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.
1961, German
Softcover, 56 pages, 17 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Goetheanum Freie Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaften / Dornach
$45.00 - Out of stock
Handsome catalogue produced to accompany an exhibition on the work of Rudolf Steiner in 1961 at the Goetheanum Freie Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaften (Goetheanum School of Spiritual Science) in Dornach Switzerland, the first cultural centre and artistic home designed by Steiner and built in 1913 for the Anthroposophical Society (founded by Steiner) to house performances of plays, exhibitions, conferences - a house for all of the arts.
Through beautiful photographic reproductions, this little publication presents a glimpse into Steiner's visionary work across architecture, sculpture, design and painting around the creation of this incredible building, alongside texts in German.
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (1861 – 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect and esotericist. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy; other influences include Goethean science and Rosicrucianism.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked to establish various practical endeavors, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, andanthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which "Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas. "A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.
2016, English / French
Softcover, 480 pages, 17x 24 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$40.00 - Out of stock
Republications is the first volume of Archive Journal’s hors-séries. Each issue of the series is commissioned to authors whose research is close to the editorial line of the journal. For the inaugural issue Archive’s editors have invited curators and art critics Virginie Bobin and Mathilde Villeneuve. Taking as a starting point the notion of republication, the contents of this volume have been compiled through a collective process over the course of multiple editorial meetings in Berlin, Aubervilliers and Paris between 2011 and 2012.
Edited by Mathilde Villeneuve and Virginie Bobin
Contributions by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Lene Berg, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Christophe Bruno, Foundland, Jeff Guess, Alexis Guillier, Rémy Héritier, franck leibovici, Sohrab Mohebbi, Julien Prévieux, Sally Price, Anna Théodoridès, Vassilis Salpistis & Marie Voignier
2015, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 12 × 20 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$35.00 - Out of stock
Anguish Language approaches language as a core aspect of the present social crisis. The project engages in solidarity with forms of self-publishing, poetry, criticism, experimental writing and declamation that have arisen in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis, considering language among and through the social struggles responding to its consequences.
Edited by John Cunningham, Anthony Iles, Mira Mattar and Marina Vishmidt
Designed by Archive Appendix
Essays by John Cunningham, Sean Bonney, Anthony Iles, Wealth of Negations, Mira Mattar, Anguish Language Copenhagen Group, Danny Hayward, Pier Paolo Pasolini...
2015, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 13 x 20 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$40.00 - Out of stock
The anthology Politics of Memory aims to investigate the document as such, as an objective trace left by events, as material proof or the creation of reality – the strategies with which they transform a state of memory into state memory, those by means of which a historical removal is enacted, those, ultimately, in which there is an attempt to challenge permanent or temporary amnesia, opening up to the future. The artists and filmmakers contributing to this publication represent the most advanced area on an international scale of a research that inaugurates a new relationship between artistic practices and the documentary.
The artists’ contributions have been collected within the context of a cycle of conferences held between 2010 and 2013 and are re-presented here in a format aimed at highlighting their connections and common research perspectives. To this end, the volume is articulated in four sections and does not follow the chronological order of the conferences. The first section is dedicated to archival practices, the second to the memory of conflicts, the third to the documentary dispositive and the last to the representation of migration as a social practice and as the enactment of breaching boundaries.
Edited by Marco Scotini and Elisabetta Galasso
Contributions by John Akomfrah, Eric Baudelaire, Ursula Biemann, Harun Farocki, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Khaled Jarrar, Lamia Joreige, Gintaras Makarevičius, Angela Melitopoulos, Deimantas Narkevičius, Lisl Ponger, Florian Schneider, Eyal Sivan, Hito Steyerl, Jean-Marie Teno, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Mohanad Yaqubi and Reem Shilleh
2015, English
Softcover, 280 pages 14.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$46.00 - Out of stock
In this book devoted to the field of curating and “institutional art”, Žerovc raises questions about the character and limitations of the “exhibition-maker as artist” and the “exhibition as a work of art”, asking whether the socio-political objectives for the latter actually manifest contradictory or even opposite effects given the inescapable conditions of capitalism. The book culminates with Žerovc’s queries about the ritualistic function of contemporary art exhibitions, and this is evocatively expressed in her introduction: “There was once great discussion about how removing artworks from their original context and installing them in the museum meant their certain death. Today, it seems, we need to be thinking about different questions. Does the institution of visual art bring something to life … what, in fact, are we summoning to life?” (Mary Anne Staniszewski)
Pierre Restany, Zoran Kržišnik, Harald Szeemann, Daniel Buren, Charles Esche, Beautiful Freedom, Walter Benjamin, Mary Anne Staniszewski
2014, English
Softcover, 600 pages, 13 x 20 cm
Published by
Academy of Arts of the World / Cologne
Archive Books / Berlin
$58.00 - Out of stock
To eat a frog, the missionary Jesuit priest, the enemy tribe, the whole history of colonial domination in South America, is to serve your ancestor at a dinner table, without nostalgia, for what you are digesting is your future as a human— and that includes a frog-future as well.
In the sixteenth century, the image of Amerindian anthropophagy was at the center of disputes on the meaning of humanity. In the early twentieth century, it was again rediscovered by the Brazilian avant-garde associated with the imprint Revista de Antropofagia. Antropofagia is a cosmopolitical philosophy, a cannibal metaphysics extending well beyond a pacifying, multicultural view of appropriation. Eating another human is to cross the ontological boundaries imposed by Western modernity, capitalist labor, the Cartesian-Freudian self. Nature and culture are in the perspective of the hunter and the hunted. To become prey is the movement of humanity.
‘The Forest and The School: Where to sit at the dinner table?’ is co-published by Archive Books and the Academy of Arts of the World in Cologne. Edited by the writer and visual artist Pedro Neves Marques, this publication is a thorough anthology on Brazilian Antropofagia. It presents Antropofagia not simply as an aesthetic movement, based on acculturation or an hybridity exemplary of the tropics, but as a full scope South American cosmopolitics, defined by predation and the immanence of the enemy, by an humanity unbound from species, and a aimed at leisure.
The first half of the book, “The Forest and The School” gathers texts from sixteenth century chronicles on cannibalism, the Brazilian avantgarde, Tropicália, and the anthropology of Pierre Clastres, Bruno Latour, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, as well as of Davi Kopenawa. The second half ‘Where to sit at the dinner table?’ collects recent texts and new commissions relating Antropofagia to multinaturalist perspectivism, the declaration of the Rights of Nature, or the centrality of the indigenous in current political struggles.
Edited by Pedro Neves Marques
Texts by Hans Staden, Jean de Léry,Michel de Montaigne, James Frazer, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Alfred Jarry, Oswald de Andrade, Antônio de Alcântara Machado, Oswald Costa, Freuderico, Japy-Mirim Poronominare, Garcia de Rezende, Raul Bopp, Flávio de Carvalho,Glauber Rocha, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Hélio Oiticica, Hélène Clastres, Pierre Clastres, Félix Guattari, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Bruno Latour, Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, Tânia Stolze Lima, Alexandre Nodari, Jean Tible, Paulo Tavares, Giuseppe Cocco, Suely Rolnik
Designed by Nuno da Luz
2016, English
Softcover, 382 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Distanz / Berlin
$50.00 - Out of stock
The Present in Drag is published as a companion volume to the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, which was curated by New York collective DIS. Providing information on the works shown in the exhibition, it also includes contributions by Roe Ethridge, Simon und Daniel Fujiwara, Boris Groys, Katja Novitskova, Chus Martinez, Bjarne Melgaard, Sean Patrick Monahan, Sabine Reitmaier, McKenzie Wark, and others.
The 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art features the work and contributions of: 69, Antoni Abad, Halil Altindere, Ei Arakawa (in collaboration with Dan Poston, Stefan Tcherepnin), Korakrit Arunanondchai/Alex Gvojic, atelier le balto, Armen Avanessian/Alexander Martos (in collaboration with Christopher Roth), åyr, Will Benedict, Julien Ceccaldi, Centre for Style
(in collaboration with Anna-Sophie Berger; Burkhard Beschow & Anne Fellner; Max Brand; Rare Candy with Alden Epp, Spencer Lai, Natasha Madden, Misty Pollen, Ander Rennick & Amber Wright; Susan Cianciolo; Marlie Mul; Liam Osborne; H.B. Peace & Kate Meakin; Joshua Petherick; Lin May Saeed; Eirik Sæther), Brody Condon, CUSS Group (in collaboration with ANGEL-HO, FAKA, Megan Mace, NTU), Kathleen Daniel, Debora Delmar Corp., Simon Denny with Linda Kantchev, Cécile B. Evans, Nicolás Fernández, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Simon Fujiwara, GCC, GUAN Xiao, Calla Henkel/Max Pitegoff, Camille Henrot, Yngve Holen, Alexa Karolinski/Ingo Niermann, Kartenrecht, Josh Kline, Korpys/Löffler, Nik Kosmas, M/L Artspace, Shawn Maximo, Ashland Mines, Katja Novitskova, Trevor Paglen/Jacob Appelbaum, Juan Sebastián Peláez, Adrian Piper, Alexandra Pirici, Josephine Pryde, Puppies Puppies, Babak Radboy, Jon Rafman, Timur Si-Qin, Lucie Stahl, Hito Steyerl, TELFAR, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Wu Tsang, Anna Uddenberg, Amalia Ulman, Anne de Vries, Abu Hajar, Halil Altindere, Math Bass, Lizzi Bougatsos & Brian DeGraw, Elysia Crampton, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Isa Genzken, Juliana Huxtable, Kelela, Nguzunguzu, PATRICIA (Patricia Satterwhite, Jacolby Satterwhite, Nick Weiss), Adrian Piper, Fatima Al Qadiri, Carles Santos, Hito Steyerl, Total Freedom, Amalia Ulman, Antoni Abad, åyr/Rem Koolhaas/Hans Ulrich Obrist, Kathleen Daniel, Cécile B. Evans and Andrew Snyder-Beattie, Oleg Fonaryov and Oleksiy Radynski, Simon & Daniel Fujiwara, GCC, Boris Groys, Rob Horning, Izabella Kaminska and Simon Denny, Chus Martínez, Meredith Meredith, Sean Monahan, New Scenario, Ingo Niermann, Alexandra Pirici, Puppies Puppies, Sean Raspet, Natasha Stagg, Amalia Ulman, Sencer Vardarman, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Déborah Danowski in conversation with Michelle Sommer and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, McKenzie Wark, Will Benedict, Dora Budor, Cao Fei, Roe Ethridge, Hood by Air, Bjarne Melgaard, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Zanele Muholi, Johannes Paul Raether, Torbjørn Rødland, Akeem Smith, Martine Syms, Stewart Uoo, Nina Cristante, Sabine Gottfried, Nik Kosmas, Lesley Moon, Helga Wretman, Frank Benson, Asger Carlsen, DIS, Casey Jane Ellison, Roe Ethridge, Avena Gallagher, Saemundur Thor Helgason, Tilman Hornig, Benjamin Alexander Huseby, Chris Kraus, Bjarne Melgaard, Jason Nocito, Babak Radboy, Sean Raspet, Sabine Reitmaier, Aaron David Ross, Andrew Norman Wilson, Anonymous, Anonymous, Anonymous and others.
2015, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$43.00 - Out of stock
Belgian-Moroccan Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and British-Bengali Akram Khan are two of today's most prolific choreographers. Given their respective backgrounds and the practices they pursue, their artistic universes are largely built around their identity in-between dance cultures. Guy Cools, who accompanied both, situates their work within the larger critical debate on the (post)modern and (post-)migrant identity. Cools details some of their iconic choreographic pieces. This book offers a complementary view on questions of cultural identity taking the contemporary dancer’s somatic awareness and knowledge of the body as its starting point.
Designed by Metahaven
2015, English
Softcover, 326 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$44.00 - Out of stock
To interrupt the city (be it digitally or materially) means to arrest the flow or circulation that the city consists of. The tactics by which this interruption is achieved may vary, ranging from a media offensive to riots in the streets, but each and every time these activities affect the public sphere, also make the public sphere. Thus, the public domain is constituted by a combination of social, political and media forces, in a continuous flux, continuously being interrupted. This book attempts to chart the conditions under which one is able to develop a voice in the public sphere, and to ask in what way these conditions could be altered by means of artistic interventions.
Designed by Metahaven
2015, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 13 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$44.00 - Out of stock
Is art criticism losing ground, because of the internet and art blogs? Do people consider the authoritative art critics as their most important source to assess and filter what they want to see, read, etc.? Most recent discussions have evolved around the question "What is art criticism?", this book wants to explore the question "Where is art criticism?". It delves into new ways and spaces where art critics might interact with publics, works of art, artists and scholars.
Contributions by Luc Boltanski, Sabeth Buchmann, Robin Celikates and more...
Designed by Metahaven
2015, English
Softcover, 430 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$42.00 - Out of stock
‘Moving Together’ by Rudi Laermans examines contemporary dance from both a practical and a theoretical perspective, with interactions between the two. The author analyses three important tendencies in contemporary dance: pure dance, dance theatre, and (self-)reflexive dance. He proposes a (theoretical) conceptual framework and through extensive dialogues with choreographers he investigates how artistic cooperation results in dance.
Designed by Metahaven
2015, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$42.00 - Out of stock
Neoliberalism has taken autonomous professional values and labour firmly in its grasp. Work has become freelance, flexible, mobile, project-based, hybrid and temporary. This way of working is not new to artists. They have seen themselves confronted with these precarious conditions since many years. 'Mobile Autonomy' detects what modes of economy and different innovative working modalities artists and other artistic professionals have developed in order to create their work in today’s social, economic and political conditions.
Contributions by : A Dog Republic, Nico Dockx, Jef Geys, Pascal Gielen, Erik Hagoort, Thomas Hirschhorn, Kirsten Leenaars, Isabell Lorey, Oda Projesi, Louise Osieka, Jason Pallas, Caroline Picard, Raqs Media Collective, Kuba Szreder, Jonas Tinius, Tricia Van Eck, Sara Weyns
Designed by Metahaven
2014, English
Softcover, 342 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$42.00 - Out of stock
The term “participation” is often loosely used, especially within the contexts of new media and innovative research, and is often equated with interaction. Among the recent generation of artists and designers, there is a naturally growing need to work together, across the boundaries of disciplines, in ways that enable end users to contribute to content, form, or structure. New parameters are evolving. This book studies how makers who engage in participative practices must risk abandoning their traditional roles. It demonstrates interesting participative practices, methods and results, typically characterised by ‘risky’ confrontation between disciplines and perspectives.
Contributions from Katrien Dreessen, Denny K.L. Ho, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Yanki Lee, Selina Schepers, Jessica Schoffelen, Cristiano Storni.
2014, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 13 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$44.00 - Out of stock
In this publication, sociologist Pascal Gielen and curator Niels Van Tomme invite a variety of artists and critical thinkers to reflect on new futures for the notion and practice of justice. Launching the proposition of ‘aesthetic justice’, the book offers thought-provoking views on the ways in which works of art may confront, and potentially redirect social and political imaginaries. Using analyses of contemporary art works that challenge the social, political or economic status quo, as well as interviews with artists and theoretical reflections, the book suggests alternatives for a more just future. It does so by considering the liberating potential of specific aesthetic frameworks used in a wide variety of artistic contexts, ranging from the visual arts to cinema, from music to theatre, and by exploring novel modes that can shape the emotionally charged concept of justice, and eventually transform it.
Contributors: Zoe Beloff, Arne De Boever, Mark Fisher, Matt Fraser, Pascal Gielen, Tessa Overbeek, Kerry James Marshall, Viktor Missiano, Carlos Motta, Nat Muller, Julie Atlas Muz, Gerald Raunig, Dieter Roelstraete, Hito Steyerl, Julia Svetlichnaja, Hakan TopalNiels Van Tomme, Samuel Vriezen, Christian Wolff
2015, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 13 x 21 cm
3rd Revised Ed.,
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$42.00 - Out of stock
Here, art sociologist Pascal Gielen examines the notion that the global art economy—with its ever-renewable youth quota, its gender imbalance, flexible working hours and short-term contracts (or lack of contracts)—is wholly congruent with the worst aspirations of late capitalism, and is ripe for economic exploitation. Conscious that art also offers real liberties, Gielen also proposes alternative models and argues for a recognition of the values implied by the creative process, rather than by the subtle coercions of post-Fordist production imperatives to which we are all subject.
Designed by Metahaven
2014, English
Softcover, 350 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$42.00 - Out of stock
In today’s art world there is a growing sense of ethics in relation to social, political and economic challenges, entailing a critical rethinking of production and distribution mechanisms. This book shows how the artistic perspective might generate new situations based on the potentials and limitations of the body. Featuring eleven exemplary North American practitioners, part one deals with eco-artistic practices and how these can lead to a greater sensibility towards our environment, while part two uses dance to explore the renewed concern for caring for the body. With contributions by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Jeroen Peeters, Sara Wookey, Mala Kline and others.
Design by Metahaven
2013, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$43.00 - In stock -
Constantly changing technology and growing communication networks give us ever more choices and options. However, every technological innovation has its counterpart: catastrophe looms. Dread is an essential, potentially productive element of our consciousness, and a defining characteristic of the present-day human condition. However dark and fatalistic its connotations, through its dialectical coupling of caution and transgression, paralysis and overdrive, it allows imagining the world differently, offering glimpses of the ineffable. This book is a peripheral exploration of dread wherein contributors reflect upon the concept’s potentialities from a contemporary viewpoint.
Contributions by Timo Arnall, James Bridle, Simon Critchley, Adam Greenfield, Johan Grimonprez, Vinay Gupta, Ben Hammersley, Thomas Hirschhorn, Xander Karskens, Metahaven, China Miéville, Kevin Slavin, Superflux, Juha van ’t Zelfde
Designed by Metahaven
2013, English
Softcover, 262 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$42.00 - Out of stock
Today’s networked society offers us many wondrous possibilities of information, communication, mobility, and flexibility. It also has a latent side effect: it makes the world “flat”. Time-honoured hierarchies, traditions, elites and canons are subject to erosive movements. In such a flattened, “horizontal” world, art institutions are finding it difficult to survive. After all, institutions such as these traditionally represent “verticality” – historic profundity, tradition, values, dignity, and certainty.
Contributions by: Kenny Cupers, Bart De Baere, Ann Demeester, Jimmie Durham, Alex Farquharson, Mark Fisher, Pascal Gielen, Marc Jacobs, Sonja Lavaert, Thijs Lijster, Isabell Lorey, Markus Miessen, Chantal Mouffe, Gerald Raunig, Patricia Reed, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Blake Stimson
Designed by Metahaven
2015, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 17 x 23 cm
Published by
MUMA / Victoria
$20.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published to accompany the exhibition Technologism, at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) in Melbourne, 3 Oct - 12 Dec 2015, curated by Charlotte Day.
Artists: Cory Arcangel (US), Dara Birnbaum (US), Chris Burden (US), Ian Burn (AU), Antoinette J. Citizen (AU), Simon Denny (NZ), Jan Dibbets (NL), Aleksandra Domanović (SI/DE), Harun Farocki (DE), Benjamin Forster (AU), Isa Genzken (DE), Greatest Hits (AU), Martijn Hendriks (NL), Lynn Hershman Leeson (US), Matt Hinkley (AU), Jenny Holzer (US), Edward Kienholz & Nancy Reddin Kienholz (US), Oliver Laric (AT), Mark Leckey (UK), Scott Mitchell (AU), Rabih Mroué (LB), Henrik Olesen (DK), Nam June Paik (KR/US), Nam June Paik & John Godfrey (US), Joshua Petherick (AU), Matte Rochford (AU), Jill Scott (AU), Richard Serra (US), John F. Simon Jr. (US), Brian Springer (US), Hito Steyerl (DE), Ricky Swallow (AU), Jeff Thompson (US), Pia van Gelder (AU), Ulla Wiggen (US) and Dennis Wilcox (AU)
MUMA concludes its three-part series on watershed moments in art history — Reinventing the Wheel: the readymade century and Art as a Verb — with Technologism, a major group exhibition bringing together forty-three historical and contemporary artworks, including several new commissions from Australian practitioners. Technologism wrestles with the profound cultural, social and political impact technology has made on art since the 1960s.
Conservative cul-de-sac's of the community are often sceptical of technology and its ever increasing presence in our lives. However many artists — with a natural propensity for constant upheaval — have whole-heartedly embraced radical changes in technology over the last sixty years. Featuring artworks that engage both physically and conceptually with electronic systems — television, computers, the internet, smartphones — Technologism focuses on the ways artists critique and disrupt official uses of the media, or construct their own machines and data systems.
Riffing off both the aesthetic and conceptual characteristics of technology, artists in Technologism document technology's advancement in a plethora of ways: Ulla Wiggen's intricate paintings of circuit boards from the mid 1960s, see the development of an aesthetic inspired by the complex intersection of electrical wires, connectors and components, working to manipulate and rewire the physicality of technology; some thirty years later, John F. Simon's Art Appliances series of the 1990s uses the circuitry of small LCD screens to disrupt pictures and patterns, recreating them over; in Matte Rochford's video Progressively Degrading Test Pattern 2013, humble VHS tapes are copied and recopied, in a process of metaphysical reduction; while in Joshua Petherick's new work, one technology is employed to record another soon to be superseded, revealing new visual dimensions and the 'ghosts in the machine'.
A story of advancement inevitably turns into obsolescence, and Technologism seeks to document the early use of broadcast technology as a way of bridging the gap (and finding a space) between the image on the screen, the physical presence of the viewer, and the broader community. Jan Dibbet's TV as a Fireplace 1968, documents television as a collective experience — even if viewers were separated physically, they were united through time and space like pre-historic cave-dwellers by a communal broadcast. However with the advent of the internet, personal computer devices and streaming services, technology has again changed the relationship we have with the world around us to a more singular yet proliferating existence.
A history of DIY jamming and hacking presents the way artists have continued to subvert conventional uses of technology and challenge the status-quo, from the internet as militarily-designed, to corporately-exploited, civilian-employed, artistically-manipulated, and back again. For instance, Lynn Hershman Leeson's work investigates how media is used as a tool for censorship and political repression, while Simon Denny's work co-opts the aesthetic and rhetoric of language of multinational corporations in order to question their power. In presenting these works and others, Technologism seeks to consider what is the value of such subversion, or is it merely a perpetuation of the problem?
Artist Hito Steyerl asks, 'is the internet dead?' Although, hyperbolic in its prognosis, Technologism recognises that sceptical questions such as this are an important part of how artistic practice negotiates technological advancement. Technologism proceeds from the idea that technology in all its forms, physical and immaterial, needs to be interrogated in order to be perpetually remade.
Technologism considers changes in infrastructure, such as telecommunication networks and the internet, and the cultural implications of technological innovation and considers from the position of the developers of these technologies as well as from the end user. Technologism asks 'how does technology effect artistic practice?' As well as, 'how can artistic practice effect technology?'
Fully illustrated catalogue features texts by Charlotte Day, Philip Brophy, Bridget Crone and Sean Dockray. Designed by Yanni Florence.
2016, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 18.7 X 26 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$20.00 - Out of stock
The Exhibitionist #12
Journal on Exhibition Making
Reflection
Jens Hoffmann, Julian Myers-Szupinska, and Liz Glass
Exhibitions are a social and collective form. Whether the products of a single artist or of a group, they gather together artworks (or objects, projects, residues) and construct from them an image of a social field. Just as understanding an exhibition involves thinking about the relations that exist among, and engender the possibility of imagining, that field, no less are exhibitions produced by a group. Beyond the artists and the exhibition maker(s) involved, an exhibition radiates from an expansive network: conservators, shippers, installers, writers, editors, designers, administrative types of all sorts, interns, guards, funders, promoters, and so on. Exhibitions are, furthermore, perceived by an audience or a public—another group—who are themselves internally divided and classed, cohesive or cacophonous....
contents
Response I: Artists and curators
Fia Backström and Anthony Huberman
Re: family dynamics
Anne Ellegood and Kerry Tribe
Long Term Relationship
Claire Fontaine and Jens Hoffmann
Artistic Bitches and Curatorial Bastards
Inés Katzenstein and Juan José Cambre
Agreement
Response II: Archival
Introduced by Liz Glass
Dear King Harry
James Lee Byars: Correspondence with Harald Szeemann (1988)
La critique
Triple Candie: Let the Artists Die
Emiliano Valdés: Who Has the Power?
Nontobeko Ntombela: Remastered
Daniel Birnbaum: Hijacking the Situationists
Slavs and Tatars: The Splits of the Mind, If Not the Legs
Rachel Rose: Artist, Curator, Meaning
+
An Illustrated Bibliography of the exhibitionist, Issues IX–XII
2016, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 22 x 29.3 cm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$20.00 - Out of stock
Kaleidoscope #27 (Summer 2016) is issue is a key to enter the world of Los Angeles-based artist Sterling Ruby, exclusively playing the double role of subject and guest editor. Conceived as a viral, aggressive takeover of the magazine’s architecture, content and design, this hyper-vertical survey is the result of an intense dialogue with the artist and his studio, comprised of 160+ pages on his exuberant work and vision.
Ruby’s cover portrait is drawn from an extensive series shot by photographer Max Farago at the artist’s massive industrial studio space in LA. Inside, the Sterling Ruby Takeover decodes the artist's grammar through an intimate conversation with artist Piero Golia and newly commissioned writings by Alex Gartenfeld, Donatien Grau, Aram Moshayedi, Ross Simonini, Paul Schimmel and Catherine Taft; while his network of influences is explored through a series of guest features dedicated to his peers, heroes and collaborators, including Huma Bhabha (by Massimiliano Gioni), Cassils (by Francesca Gavin), Mike Davis (by Sterling Ruby), John Divola (by Alexander Shulan), Cyprien Gaillard (by Natalia Valencia Arango), Ron Nagle (by Sterling Ruby), Nancy Rubins (by Sterling Ruby), Raf Simons (by Alessio Ascari) and Melanie Schiff (by Sarah Workneh). All of this content is punctuated by stunning visual contributions especially created by Ruby for the magazine’s pages, comprising an unseen presentation of his Work Wear modeled by the entire studio team.
Born in 1972 on an American air force base in Germany, raised in rural Pennsylvania, trained in Chicago, Ruby moved to LA to finish his education, became Mike Kelley’s teaching assistant and quickly one of the city’s quintessential artists. Now 44, he runs a megastudio with a staff of over twenty under the big black sun. Complex to label in his unapologetic combination of compulsion and strategy, bigness and poetry, handcraft and seriality, darkness and psychedelia, hard and soft, Ruby is one of the most unique and controversial voices on the art scene, working incessantly across the most diverse media and platforms and stretching the limits of visual language. This hybrid editorial experiment coincides with the artist's major show at the Belvedere/Winterpalais in Vienna and participation in the “Made in LA“ biennial at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Running independent from the takeover, the opening section of HIGHLIGHTS and the closing section of REGULARS complete the issue with a rich and varied selection of the best of the summer season and insightful contributions from our columnists and correspondents around the globe.
HIGHLIGHTS features profiles on Sean Raspet (by Franklin Melendez), Kienholz (by Gianni Jetzer), Marguerite Humeau (by Nadim Samman), Eckhaus Latta (by Chloe Wilcox), Sol Calero (by George Vasey), Renaud Jerez (by Tina Kukielski), Christopher Y. Lew (by Julia Trotta), Yngve Holen (by Cristina Travaglini), Home Economics (by Attilia Fattori Franchini), Valerie Keane (by Allison Bulger), Cao Fei (by Xin Wang) and Megan Rooney (by Harry Burke).
In the REGULARS section, “Producers” features Carson Chan in conversation with New York-based collective DIS; in “Futura 89+,” Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets (with Katherine Dionysius) interview young Portuguese artist Bruno Zhu; Fiona Duncan reflects on the figure of the go-go dancer in contemporary art and culture as part of her “Pro/Creative” column; in “Renaissance Man,” Jeffrey Deitch discusses the collaboration between artist Alex Israel and writer Bret Easton Ellis; Maria Lind's “Centerstage” presents Danish artist Marie Kölbaek-Iversen; Gean Moreno unveils Cuba’s new normal for “Panorama”; in “Pioneers,” Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen talk to Heimo Zobernig; and lastly, as part of the “What's Next” series, we look forward to the season with collector and curator Tiffany Zabludowicz.
Softcover, 230 pages, 20.5 x 27 cm
Published by
Cura Books / Rome
$20.00 - Out of stock
cura. is a quarterly magazine, a publishing house, an exhibition space and a platform for editorial and curatorial activities, based in Rome, Italy.
CURA. NO.22
COVER BY SOL CALERO
INSIDE THE COVER
Sol Calero
text by Adam Carr
PORTRAITS IN THE EXHIBITION SPACE
Johannes Cladders’ anti-museum
by Lorenzo Benedetti
EXHIBITION LITERATURE
Expanded Literature.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
by Jean-Max Colard
SPOTLIGHT
James Bridle.
Seeing Like a Network
in conversation with Ben Vickers
Self-Portrait as a City.
Alex Israel in conversation
with Gigiotto Del Vecchio
ABOUT
Anicka Yi’s Allegorical Bouquets
by Chris Sharp
ABOUT
Kevin Beasley.
Energy Accumulates
by Rose Bouthillier
ARTIST’S PROJECT
by Amy Yao
SPOTLIGHT
Philipp Timischl
in conversation with
Pierre-Alexandre Mateos
and Charles Teyssou
A VISIT TO
Rodrigo Hernández
in conversation with
Joao Mourao & Luis Silva
SPOTLIGHT
ÅYR
in conversation with Philipp Ekardt
SPOTLIGHT
Caroline Mesquita
in conversation with
Martha Kirszenbaum
HOT!
Debora Delmar Corp.
by Judith Vrancken
Juliana Huxtable
by Whitney Mallett
Sophie Jung
by Frances Loeffler
Nancy Lupo
by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
2016, English
Softcover (w. french-folds), 240 pages, 14 cm x 22.8 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$49.00 - Out of stock
Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992) started writing about photography from the moment he became a photographer: for his own publications, for Italian magazines and newspapers, as well as private reflections committed to paper, where his thoughts would settle and then often depart in new directions.
Published for the first time in English, The Complete Essays 1973–1991 comprises sixty-eight texts in which Ghirri explores the same subjects at the core of his photographs – the themes of identity, time, memory, vision, representation, and sense of place. As a voracious reader with a particular taste for the eclectic, Ghirri also reaches outwards from his own practice to explore the history of photography as he considers the work of Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Robert Adams and John Gossage, weaving in references to musicians, writers and painters alike. As themes and ideas overlap, the compilation of texts create a sort of dialectic chamber of curiosities that includes Gulliver, Van Gogh’s yellow house, Cézanne, Morandi’s studio, Mallarmé, the fireworks above Trani Cathedral, neo-realist films, lots of music, Francis Bacon, McLuhan’s global village, Pessoa, poetry. Together, the essays offer an unintentional yet comprehensive treatise on the history and theory of photography, and above all, they constitute a special form of autobiography.
Accompanied by 50 colour plates.
Born in Scandiano in 1943, Luigi Ghirri spent his working life in the Emilia Romagna region, where he produced one of the most open and layered bodies of work in the history of photography. He was published and exhibited extensively both in Italy and internationally and was at the height of his career at the time of his death in 1992. His first book, Kodachrome (1978), an avant-garde manifesto for the medium of photography and a landmark in his own remarkable oeuvre, was re-published by MACK in 2012.
2016, English / Albanian
12“ vinyl LP and catalogue in gatefold cover,24 pages, 31 x 31 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$30.00 $10.00 - In stock -
I Have Left You the Mountain
Edited by Simon Battisti, Leah Whitman-Salkin, Åbäke
With contributions by Etel Adnan, Mourid Barghouti, Michel Butor, Claire Fontaine, Yona Friedman, Anri Sala, Michael Taussig, Yanis Varoufakis, Ornela Vorpsi, Finn Williams; the singers of Fier, Vlorë, Himarë, and Tirana
“I Have Left You the Mountain,” published on the occasion of the Albanian Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presents ten new texts written by contemporary writers and thinkers on the architecture of displacement. These texts have been set to music and sung by some of the last remaining groups of Albanian iso-polyphonic singers, an art form now protected as “intangible cultural heritage” by UNESCO.
A living art form in step with the generations of migration and transition, “singing migration” has been a core part of processing departure, longing, and return. The Albanian Pavilion is a space of collective listening; of “individuals in company.”
“I Have Left You The Mountain” initiates a conversation about the urbanism of displacement, projecting the Albanian case onto an international stage, with the express intention to transmit that dialogue and its speculations back into Albania.
The singers of Fier: Petrit Canaj, Llazar Dumi, Kastriot Halihoxha, Nesim Meno, Muharrem Mezani, Guri Rrokaj, Fatmir Tahiraj, Shaban Zeneli; the singers of Vlorë: Adriatik Cenko, Viktor Gjoka, Sinan Gjoleka, Vendim Kapaj, Piro Latifaj, Dejrim Mustafaraj, Trifon Malaj; the singers of Himarë: Luljeta Çipa, Valentina Gerdhuqi, Violeta Gerdhuqi, Zaharulla Koka, Polite Merkuri, Eglanda Prifti, Vojsava Zenelaj; the singers of Tirana: Dhurim Ballo, Sotir Ballo, Nazo Celaj, Trifon Golemi, Hyso Xhaferraj
Published on the occasion of the Albanian Pavilion at the15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Design by Åbäke