz Djurdjevic, Leonidas Donskis, Jānis Dripe, Keller Easterling, David Grandorge, Felix Hummel, Gustav Kalm, Karolis Kaupinis, Maroš Krivý, Carl-Dag Lige, Laura Linsi, Jonathan Lovekin, Agata Marzecova, Timothy Morton, Kaja Pae, Thomas Paturet, Ljeta Putāne, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, Markus Schaefer, Jack Self, Nasrine Seraji, Tuomas Toivonen, Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, Jānis Ušča, Aro Velmet, Ines Weizman
“It is impossible, but as you do not know it is impossible, it might be possible.”
—Lolita Jablonskiene, Director of the National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, commenting on previous attempts to organize a joint pavilion including all three Baltic States for the Venice Biennale
The Baltic Atlas, published in conjunction with the exhibition of the Baltic States Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016, is a gradient between two questions. The first: “what is it possible to imagine?” focuses on interpretations, fictional stories, analyses, and reflections on the ongoing processes, and proposes future projections. The second: “what is possible?” is an inquiry into the methods, resources, and parameters that define space.
All texts have been specially written for this publication. Parallel discourses are positioned next to each other—overlaid in an atlas that works in range of different modes. An atlas is a medium that unravels multiple ways of seeing the region of the Baltic States as an intensification of networks, agendas, and ideas that are relevant on a global scale. Along with the Baltic Pavilion exhibition, this publication offers a sense of an open-ended ecology of practices—a forum on what is to come.
Design by Åbäke and Vytautas Volbekas
2016, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 22.9 x 29.2 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$36.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Rachel Adams
Texts by Rachel Adams, Sandra H. Olsen, Mari Rodriguez Binnie; interview with Lydia Okumura
For almost fifty years, Lydia Okumura has explored the realm of geometric abstraction. She challenges our perception of space through sculptures, installations, and works on paper that blur distinctions between dimensions. In the 1970s, a young artist in her native São Paulo, she studied the Japanese art magazine Bijutsu Techou, which introduced her to Conceptual art, Minimalism, Land art, and Arte Povera. These movements, along with Brazilian Concretism and Neoconcretism, influenced Okumura’s work. Using simple materials such as string, glass, and paint, her dynamic work balances line, plane, and shadow.
Okumura’s oeuvre—although reminiscent of the work of Latin American artists such as Lygia Pape and Carmen Herrera, as well as contemporaries such as Dorothea Rockburne and Robert Irwin—has remained under-recognized. She has exhibited widely in São Paulo and is part of multiple museum collections, but she is much less known in her adopted country, the United States. “Lydia Okumura: Situations” (September 8, 2016–January 8, 2017) is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Through the exhibition and catalogue, the UB Art Galleries seek to encourage a critical reassessment of Okumura’s oeuvre within art history. The catalogue includes an essay on Okumura and her work, by curator Rachel Adams; an account of vanguardism in Brazilian art from 1960 to 1975, by art historian Mari Rodriguez Binnie; a conversation between Adams and Okumura; and extensive photo documentation of Okumura’s work from the 1970s until today.
Copublished with UB Art Galleries
Design by Mark Owens with Sarah Cleeremans
2017, English / German
Softcover, 132 pages, 12.5 x 19 cm
Published by
Portikus / Frankfurt
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$39.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Fabian Schöneich
Texts by Sunghoon Han, Minouk Lim, Fabian Schöneich, Hyunsuk Seo
What role does historiography play in the formation of the present? How does contemporary experience inform the commemoration of historical events or lack thereof? Minouk Lim explores history in the present tense—its media representation, collective memory, ritual, and trauma—through her exhibition, publication, and broadcasting station United Paradox. The South Korea in Lim’s project is a nation with a hole in its chest: a nation of families divided by territorial disputes and traumatized by civilian massacres, victims of an authoritarian power in service of ideological control and economic growth. While reflecting on the representation and reappropriation of historical events in South Korea, Lim and the contributors to this publication explore ways of working through the past in a present that prefers to forget.
Copublished with Portikus
Design by Ronnie Fueglister
2016, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 12.5 x 20.5 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$28.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Jürg Berthold, Kristina Hinrichsen, Philip Ursprung, Mechtild Widrich
With contributions by Elisabeth Bronfen, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Michael Hampe, Mark Jarzombek, Amelia Jones, Tom Levin, Dieter Mersch, Rebecca Schneider, Peter Zumthor
Recently, the idea of “presence” has returned to the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In February 2013, in Zurich’s historical Cabaret Voltaire, which was central to the Dada movement almost a hundred years ago, an experimental international symposium took place that put presence under the microscope.
Presence: A Conversation at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich is not a traditional post-conference publication but is conceived as a theatrical discussion of ideas between different speakers, both on and offstage. In contrast to transcribed conversations, monologues are interspersed throughout the book, acting like small, performative interruptions. The lively juxtaposition of both individual speech and colloquy is enhanced by theatrical conventions: characters enter and exit; stage directions mirror those found in the cabaret.
Design by Elektrosmog, Zürich, Adeline Mollard, Marina Brugger, Marco Walser
2016, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 10.6 x 16 cm
Published by
Portikus / Frankfurt
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$18.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Fabian Schöneich
Contributions by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Emily Apter, Giovanni Carmine, Omar Kholeif, Fabian Schöneich
A “politics of listening” is an intervention into and a reorganization of forms that listening takes rather than a call for free speech or for a platform for voices to be heard. Listening is a political act, a pedagogical process, and an activity that can lead to the development of an organized protocol for engagement.
In his art and research, Beirut-based artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan explores the perception of language, sound, and listening. National identity, human rights, and the administration of justice are recurrent themes in his work. The techniques used in his audio-aesthetic practice have been used to conduct forensic audio analysis for several legal investigations. This monograph includes a series of transcripts of live speech from sermons, monologues, testimonies, and interviews made over the course of the last five years.
Copublished with Kunsthalle St. Gallen and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main
Design by David Bennewith, Colophon
2016, English
Softcover, 16.5 x 22 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$34.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Anette Baldauf, Stefan Gruber, Moira Hille, Annette Krauss, Vladimir Miller, Mara Verlič, Hong-Kai Wang, Julia Wieger
With contributions by Berhanu Ashagrie Deribew, Anette Baldauf, Tesfaye Bekele Beri, Aluminé Cabrera, Silvia Federici, Elizabeth Giorgis, Stefan Gruber, Stefano Harney, Moira Hille, Mihret Kebede, Annette Krauss, Lisa Lowe, Maria Mesner, Vladimir Miller, Stavros Stavrides, Pelin Tan, Team at Casco—Office for Art, Design and Theory, Brook Teklehaimanot, Ultra-red, Mara Verlič, Hong-Kai Wang, Julia Wieger
Spaces of Commoning: Artistic Research and the Utopia of the Everyday is the outcome of a research project pursued by a group of artists, architects, and social theorists, who, in the face of exhilarating politics of accumulation and dispossession, explore commoning as the subject as well as the means of their collective study. The power of the commons, this book suggests, does not reside in the promise of a coming together free of friction. As different dimensions of power organize the terrain of the social, social movements are often caught between competing agendas, and in the gap between aims and everyday life. It is precisely the sites of these struggles that the book calls spaces of commoning. As such, this study is part of a much wider recognition of the necessity to rethink and undo the methodological premises of Western sciences, arts, and architecture, and to raise unsettling questions on research ethos, accountability, and the entanglement of power and knowledge.
Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, vol. 18
Design by Surface