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.
1989, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages, 15 x 21 cm
1st Edition of 500, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
IMA / Brisbane
$50.00 - Out of stock
This limited edition publication is a collection of papers that resulted from a forum, entitled "Postmodernism: A Consideration of the Appropriation of Aboriginal Imagery?", which was held at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, on June 16 1988.
Edited by Sue Cramer, Director, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.
CONTENTS:
Foreward by Sue Cramer
"Some Background To Issues Concerning The Appropriation of Aboriginal Imagery" by Henrietta Fourmile
"Re―Appropriation" by Tim Johnson
"A Whiter Shade of Palaeolithic" by Vivien Johnson
"Appropriation of Aboriginal Imagery: Tim Johnson and Imants Tillers" by Bob Lingard "Postmodernism, Appropriation and Western Desert Acrylics" by Eric Michaels
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS:
Henrietta Fourmile lives in Brisbane, and is a writer and lecturer in Aboriginal Studies at Brisbane CAE, Mt Gravatt. She was born in Yarrabah, North Queensland, and is a member of the Yidindji tribe, Kurabana clan, of the Cairns region.
Tim Johnson is a writer and artist living in Sydney who has worked closely with Papunya artists. He exhibits mainly in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Vivien Johnson lives in Sydney and is Senior Lecturer in sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney. She also writes on Western Desert Painting and rock music.
Bob Lingard lives in Brisbane and is a writer and sociologist who teaches in the Department of Education at the University of Queensland. He is also co-author of Understanding Schooling (London, Routlalge, 1988).
Eric Michaels was a writer and anthropologist who lectured at Griffith University and was resident in Brisbane. He worked as an art adviser at Yuendumu and wrote on the subject of contemporary Aboriginal culture, He is also the author of For a Cultural Future: Francis Jupurrurla Makes TV at Yuendumu (Art and Criticism Monograph series Volume 3 Artspace, 1987. Edited by Juan Davila and Paul Foss) which examines the introduction of media into the Aboriginal community.
1981, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 18.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Art & Text / Prahran
$45.00 - Out of stock
ART & TEXT 2
Winter 1981
Edited by Paul Taylor
CONTENTS:
"On Some Alternatives to the Code in the Age of Hyperreality: the Hermit and the City—Dweller" by John Young and Terry Blake
"The Desire of Maria Kozic" by Adrian Martin
"David Wilson’s New Sculpture" by Patrick McCaughey
"Modernism and Realism: Some Orientations" by Terry Smith
"Culture Corner" by Peter Tyndall
Manifestos:
"Manifesto for a future Sculpture Triennial" by Judy Annear
"Manifesto for a Renewed Art Practice 1980" by John Nixon (missing)
Book Reviews:
"About Looking by John Berger" by Ian North
"The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change by Robert Hughes" by David Bromfield
"The Years of Hope: Australian Art and Criticism 1959 — 1968 by Gary Catalano" by Noel Hutchison
note: this copy is missing the insert manifesto "Manifesto for a Renewed Art Practice 1980" by John Nixon
Art & Text, one of the landmark contemporary art magazines of the 1980s and 1990s. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981 by Paul Taylor (1957–92), who soon moved to New York City to make his mark as an art critic, the magazine went on to become one of a handful of international art magazines that succeeded in capturing the turmoil and passing brilliance of that period of postmodernism.
Very Good - general wear/tanning.
1981, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Art & Text / Prahran
$45.00 - Out of stock
ART & TEXT 3
Spring 1981
Edited by Paul Taylor
Art & Text, one of the landmark contemporary art magazines of the 1980s and 1990s. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981 by Paul Taylor (1957–92), who soon moved to New York City to make his mark as an art critic, the magazine went on to become one of a handful of international art magazines that succeeded in capturing the turmoil and passing brilliance of that period of postmodernism.
1983, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Art & Text / Prahran
$45.00 - Out of stock
ART & TEXT 9
Autumn 1983
Edited by Paul Taylor
CONTENTS:
"The Good Oil Company and the Bad Oil Company" by Stephen Muecke
"Laughs: The Misappropriated Jewels or a close shave for the Prima Donna" by Michel Serres
"Prediction Piece # 9" by Lyndal Jones
"What Made Mad Max Popular?" by Jon Stratton
"From Alpha Trainer to Subway" by Germano Celant
"On The Use Of Certain Words" by Patricio Marchant
Art & Text, one of the landmark contemporary art magazines of the 1980s and 1990s. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981 by Paul Taylor (1957–92), who soon moved to New York City to make his mark as an art critic, the magazine went on to become one of a handful of international art magazines that succeeded in capturing the turmoil and passing brilliance of that period of postmodernism.
2014, English
Softcover, 224 pages (colour ill.), 21.5 x 15.6 cm
Published by
Afterall / London
Walther König / Köln
$28.00 - Out of stock
A show challenging the conventional understanding of public art,Culture in Action in Chicago had a new social agenda, and rethought what an exhibition of contemporary art might be. This project was curated by Mary Jane Jacob as part of the Sculpture Chicago programme in 1993.
Through eight projects by artists initiated in the early 1990s and developed in collaboration with local people, the intention was to engage diverse groups over time, in addition to the visiting public in 1993.
In this fifth book in Afterall's Exhibition Histories series, the course of these projects is documented, with a critical reappraisal of this important exhibition in newly commissioned essays and interviews, together with reviews from the time.
Included are interviews with Mary Jane Jacob, Mark Dion and Simon Grennan.
2015, English/German
Softcover, 288 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 - Out of stock
Going beyond discussions of post-Net production in the digital realm, this issue invites in the ghost of Friedrich Kittler to address “media” via the nexus of its fraught theoretical legacy – ’90s techno-determinism versus the biopolitical forces of capital in the social field. What if, rather than writing a social history of media, we thought through media to read our social sphere? The fallout is recombined here as a framework for engaging, and perhaps upending, contemporary relations of body, class, and power and the devices and cultural techniques by which they are bound.
2015, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture / Cyprus
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$33.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Omar Kholeif
Contributions by Vassos Argyrou, Mirjam Brusius, Alkis Hadjiandreou, Yannis Hamilakis, Malak Helmy, Didier Maleuvre, Walter Mignolo, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Yiannis Papadakis, Nasa Patapiou, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Eike Wittrock, Konstantina Zanou
Published on the occasion of the Cyprus Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, Two Days after Forever is not an exhibition catalogue, but rather an alternate temporal manifestation of the themes of the pavilion itself—in 2015, realized by artist Christodoulos Panayiotou and curated by Omar Kholeif. Adopting a variety of modes of address, this book acts as a kind of theater for considering the questions: How does one choreograph a history that is constantly being re-imagined? And, how do we speak of an anthropology of movement?
With critical writing, poetry, open-ended letters, sketches, and provocations through both new and existing texts, this publication explores materiality as performance and how quiet gestures can function as subversive counterpoints to homogenous nationalistic narratives. The backdrop, Cyprus, becomes a site of multiple imaginaries from where this reader will seek to articulate a new route of escape.
Copublished with the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture
Design by Julia, London
2015, English
Softcover, 629 pages, 19.5 x 25.5 cm
Published by
Leuphana University of Lüneburg / Germany
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$42.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Marie-Luise Angerer, Christoph Behnke, Ana Bogdanović, Larissa Buchholz, Sabeth Buchmann, Kathrin Busch, Bettina von Dziembowski, Daniel Falb, Paul Feigelfeld, Ulrike Gerhardt, Monica Greco, Erich Hörl, Cornelia Kastelan, Stefanie Kleefeld, Valérie Knoll, Roman Kräussl, Susanne Leeb, Hannes Loichinger, Sven Lütticken, Julia Moritz, Volker Pekron, Pierre Pénet, Dieter Roelstraete, Bettina Roggmann, Stefan Römer, Steffen Rudolph, Michael Sanchez, Magnus Schaefer, Stefanie Sembill, Christophe Spaenjers, Paul Stenner, Jeannine Tang, Olav Velthuis, Ulf Wuggenig
Peripheries are profoundly ambiguous regions. While trying to build a relationship with the center, the periphery often finds itself excluded both on a structural and actor-related level, no matter if the center-periphery model is defined in terms of space or along relations of power. However, beyond static perspectives of such struggles, in a dynamic and globalized artistic field increasingly transformed by the digital revolution, temporary mobility attractors deserve our attention.
This publication attempts to shift practices of thought toward both critical realism and new materialism. It is neither committed to today’s wishful thinking regarding horizontalized networks and deterritorialized structures, nor does it fix itself to determinist approaches. In contrast to twentieth-century constructivist approaches and their epistemic fallacies, materialized verticalities and matter-based, infrastructural spaces are brought to the fore.
This book is the result of four years of collaborative work that focused on topics of affect, the return of history, ecology, and art and its markets in today’s power law–based economies. These themes triggered not only the development of new artworks but also gave rise to reflexive discourses and discussions surrounding art theory, philosophy, sociology, and economics. The book contains a visual documentation of a number of group shows—which also included the works of winners of the Daniel Frese Prize—at Agathenburg Castle, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Lüneburg, and Kunstverein Springhornhof. The contributions by critics, curators, theoreticians, and scientists include essays and in-depth conversations.
Works by Art Club 2000, Patterson Beckwith, J. St. Bernard, Angela Bulloch, Daniel Buren, Merlin Carpenter, Gordon Castellane, Diego Castro, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Jeremiah Day, Stephan Dillemuth, John Dogg, Maria Eichhorn, Jana Euler, Loretta Fahrenholz, Renée Green, Karl Holmqvist, Gilta Jansen, Monika Jarecka, Tobias Kaspar, Carola Keitel, Jackie McAllister, Josephine Meckseper, Dirk Meinzer, James Meyer, Shana Moulton, nOffice, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Fabian Reimann, Carissa Rodriguez, Megan Francis Sullivan, Katja Staats, Simon Starling, Buffy Summers, Jan Timme, Daniela Töbelmann, Niko Wolf, Amelie von Wulffen, Phillip Zach
Copublished with Leuphana University of Lüneburg
Design and infographics by Sina Hurnik and Kerstin Warncke
2015, English
Softcover, 408 pages, 17.8 x 26.7 cm
Published by
Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College / New York
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$40.00 - Out of stock
With a collection of images curated by Jenny Jaskey and Alicia Ritson
Contributions by Armen Avanessian, Elie Ayache, Amanda Beech, Ray Brassier, Mikko Canini, Diana Coole, Christoph Cox, Manuel DeLanda, Diedrich Diederichsen, Tristan Garcia, Iain Hamilton Grant, Elizabeth Grosz, Boris Groys, Graham Harman, Terry Horgan, Jenny Jaskey, Katerina Kolozova, James Ladyman, François Laruelle, Nathan Lee, Suhail Malik, Quentin Meillassoux, Reza Negarestani, John Ó Maoilearca, Trevor Paglen, Luciana Parisi, Matthew Poole, Matjaž Potrč, João Ribas, Matthew Ritchie, Alicia Ritson, Susan Schuppli, Steven Shaviro, Nick Srnicek, Achim Szepanski, Eugene Thacker, McKenzie Wark, Andy Weir
Realism Materialism Art (RMA) introduces a diverse selection of new realist and materialist philosophies and examines their ramifications on the arts. Encompassing neo-materialist theories, object-oriented ontologies, and neo-rationalist philosophies, RMAserves as a primer on “speculative realism,” considering its conceptual innovations as spurs to artistic thinking and practice and beyond. Despite their differences, these philosophical positions propose that thought can and does think outside itself, and that reality can be known without its being shaped by and for human comprehension. Today’s realisms and materialisms explicitly challenge many of the dominant assumptions of cultural practice and theoretical inquiry, opening up new domains of research and artistic inquiry.
Cutting across diverse thematic interests and modes of investigation, the thirty-five essays in RMA offer a snapshot of the emerging and rapidly changing set of ideas and practices proposed by contemporary realisms and materialisms. The book demonstrates the broad challenge of realist and materialist approaches to received disciplinary categories and forms of practice, capturing their nascent reworking of art, philosophy, culture, theory, and science, among other fields. As such, RMAexpands beyond the primarily philosophical context in which realism and materialism have developed.
Copublished with the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
Design by Zak Group
2015, English
Softcover, 148 pages, 214 x 20 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$50.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Eva Grubinger, Jörg Heiser (Eds.)
Contributions by Aleksandra Domanović, Mark Fisher, Nathalie Heinich, Mark Leckey, Jean-François Lyotard and Bernard Blistène, Jussi Parikka, Christiane Sauer, Timotheus Vermeulen
While the first volume Sculpture Unlimited (2011) dealt with the question of how the contemporary field of sculpture can be defined in a useful and stimulating manner against its long history, the second volume looks at the present and future. Once again edited by Eva Grubinger and Jörg Heiser, with contributions by internationally reputed artists and scholars, this volume poses the following question: If we assume that computers and algorithms increasingly control our lives, that they not only regulate social and communicative traffic but also produce new materials and things, does this increase or decrease the space for artistic imagination and innovation? Where is the place of art and sculpture, provided we don’t want art to resort to merely maintaining aesthetic traditions?
With sculpture as a leading reference, the contributions address theory, aesthetics, and technology: Do current philosophical movements such as new materialism and object-oriented ontology affect our notion of the art object? Does so-called post-Internet art have a future? And how does the Internet of Things relate to objects and things in art?
Design by Surface
2015, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$26.00 - Out of stock
Theater of Exhibitions analyzes “art after the end of art,” questioning whether inherited frameworks of making, theorizing, and exhibiting art still apply to contemporary practice. The book also considers the current commodification of the art industry and the distribution of images in the digital age. Drawing from his formation in theater and his own curatorial work, Jens Hoffmann reflects on the spaces of contemporary art—the gallery, the institution, the biennial—and ultimately positions the discipline of curating in the context of a larger cultural sphere shaped by the political, social, and economic conditions of its time, while demanding new attitudes and new thinking. Hoffmann’s theater posits the exhibition as an anthropological endeavor, and the curator as its agent.
“Jens Hoffmann inventively connects the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator with the most recent developments in curatorial practice in a book that flows forcefully with the insights gained from his extensive and remarkable curatorial experience.”
—Jessica Morgan
“Do curators today possess their own radical concepts of freedom? Jens Hoffmann’s answer to this question is yes. Walter Benjamin would have admired his description of the reality of the work. John Dewey would have praised him for living forward. Curators will find worlds of use for Theater of Exhibitions.”
—Molly Nesbit
“What is an appropriate form of assembly, an adequate embodied ritual for a global society in the twenty-first century? The exhibition still offers the best solution, yet it is increasingly perceived as falling short. To join Jens Hoffmann on his journey to the heart of exhibition making is to enter into the center of this negotiation, and there is no better travel guide than him.”
—Tino Sehgal
Design and illustrations by A Practice for Everyday Life
2012, English
Softcover, 206 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$38.00 - In stock -
At the heart of "How to Do Things with Art" lies the question of art's relevance to society. How does art become politically or socially significant? This book attempts to answer this question on a theoretical level, and to indicate, through the analysis of works by James Coleman, Daniel Buren, Jeff Koons, and Tino Sehgal, how artists can create and shape social relevance; in other words, to provide what could be called a pragmatic understanding of art's societal impact. The title of the book itself is a play on John Langshaw Austin's seminal lecture series "How to Do Things with Words," in which he discussed the performative, or reality-producing, capacity of language.
If Dorothea von Hantelmann's line of argument is based on the two theoretical premises of Austin's and Judith Butler's notion of performativity, this book offers a real semantic of how an artwork, not in spite of, but rather by virtue of its integration in certain conventions, "acts": how, for example, via the museum it sustains or co-produces a certain notion of history, progress, and development. The model of performativity that the author argues for, points toward these fundamental levels of meaning production, putting the conventions of art production, presentation, and historical persistence into focus, showing how these conventions are co-produced by any artwork, and proposing that it is precisely this dependency on conventions that opens up the possibility of changing them.
The question of how to do things with art seems particularly pertinent today: never before has what we call art been so important to Western societies—more art museums are being built than ever before, exhibitions attract mass audiences, the art world has not only expanded globally but also socially, and probably no other profession has received such a dramatic boost in status as the artist, who perfectly embodies today's prevailing idea of a creative, self-determined subjectivity.
The book is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writings.
Second edition.
2013, English
Softcover, 302 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$38.00 - Out of stock
Following the success of "A Brief History of Curating" (now available in five different languages, in its fifth reprint, and as an e-book), this publication gathers together interviews with pioneering musicians of the 1950s to the 1980s. The book thus brings together avant-garde composers such as Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen; originators of electro-acoustic music such as François Bayle, Pauline Oliveros, Iannis Xenakis, Robert Ashley, and Peter Zinovieff; Minimalist and Fluxus-inspired artists such as Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley; as well figures such as Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Arto Lindsay, and Caetano Veloso. Their contributions map the evolution of the musical field, from early experiments in concrete and abstract music, to the electronic development and the hybridization between Pop and avant-garde culture.
Hans Ulrich Obrist (*May 1968) joined the Serpentine Gallery (London) as Co-Director of International Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects in 2006.
The book is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writings.
"What a generous and incredible documentation of modern composers' minds and spirits!! It reveals their different characters, moods, methods, and more—proper fertile!!!" —Björk
2012, English
Softcover, 424 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$38.00 - Out of stock
Published for the first time in 1990—its original title is "L'Entre-images: Photo, Cinéma, Vidéo"—this volume brings together 20 illustrated essays written between 1981 and 1989 by Raymond Bellour, one of the world’s most prominent film theorists. As he writes in his foreword to this English edition, "'Between-the-Images,' which was innovative yesterday, is now a kind of archeological corpus. That is one of its virtues. It recalls how the landscape of the moving image was constituted and historicizes the first creative passages between film, video, and photography."
Considering the works and the strategies of artists and filmmakers such as Thierry Kuntzel, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Gary Hill, and Bill Viola, he examines the slow but inexorable change in moving images, putting his emphasis on three major areas of transformation: between stillness and movement, inside the photographic analogy, and between language and image. At once poetical and concisely argued, accompanied by numerous film stills, Bellour’s essays such as "The Pensive Spectator," "Video Utopia," "The Limits of Fiction," and "The Phantom's Due" are an invaluable and still relevant analyses that contribute to an understanding of the issues of today’s creation.
Raymond Bellour is a French writer, film critic, and theoretician. Emeritus Research Professor at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, he has written numerous books on film and literature, and organized several solo and group exhibitions, such as the landmark "Passages de l'image" in Centre Pompidou (1989–1990). In 1991 he founded the renowned film review "Trafic" with Serge Daney. He is also the editor of the complete works of the poet Henri Michaux.
The book is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writings.
2015, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 23 x 17cm
Published by
Black Inc / Melbourne
$19.00 - In stock -
Last year was a 'blood year' in the Middle East – massacres and beheadings, fallen cities, collapsed and collapsing states, the unravelling of a decade of Western strategy. We saw the rise of ISIS, the splintering of government in Iraq, and foreign fighters – many from Europe, Australia and Africa – flowing into Syria at a rate ten times that during the height of the Iraq War. What went wrong?
In Blood Year, David Kilcullen calls on twenty-five years' experience to answer that question. This is a vivid, urgent account of the War on Terror by someone who helped shape its strategy, as well as witnessing its evolution on the ground. Kilcullen looks to strategy and history to make sense of the crisis. What are the roots and causes of the global jihad movement? What is ISIS? What threats does it pose to Australia? What does its rise say about the effectiveness of the War on Terror since 9/11, and what does a coherent strategy look like after a disastrous year?
'As things stand in mid-2015, Western countries . . . face a larger, more unified, capable, experienced and savage enemy, in a less stable, more fragmented region. It isn't just ISIS – al-Qaeda has emerged from its eclipse and is back in the game in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Syria and Yemen. We're dealing with not one, but two global terrorist organisations, each with its own regional branches, plus a vastly larger radicalised population at home and a massive flow of foreign fighters.' David Kilcullen, Blood Year
2010, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 23 x 17cm
Published by
Black Inc / Melbourne
$18.00 - Out of stock
What did George W. Bush and John Howard do to conservatism? In their wake, the conservative parties in the US and Australia seem to have lost their way - they no longer have a vision of the future. Their neoconservative foreign policies and neoliberal economics have been discredited, and they are split on climate change and much else. How did the Right in Australia end up in this place? How might it renew itself?
In this groundbreaking essay, Waleed Aly begins by unravelling the terms Right and Left, arguing that they have become meaningless - they only foster a political conversation that becomes more about 'teams' than ideas. He discusses neoliberal economics and its corrosive effect on the social fabric, and how, in response, Howard-style conservatism was all too ready to dictate social values, even to the point of prescribing who or what is Australian.
Aly discusses what a better conservatism might look like. He argues that the political issues of the day, such as climate change and the financial crisis, mean a reactionary brand of politics is unlikely to work because public opinion is swiftly leaving it behind. He draws on the work of conservative thinkers such as John Gray, Owen Harries and even P.J. O'Rourke to sketch the kind of conservatism that seems scarce in Australia, but which would be a welcome presence.
2014, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 23 x 17cm
Published by
Black Inc / Melbourne
$18.00 - Out of stock
The nation has unfinished business. After more than two centuries, can a rightful place be found for Australia's original peoples?
Soon we will all decide if and how indigenous Australians will be recognised in the constitution. In the words of Professor Greg Craven: 'We have a committed prime minister, and a committed opposition. We have a receptive electorate. There will never be a better time. We have no choice but to address the question. If constitutions deal with fundamental things, our indigenous heritage is pretty fundamental.'
In A Rightful Place, Noel Pearson shows how the idea of 'race' was embedded in the constitution, and the distorting effect this has had. Now there is a chance to change it – if we can agree on a way forward. Pearson shows what constitutional recognition means, and what it could make possible: true equality and a renewed appreciation of an ancient culture. This is a wide-ranging, eloquent call for justice, an essay of remarkable power that traverses history and culture to make the case for change.
'As long as we have a constitution that characterises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on the basis of race, it will have deleterious implications for their citizenship. It must be removed . . . This is not just a matter of symbolism. I think this will be a matter of psychology. The day we come to regard ourselves as people with a distinct heritage, with distinct cultures and languages but not of a distinct race will be a day of psychological liberation. And it will also be liberating for those in the wider community . . . ' Noel Pearson, A Rightful Place
2014, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 23 x 17cm
Published by
Black Inc / Melbourne
$18.00 - Out of stock
Tony Abbott promised to stop the boats. With the help of Kevin Rudd's 'PNG solution,' he has. But at what cost?
In Quarterly Essay 53, Paul Toohey tells the dramatic stories of asylum seekers heading from Java to Australia, investigates people-smuggling and witnesses the aftermath of a sinking at sea.
Toohey also examines Australian attitudes to boat people, and what politicians have made of these. He assesses the diplomatic fall-out from turning back boats and asks: have we missed our chance for an Indonesian solution, a realistic alternative to the brutally effective system we now have? This is an unflinching look at people at their worst and best - and most ruthless and most vulnerable - by one of Australia's finest reporters.
'Any hope for a genuine regional solution rested with Indonesia, the final stepping stone to Australia . . . Why did neither Howard, in his better times with Indonesia, or Labor, from 2007, seek a one-on-one solution with Indonesia? 'The Indonesian Solution.' Those words would have been the most convincing political statement any Australian government could ever deliver to Australian voters on asylum seekers.' Paul Toohey, That Sinking Feeling
2014, English
Softcover, 132 pages, 23 x 17cm
Published by
Black Inc / Melbourne
$18.00 - In stock -
Who is Clive Palmer, and what does his ascent say about Australia's creaking political system?
In Clivosaurus, Guy Rundle observes Palmer close up, examining his rise to prominence, his beliefs, his deals and his politics – not to mention his poetry. Rundle shows that neither the government nor the media have been able to take Palmer's measure. Convinced they face a self-interested clown, they have failed to recognise both his tactical flexibility and the consistency of his centre-right politics.
This is a story about the Gold Coast, money in politics, Canberra's detached political caste and the meaning of Palmer's motley crew. Above all, it is a brilliantly entertaining portrait of 'the man at the centre of a perfect storm for Australian democracy, a captain steering his vessel artfully in the whirlpool.'
'In the first half of the year we saw Tony Abbott treated with deference to his values and beliefs, as his chaotic and lying government slid from one side of the ring to the other, while Clive Palmer, ploughing a steady course on a range of key issues, was treated as the inconstant one. No wonder no one could tell what he was going to do next – they weren't even bothering to look at where he had come from.' Guy Rundle, Clivosaurus
2015, English
Softcover, 200 pages (10 b/w and 15 color ill.), 17 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$36.00 - Out of stock
Edited by David Maroto, Joanna Zielińska
Texts by Roland Barthes, Liam Gillick, Kenneth Goldsmith, Tom McCarthy, Ingo Niermann, Seth Price, Seth Siegelaub, et al.; excerpts from artist novels by Guy de Cointet, Henry Joseph Darger, Yayoi Kusama, Jill Magid, et al.
This publication is devoted to the phenomenon of the artist novel, and whether it can be considered to be a medium in its own right within the visual arts. Visual artists create different strategies to integrate their novels into their practice. Introducing traits that are particular to narrative literature into the visual arts implies the accentuation of some features over others, such as narration, fiction, identification, and the act of reading and its protracted engagement, as well as distribution in public space. An artist’s approach comes fundamentally from the visual arts. The creation of an artist novel doesn’t differ from any other artwork. Both processes feed into each other as they evolve within the same body of works. Thanks to the contributions of a selected group of artists, writers, curators, and scholars this publication strives to demonstrate that literature, when treated by visual artists, can take place well beyond the space of the book.
www.thebooklovers.info
Copublished with Cricoteka on the occasion of the exhibition “Reads Like A Book: The Book Lovers Project,” January 23–March 15, 2015.
Design by Jakub de Barbaro
2015, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Published by
Blue Rider Press / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
A highly provocative, mindbending, beautifully designed, and visionary look at the landscape of our rapidly evolving digital era. 50 years after Marshall McLuhan's ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture in "The Medium is the Massage," Basar, Coupland and Obrist extend the analysis to today, touring the world that's redefined by the Internet, decoding and explaining what they call the 'extreme present'. THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES is a quick-fire paperback, harnessing the images, language and perceptions of our unfurling digital lives. The authors offer five characteristics of the Extreme Present (see below); invent a glossary of new words to describe how we are truly feeling today; and 'mindsource' images and illustrations from over 30 contemporary artists. Wayne Daly's striking graphic design imports the surreal, juxtaposed, mashed mannerisms of screen to page. It's like a culturally prescient, all-knowing email to the reader: possibly the best email they will ever read. Welcome to THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES, a paper portrait of Now, where the Internet hasn't just changed the structure of our brains these past few years, it's also changing the structure of the planet. This is a new history of the world that fits perfectly in your back pocket. 30+ artists contributions: With contributions from Farah Al Qasimi, Ed Atkins, Alessandro Bavo, Gabriele Basilico, Josh Bitelli, James Bridle, Cao Fei, Alex Mackin Dolan, Thomas Dozol, Constant Dullaart, Cecile B Evans, Rami Farook, Hans-Peter Feldmann, GCC, K-Hole, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Eloise Hawser, Camille Henrot, Hu Fang, K-Hole, Koo Jeong-A, Katja Novitskova, Lara Ogel, Trevor Paglen, Yuri Patterson, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Michael Stipe, Rosemarie Trockel, Amalia Ulman, David Weir, Trevor Yeung.
2014, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 15 x 20.8 cm
Published by
Actar / Barcelona
$35.00 - Out of stock
Beyond Environment presents the potent interchange between architecture, Land Art, and Performance Art that emerged through Italian architect Gianni Pettena's idealized collaboration with American artists Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson in the 1970s. Captivated by a journey to the USA in 1971, Pettena would converse with the American Midwest, a conversation culminating in his meeting with Robert Smithson in Salt Lake City. Earlier in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Pettena's experiments in material trans- formations helped create some of the architect's most iconic works. Staged in an abandoned school and in a non-descriptive suburban house, and titled Ice House I and II, Pettena would pour water into the mold works he created around the buildings' perimeter walls. Curing during the winter night to a coat of ice, the houses resonated with their conceptual predecessor, Kaprow's Fluids of 1967, as well as with an incomparable contemporary architectural sensibly concerned with the effects of variedly compounded, highly eidetic archi- tectural surfaces. Emanuele Piccardo is an architect and a curator working from Genoa, Italy; Amit Wolf is an architect, curator, and Lecturer at Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles. With contributions and works of Peter Cook, Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta Clark, Superstudio; and interviews with Gianni Pettena, Ugo La Pietra, Lapo Binazzi, Fabio Sargentini.
2015, English / German
Softcover, 264 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$31.00 - Out of stock
Exile and marginality, network availability, mass- versus subcultural identities, privilege, opting (versus dropping) out – these are elements this issue takes on. The fading of bohemia’s appeal is no doubt linked in part to a growing preference for the web’s promise of total-connectivity. Though could another factor be at work here too: an underlying sense that perhaps the real displacement and disenfranchisement after which romantic notions of “bohemia” were later formed may again be a very real threat?
ISSUE NO. 97 / MARCH 2015 “BOHEMIA”
ENGLISH CONTENTS include:
DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN
THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF DISENFRANCHISEMENT
“Faces of bohemia at one hundred and fifty”
THE POSSIBILITY OF LIFE AT THE SYSTEMIC EDGE
Three questions for Saskia Sassen
AT THE END OF ALTERNATIVES
An interview with Cornelia Koppetsch
PHILIPP EKARDT
FIORUCCI MADE ME NORMCORE / Five observations on art, style, and scenes today
DOUGLAS COUPLAND
BOHEMIA = UTOPIA?
DANIEL KELLER
HOTTEST NEW ALT MARRIAGE STACK SOLUTIONS / Paratext and Glossary by Ella Plevin
CAROLINE BUSTA
BASIC INSTINCT / Cyber-channels and the female pose
STEPHAN DILLEMUTH
WHAT’S YOUR NAME, BOHEMIA?
THE DEATH OF ILLUSION / An interview with Noura Wedell
MORAG KEIL
BOHEMIA COMMISSION
O CRONENBERG! (A SPOILER) / Mark von Schlegell on David Cronenberg’s recent movie “Maps to the Stars” and novel “Consumed”
Nick Zedd on Greer Lankton at Participant Inc, New York
Tess Edmonson on Amalia Ulman at James Fuentes, New York
Ana Teixeira Pinto on Oliver Laric at Tanya Leighton, Berlin
NOT ONLY THE HEART IS NOT A METAPHOR / Rachel Haidu on Robert Gober at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
TOTAL CONFUSION / Christian Naujoks on Cosima von Bonin at Mumok, Vienna
GLOOM / Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho on the Taipei Biennial 2014
A GLIMPSE AT THE SOCIAL LIFE OF PAINTINGS / Catherine Chevalier on Marcel Duchamp at Centre Pompidou, Paris
LEWIS BALTZ (1945–2014)
by Jeff Rian
EDITION
TOMMA ABTS
AVERY SINGER
2015, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$33.00 - In stock -
Experts, pundits, and politicians agree: public debt is hindering growth and increasing unemployment. Governments must reduce debt at all cost if they want to restore confidence and get back on a path to prosperity. Maurizio Lazzarato’s diagnosis, however, is completely different: under capitalism, debt is not primarily a question of budget and economic concerns but a political relation of subjection and enslavement. Debt has become infinite and unpayable. It disciplines populations, calls for structural reforms, justifies authoritarian crackdowns, and even legitimizes the suspension of democracy in favor of “technocratic governments” beholden to the interests of capital. The 2008 economic crisis only accelerated the establishment of a “new State capitalism,” which has carried out a massive confiscation of societies’ wealth through taxes. And who benefits? Finance capital. In a calamitous return to the situation before the two world wars, the entire process of accumulation is now governed by finance, which has absorbed sectors it once ignored, like higher education, and today is often identified with life itself. Faced with the current catastrophe and the disaster to come, Lazzarato contends, we must overcome capitalist valorization and reappropriate our existence, knowledge, and technology.
In Governing by Debt, Lazzarato confronts a wide range of thinkers—from Félix Guattari and Michel Foucault to David Graeber and Carl Schmitt—and draws on examples from the United States and Europe to argue that it is time that we unite in a collective refusal of this most dire status quo.