World Food Books

Michael Snow
Cover to Cover

2020, English
Softcover, 316 pages, 18 x 23 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Primary Information / New York Light Industry / New York

$140.00 - In stock -

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For years an out-of-print rarity, and now this edition also out-of-print, Michael Snow’s classic artist book Cover to Cover published in limited facsimile edition in 2020 by Light Industry and Primary Information. Never bound by discipline, Snow has remarked that his sculptures were made by a musician, his films by a painter. Flipping through Cover to Cover, which is composed entirely of photographs in narrative sequence, one might describe it as a book made by a filmmaker. Snow himself has called the piece “a quasi-movie,” structured around a precise recto-verso montage.

Each page features a distinct moment, seen from one perspective on the front, and from a diametrically opposed angle on the back, occasionally pivoting, for instance, between interior and exterior spaces. This organizing principle is complicated by the fact that a given image might be a depiction of the physical environment surrounding the camera or, at other times, a photograph of a photograph. Midway through, the scene is inverted such that the volume must be turned upside-down to be looked at right-side up. The result is an elegant, disorienting study in simultaneity that allows the viewer to enter the work from either end.

Cover to Cover was originally released by the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1975. It was part of a now-legendary series of publications, overseen by Kasper König and later Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, that included titles by Michael Asher, Dara Birnbaum, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, Martha Rosler, and Yvonne Rainer, among others. Snow departed from the format of many of the press’ projects, however, producing not a collection of writings, but rather a book that constitutes an artwork in itself.

Michael Snow (b. 1928) is a Canadian artist whose multidisciplinary oeuvre includes painting, sculpture, video, film, sound, photography, drawing, writing, and music. His art explores the nature of perception, consciousness, language, and temporality and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Hara Museum of Art (Tokyo), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Palais des Beaux Arts (Brussels). Snow’s key works include experimental films such as Wavelength (1967), Back and Forth (1969), and La Région Centrale (1971), as well as the large-scale public sculptures Flightstop (1979) and The Audience (1988-89). He is the recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2011), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1972), the Order of Canada (1982), and the Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres, France (1995, 2011).

Out-of-print, As New with some very light storage wear.

File under: Michael Snow Primary Information / New York Light Industry / New York Conceptual Art Film / Video Art Photography

Destroy All Monsters — Geisha This
Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Cary Loren, Niagara

1995, English
Softcover + 7" Flexi Disc (Sonosheet), unpaginated, 21 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Primary Information / New York

$400.00 - In stock -

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Rare very first (black and gold) 1995 edition, hand-assembled and limited to 800 copies!

Destroy All Monsters started out as an anti-rock band: four midwestern art students — Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, and Niagara — with a mission to subvert the airwaves. Between 1975 and 1979, they produced six issues of DAM Magazine, a barrage of Kelley's perverse cartoons, Shaw and Loren's wild Xeroxed collages, and shots of the band; Niagara did a lot of the cover designs, and everything was crudely printed on cheap paper. "The images that drove us were the strange combinations of film noir, monster movies, psychedelia, thrift-shop values, and the relentless anarchy of an over-stimulated pop culture", recalls Cary Loren. This compilation is the definitive DAM document: hundreds of drawings, photos, Xeroxed artwork, collages, reviews, profiles, and personal manifestos, many works unpublished and unseen before — plus a flexi-record bound into the book (first printing and first pressing of this 1975 recording).

A total of three editions of “Geisha This” were produced and all are out-of-print. Each version was printed in different colours, with a different metallic cover and hand collated in a different sequence, containing new and different contents.

This version (the very first edition), has a cover design by Niagara printed in GOLD metallic ink on BLACK cardboard cover stock. The entire first printing was 800 copies, strikingly printed with dozen’s of multicoloured inks (fluros, metallics), silk-screened and spray-painted pages, with many paper stocks, all hand-assembled, printed, designed and edited by Cary Loren, with artwork and texts by Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Loren and Niagara.

Very Good copy of the first edition in black, a stunning document, complete with the brand new Flexi Disc (Sonosheet) in its first pressing.

File under: Destroy All Monsters Jim Shaw Mike Kelley Cary Loren Niagara Primary Information / New York Performance / Dance / Theater Out-of-print / Rare Art Sound / Music Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Painting Counterculture Drugs / Psychedelia

The Fluxus Newspaper

2024, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 26.7 x 35.6 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$44.00 - Out of stock

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The Fluxus Newspaper collects all eleven newspapers published by the Fluxus art collective between January 1964 and March 1979. The newspapers were edited by an ever-changing team of artists known as the Fluxus Editorial Council for Fluxus and every issue, except the last two, was designed by Fluxus founder George Maciunas.

Although published irregularly, the newspapers were used to promote Fluxus events and publications, especially the group’s famous multiples and Fluxkits, with advertising materials, order forms, and pricelists interspersed throughout. More than just a space for promotion and information, the Fluxus newspapers featured the work of over sixty artists as well as appropriated newspaper headlines, advertisements, articles, and comic strips that are indicative of the group’s anti-art sensibility and characteristic humour.

The Fluxus Newspaper is exemplative of the 'do-it-yourself' creative attitude characteristic of Fluxus – an approach that is collaborative, interdisciplinary, anti-commercial, humorous, and open to anyone. The periodical is also an early example of the artist newspaper, a medium which grew out of the underground press movement and flourished in the late 60s and 70s as artists began to seek new mediums for presenting and distributing their work.

Artists featured in The Fluxus Newspaper include: Ay-O, Carol Bergé, Joseph Beuys, Elaine Bloedow, George Brecht, Christo, Philip Corner, Walter De Maria, Willem de Ridder, Bern Erismann, Nye Ffarrabas [participating as Bici Forbes], Robert Filliou, Henry Flynt, Ken Friedman, Carolyn Krumm, Heinz Gappmayr, Eugen Gomringer, Raymond Hains, Dick Higgins, Geoffrey Hendricks, Jon Hendricks, Alice Hutchins, Tatsu Izumi, Ray Johnson, Joe Jones, Allan Kaprow, Milan Knížak, Alison Knowles, Arthur Köpcke, Takehisa Kosugi, Ruth Krauss, Philip Krumm, György Ligeti, George Maciunas, Angus MacLise, Jackson Mac Low, Larry Miller, Peter Moore, Hans Nordenström, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson, James Riddle, Dieter Roth, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Tomas Schmit, Daniel Spoerri, Christer Strömholm, Yasunao Tone, Stan VanDerBeek, Ben Vautier, Jacques Villeglé, Wolf Vostell, Yoshimasa Wada, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, William S. Wilson, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela.

80 pages, 26.7 x 35.6cm, softcover, Primary Information (New York).

File under: George Maciunas Christer Strömholm Milan Knížák Jacques Villeglé Ay-O Carol Bergé Joseph Beuys Elaine Bloedow George Brecht Christo Philip Corner Walter De Maria Willem de Ridder Bern Erismann Nye Ffarrabas [participating as Bici Forbes] Robert Filliou Henry Flynt Ken Friedman Carolyn Krumm Heinz Gappmayr Eugen Gomringer Raymond Hains Dick Higgins Geoffrey Hendricks Jon Hendricks Alice Hutchins Tatsu Izumi Ray Johnson Joe Jones Allan Kaprow Arthur Køpcke György Ligeti Alison Knowles Angus MacLise Jackson Mac Low Larry Miller Peter Moore Hans Nordenström Yoko Ono Nam June Paik Benjamin Patterson James Riddle Dieter Roth Takako Saito Mieko Shiomi Tomas Schmit Daniel Spoerri Yasunao Tone Stan VanDerBeek Ben Vautier Wolf Vostell Yoshimasa Wada Robert Watts Emmett Williams William S. Wilson La Monte Young Marian Zazeela Primary Information / New York Fluxus Performance / Dance / Theater Concrete Poetry Art Sound / Music Sculpture / Installation Painting Group Shows / Collections Conceptual Art

Martin Wong
Footprints, Poems, and Leaves

2024, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$44.00 - In stock -

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Self-published in 1968, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves collects dozens of poems written by Martin Wong between 1966 and 1968. Hand-written in a signature calligraphic style that he was just beginning to develop, the poems ebb and flow visually across the page, much like the fluctuating characters, scenes, and moods that inhabit them. This was Wong’s first book of poetry and it contains a double cover showcasing intricate drawings of skeletal angels and other tableaux, as well as a folded, looseleaf broadsheet containing two poems and a drawing of a boney leaf.

The poems were written during a relatively free period for the artist, shortly after he dropped out of Berkeley and began exploring San Francisco at the height of the hippy movement. The poems range from surrealist and pastoral descriptions of the urban subculture that surrounded him to downtrodden, travel-weary biographical entries that are both lonely and tender. Footprints, Poems, and Leaves functions like a journal capturing Wong’s tumultuous life in this period, which included being arrested at a queer, drug-fueled house party (along with Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn) and a stay in a mental institution in late 1967 and early 1968. Around the time of the book’s publication, Wong enrolled in Humboldt State University to finish his degree, beginning a new chapter for the artist.

Despite the dark backdrops of many of the works, the writing displays a playfulness with form and language and a sense of humor that can be seen throughout Wong’s later work as well. Altogether, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves creates a rich tapestry of visual poetry that is both a product of its time and the budding artistic mind of a young Martin Wong.

Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in San Francisco, California. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University, graduating in 1968. Wong was active in the performance art groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light before moving to New York in 1978. He exhibited for two decades at notable downtown galleries including EXIT ART, Semaphore, and P·P·O·W, among others, before his passing in San Francisco from an AIDS related illness. His work is represented in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, among others. Human Instamatic, a comprehensive retrospective, opened at the Bronx Museum of The Arts in November 2015, before traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2016 and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2017. In 2022, the first extensive, touring exhibition of Wong’s work in Europe, Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief, opened at Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid before traveling to KW Institute of Contemporary Art (Berlin), Camden Art Centre (London), and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).

Managing Editor (2024): James Hoff
Managing Designer (2024): Rick Myers

File under: Martin Wong Primary Information / New York LGBTQ+ Drawing Poetry Painting Art

Martin Wong
Das Puke Book

2024, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 10.5 x 7 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$22.00 - In stock -

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Das Puke Book is a small chapbook self-published by Martin Wong in 1977. Written in the early 1970s, the publication contains thirteen chapters of handwritten micro-fictions filled with cringeworthy stories unfolding in San Francisco and beyond.

Subtitled Da Otto Biography of Otto Peach Fuzz, the publication is populated with a cadre of colorful characters, some of who are obscure underground figures such as George “Hibiscus” Harris from the Cockettes and Angels of Light and Rodney Price and Debra “Beaver” Bauer from Angels of Light, while others such as Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and God, are more well known. Although lighthearted, Wong paints unforgettably vivid scenes, such as Van Gogh attacking Gauguin with a razor, Beaver eating so many hot dogs she explodes, and God coming to San Francisco only to find a notebook that makes him so sick to his stomach that he vomits endlessly until the world ends. Written during his days working on the flyers and theatrical backdrops for the Angels of Light Free Theater and published just before his move to New York, these stories capture Wong’s playfulness and the absurdist, kaleidoscopic milieu of the moment in which they were written.

Many of these stories appeared before the book’s publication in Wong’s now-iconic calligraphic scrolls. Possessing a lifelong fascination with language and its representation, Wong began writing in a flickering, calligraphic style in the sixties that found a natural home in the psychedelic movement. During the period that Das Puke Book was written, the artist traveled to Nepal, India, and Afghanistan (which makes an appearance in chapter twelve) to take a mosaic workshop in Herat and study calligraphy and tantric painting. Upon his return, he referred to himself as a tantric set designer until concluding his work with the Angels of Light in 1973–the same year that he finished the work in this book.

Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in San Francisco, California. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University, graduating in 1968. Wong was active in the performance art groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light Free Theater before moving to New York in 1978. He exhibited for two decades at notable downtown galleries including EXIT ART, Semaphore, and P·P·O·W, among others, before his passing in San Francisco from an AIDS related illness. His work is represented in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, among others. Human Instamatic, a comprehensive retrospective, opened at the Bronx Museum of The Arts in November 2015, before traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2016 and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2017. In 2022, the first extensive, touring exhibition of Wong’s work in Europe, Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief, opened at Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid before traveling to KW Institute of Contemporary Art (Berlin), Camden Art Centre (London), and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).

Managing Editor (2024): James Hoff
Managing Designer (2024): Rick Myers

File under: Martin Wong Primary Information / New York Painting Poetry Drawing LGBTQ+ Art

Newspaper
Steve Lawrence, Peter Hujar, Andrew Ullrick

2023, English
Softcover, 416 pages
Published by Primary Information / New York

$84.00 - Out of stock

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Published by Steve Lawrence and edited with Peter Hujar and Andrew Ullrick, Newspaper was published in New York City between 1968 and 1971.

Newspaper was a wordless, picture-only periodical that ran for fourteen issues and featured the disparate practices of over forty artists. With an editorial focus on placing appropriated material alongside new works, the periodical sought to codify a visual language of high and low culture that represented contemporary society in the late 1960s. While largely overlooked in art-historical discourse, Newspaper showcased many of the most revered artists working in the United States at the time, as well as an emerging coterie of queer artists.

The mid to late sixties was a flourishing period for artists experimenting with new media formats such as books, records, and magazines to create or distribute their work. Newspaper was one of the first artist-published tabloids of its era, preceding Andy Warhol’s Interview and Les Levine’s Culture Hero, both of which debuted in 1969. However, in contrast to other tabloids, Newspaper focused strictly on images.

At a time when photography was not being exhibited regularly in galleries, Newspaper provided an alternative exhibition space for the medium and some of the era’s greatest photographers. The publication’s large size and unbound format encouraged readers to take it apart and hang its pages, which was how Newspaper was installed at the Museum of Modern Art’s influential Information show in 1970.

This is not to say that Newspaper only existed within the narrow confines of the art world, far from it. It lived within (and shared contributors with) a robust network of underground and queer periodicals like The New York Review of Sex, Rags, and Gay Power, among others. Yet, unlike many of these tabloids, Newspaper has largely disappeared from the discourse around underground magazines, queer publishing, and artists’ periodicals.

All fourteen issues of Newspaper are compiled in this volume for the first time.

Featured artists include: Diane Arbus, Art Workers Coalition, Richard Avedon, Clyde Baines, Sheyla Baykal, Peter Beard, Brigid Berlin, Richard Bernstein, Ann Douglas, Paul Fisher, Maurice Hogenboom, Peter Hujar, Scott Hyde, Christo and Jeanne-Claude Javacheff, Ray Johnson, Edwin Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Gerald Laing, Dorothea Lange, Steve Lawrence, Jeff Lew, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Mercado, Duane Michals, Jack Mitchell, Forrest “Frosty” Myers, Billy Name, Stephen Paley, Warner Pearson, Jurgen Warner Piepke, Charles Pratt, Joseph Raffael, Mel Ramos, Lilo Raymond, Ruspoli-Rodriguez, Lucas Samaras, Alan Saret, Bill Schwedler, Leni Sinclair, Norman Snyder, Elizabeth Staal, Stanley Stellar, Terry Stevenson, Paul Thek, Andrew Ullrick, Andy Warhol, William T. Wiley, and May Wilson.

Editor: Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez
Managing Editor: James Hoff
Designer: Rick Myers
Copy editor: Allison Dubinsky

File under: Diane Arbus Art Workers Coalition Richard Avedon Clyde Baines Sheyla Baykal Peter Beard Brigid Berlin Richard Bernstein Ann Douglas Paul Fisher Maurice Hogenboom Peter Hujar Scott Hyde Christo and Jeanne-Claude Javacheff Ray Johnson Edwin Klein Yayoi Kusama Gerald Laing Dorothea Lange Steve Lawrence Jeff Lew Roy Lichtenstein Frank Mercado Duane Michals Jack Mitchell Forrest “Frosty” Myers Billy Name Stephen Paley Warner Pearson Jurgen Warner Piepke Charles Pratt Joseph Raffael Mel Ramos Lilo Raymond Ruspoli-Rodriguez Lucas Samaras Alan Saret Bill Schwedler Leni Sinclair Norman Snyder Elizabeth Staal Stanley Stellar Terry Stevenson Paul Thek Andrew Ullrick Andy Warhol William T. Wiley May Wilson Rick Myers Primary Information / New York Art Photography Conceptual Art Pop Art LGBTQ+ Counterculture

Primetime Contemporary Art: Art by the GALA Committee as Seen on Melrose Place
Mel Chin and Helen Nagge

2023, English
Softcover, 40 pages, 21.6 x 28 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$44.00 - In stock -

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Primetime Contemporary Art is a publication documenting a radical, two-year intervention by the GALA Committee on the primetime television show Melrose Place. Originally published in a limited run in 1998, this extremely rare artist book is reproduced here for the first time as a facsimile edition.

Mel Chin initiated the loose collective of artists known as the GALA Committee in 1995 in response to an invitation to participate in an upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The artist arranged with the producers of Melrose Place for the collective to create objects for the soap opera, resulting in an extensive series of political works used as plot devices and props across two seasons of the show. The GALA Committee’s intervention provided surreptitious commentary on reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, the Gulf War, domestic terrorism, corporate malfeasance, and substance abuse, among other issues. Despite some of these topics having been banned by the FCC at the time, the group’s political critiques went unnoticed by censors, subverting corporate and government controls of primetime television with a progressive agenda.

These works were exhibited in Uncommon Sense at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 1997 and then sold at an auction at Sotheby’s to support several charities. Primetime Contemporary Art, created by Chin and Helen Nagge, was used as the auction catalog for the evening, documented the artwork produced for the exhibition, and articulated the conceptual framework of the GALA Committee.

Mel Chin was born in Houston, Texas, and is known for the broad range of approaches in his art, including works that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork, and works that enlist science as an aesthetic component to developing complex ideas. He pioneered “green remediation” in his 1990 project, Revival Field; presented his proposal for a New World Trade Center as part of the American representation at the 2002 Venice Biennale of Architecture; won a Pedro Sienna Award for Animation in Chile for his 2017 film, 9-11/9-11; and founded S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio in 2017 to realize sustained engagements with community and environment. In 2018, he presented Unmoored and Wake in Times Square, New York City, creating a visual portal into a future of rising waters, and had a forty-year-survey exhibition at the Queens Museum. He is the recipient of many awards, grants, and honorary degrees, including the MacArthur Fellowship in 2019, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021.

Helen Nagge has collaborated with Mel Chin on major public art projects for over two decades. She has worked with commercial galleries and non-profit art spaces in Houston, Texas, and New York City, and developed in-house archival systems for clients and seminal American artists’ estates. She also worked in publishing for several years, notably for Simon & Schuster, Harvey Klinger Literary Agency, and others, and continues to edit texts for Mel Chin Studio.

The GALA Committee (1995-1997) was a collective of artists, faculty, and students from the University of Georgia, Athens; CalArts, Los Angeles; and Grand Arts, Kansas City formed by Mel Chin in response to the 1995 invitation to participate in the group show Uncommon Sense at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The GALA Committee included: David Adams, Elizabeth Adams, Eric Andersen, Emily Arthur, Katie Bauman, Cameron Bernie, David Blanchard, John Borthwick, Barron Brown, Alan Bush, Heather Champ, Heeyeon Chang, Mel Chin, Lance Clarke, Roymont Clements, Kathleen Hillseth Clinesmith, Karina Combs, Melissa Conroy, John Crowe, John Cupit, Lesley Dill, Heather M. Eastman, Diane Edison, Brian Ellison, Evan Firestone, Mark Flood, Joe Girandola, Terry Glispin, Nuala Glynn, Jason Grier, Garrison Gunter, Elizabeth Huber, Chip Hayes, Frank Irving, Kim Jensen, Bryan Jernigan, Karin Johansson, M. Dana Jones, Cheryl Kaplan, Kendal Kerr, Kat Kinsman, Koichi Kimura, Jeff Knowlton, Leo Knox, Bernie Koersen, H. Lan Thao Lam, Ed Lambert, Elizabeth Langford, Jon Lapointe, Tom Lawson, Kristi Leonard, Donna Marcantonio, Diana McIntosh, Mara Lonner, Wendy Lundin, Steve Maleski, Thomas Mann, Stephen McRedmond, Carol Mendelsohn, Georgia Metz, Tamara Mewis, James Millar, Stever Miller, Tam Miller, Tess Miller, Dallas Moore, Margaret Morgan, Jerry Murphy, Helen K. Nagge, Yana Nirvana, Gail Patterson, Kim Patterson, Constance Penley, Joseph Pizzorusso, Chuck Pratt, Elizabeth S. Puckett, Dan Pugh, Martha Rees, Carl Robertson, Guadalupe Rodriguez, Sandra Rodriguez, Jeff Roe, Kathleen Rogan, Huan Saussy, Sanjit Sethi, Maura Sheehan, Jocelyn Shipley, Eric Shriner, Deborah Siegel, Rachel Slowinski, Frank South, Rachael Splinter, Eric Swangstu, Troy Swangstu, Janice Tanaka, Valerie Tevere, Joseph Tucker, Kathy Vargas, Tony Velasco, Jim Wade, John Watts, David Wilson.

Managing Editor: Rachel Valinsky
Managing Designer: Siiri Tännler

File under: The GALA Committee Mel Chin Primary Information / New York Art Conceptual Art Film / Video

Tony Conrad
Writings

2019, English
Softcover, 576 pages, 12.5 x 19 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$54.00 - Out of stock

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I want art to stand strong, to display how it manipulates its audience. I want it to take up their expectations, their sense of the world, their predispositions toward the way they think or use their language, and then to use these things perversely, politically, colorfully, “expressively.”

—Tony Conrad, “Dolomite: Having No Trust in Readers”

Writings is the first collection to widely survey this singular polymath’s prolific activity as a writer. Edited by artists Constance DeJong and Andrew Lampert, the book spans the years 1961 – 2012 and includes fifty-seven pieces: essays originally published in small press magazines, exhibition catalogs, anthologies, and album liner notes, along with other previously unpublished texts. Conrad writes about his own work, with substantial contributions on The Flicker, Loose Connection, Four Violins, Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals, Early Minimalism, Yellow Movies, Slapping Pythagoras, and Music and the Mind of the World, as well as that of his peers: Tony Oursler, Jack Smith, Rhys Chatham, and Henry Flynt, among others. He devotes critical essays both to grand subjects—horology, neurolinguistics, and the historical development of Western music—and more quotidian topics, such as television advertising and camouflage. He also writes on media activism, network communications, censorship, and the political and cultural implications of corporate and global media. No matter the topic or theme, Conrad always approaches his subjects with erudition, precision, and a healthy twist of humor.

Tony Conrad (1940–2016) was a multidisciplinary artist known for his groundbreaking art, music, films, and videos, although his work doesn’t fit comfortably within any of these disciplines. He eschewed categorization and actively sought to challenge the constraints of media forms, their modes of production, and the relationships of power embedded within them.

Re-print.

File under: Tony Conrad Constance DeJong Primary Information / New York Theory / Essay Performance / Dance / Theater Film / Video Painting Art Fluxus

A Something Else Reader

2022, English
Softcover, 368 pages, 15 x 23.5 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$66.00 - Out of stock

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A Something Else Reader is a previously-unpublished anthology edited by Dick Higgins in 1972 to celebrate Something Else Press, the publishing house he founded in 1963 to showcase Fluxus and other experimental artistic and literary forms. The publication features selections from Claes Oldenburg’s Store Days, John Cage’s Notations, An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, Breakthrough Fictioneers, Jackson Mac Low’s Stanzas for Iris Lezak, Gertrude Stein’s Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein, Bern Porter’s I’ve Left, Wolf Vostell’s Dé-coll/age Happenings, Al Hansen’s A Primer of Happenings & Time/Space Art, and other projects for the page by Robert Filliou, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, Philip Corner, Daniel Spoerri, André Thomkins, and Richard Meltzer, among others. An annotated checklist assembled by Hugh Fox and Higgins’s unpublished introduction are also included.

Perhaps no other publisher in the 60s influenced artists’ books more than Something Else Press. Higgins had a firm vision that radical art could be housed in book form and distributed throughout the world and he worked endlessly to cultivate new works that challenged conventional notions of both contemporary art and books. While other presses created extraordinary publications, none were able to achieve the breadth of titles and artists like Higgins, who successfully ran Something Else Press until 1974 in a manner that resembled a more traditional paperback publisher. Oddly, Higgins hadn’t intended to publish A Something Else Reader himself. Instead, in 1972, he assembled the table of contents and an introduction into a proposal that he then pitched to Random House. They eventually rejected the title and encouraged Higgins to publish it, but before he could do that, Something Else Press went out of business, and the dreams of the anthology evaporated. From there, the proposal went into Higgins’s archive, where it was found by scholar and curator Alice Centamore, who compiled the works and assembled A Something Else Reader.

Eleanor Antin, George Brecht, Pol Bury, Augusto de Campos, Clark Coolidge, Philip Corner, William Brisbane Dick, Robert Filliou, Albert M. Fine, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Hugh Fox, Buckminster Fuller, Eugen Gomringer, Brion Gysin, Richard Hamilton, Al Hansen, Jan J. Herman, Dick Higgins, Åke Hodell, Ray Johnson, Allan Kaprow, Kitasono Katue, Bengt af Klintberg, Alison Knowles, Richard Kostelanetz, Ruth Krauss, Jackson Mac Low, Robert K. Macadam, Toby MacLennan, Hansjörg Mayer, Charles McIlvaine, Richard Meltzer, Manfred Mohr, Claes Oldenburg, Pauline Oliveros, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson, Charles Platt, Bern Porter, Dieter Roth, Aram Saroyan, Tomas Schmit, Carolee Schneemann, Mary Ellen Solt, Daniel Spoerri, Gertrude Stein, André Thomkins, Wolf Vostell, and Emmett Williams are all included in A Something Else Reader.

Dick Higgins was an American artist, composer, theorist, poet, and publisher, as well as a co-founder of Fluxus. After attending Yale and Columbia Universities and receiving a BA in English, he graduated from the Manhattan School of Printing. He studied music composition with Henry Cowell, attended John Cage’s course in experimental music at The New School, and participated in the inaugural Fluxus activities in Europe from Fall 1962 to Summer 1963. He founded Something Else Press in 1963 and in 1972, he founded Unpublished Editions (later renamed Published Editions). Over the course of his life, Higgins wrote and edited forty-seven books.

File under: Claes Oldenburg John Cage Jackson Mac Low Bern Porter Wolf Vostell Al Hansen Robert Filliou Alison Knowles Nam June Paik Philip Corner Daniel Spoerri André Thomkins Richard Meltzer Eleanor Antin George Brecht Pol Bury William Brisbane Dick Albert M. Fine Ian Hamilton Finlay Hugh Fox Buckminster Fuller Eugen Gomringer Brion Gysin Richard Hamilton Jan J. Herman Dick Higgins Åke Hodell Ray Johnson Allan Kaprow Kitasono Katue Bengt af Klintberg Richard Kostelanetz Ruth Krauss Robert K. Macadam Toby MacLennan Hansjörg Mayer Charles McIlvaine Manfred Mohr Pauline Oliveros Benjamin Patterson Charles Platt Dieter Roth Tomas Schmit Carolee Schneemann Mary Ellen Solt Gertrude Stein Richard Meltzer Emmett Williams Clark Coolidge Augusto de Campos Aram Saroyan Albert M. Fine Primary Information / New York Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Art Conceptual Art Fluxus Performance / Dance / Theater Pop Art Sound / Music

Assembling a Black Counter Culture
by DeForrest Brown, Jr.

2022, English
Softcover, 432 pages, 13.7 x 20.8 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$40.00 - Out of stock

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DeForrest Brown, Jr.’s Assembling a Black Counter Culture presents a comprehensive account of techno with a focus on the history of Black experiences in industrialized labor systems—repositioning the genre as a unique form of Black musical and cultural production.

Brown traces the genealogy and current developments in techno, locating its origins in the 1980s in the historically emblematic city of Detroit and the broader landscape of Black musical forms. Reaching back from the transatlantic slave trade to Emancipation, the Industrial Revolution, and the Great Migration from the rural South to the industrialized North, Brown details an extended history of techno rooted in the transformation of urban centers and the new forms of industrial capitalism that gave rise to the African American working class. Following the groundbreaking work of key early players like The Belleville Three, the multimedia output of Underground Resistance and the mythscience of Drexciya, Brown illuminates the networks of collaboration, production, and circulation of techno from Detroit to other cities around the world.

Assembling a Black Counter Culture reframes techno from a Black theoretical perspective distinct from its cultural assimilation within predominantly white, European electronic music contexts and discourse. With references to Theodore Roszak’s Making of a Counter Culture, writings by African American autoworker and political activist James Boggs, and the “techno rebels” of Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave, among others, Brown draws parallels between movements in Black electronic music and Afrofuturist, speculative, and Afrodiasporic practices to imagine a world-building sonic fiction and futurity embodied in techno.

DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised rhythmanalyst, writer, and representative of the Make Techno Black Again campaign. As Speaker Music, he channels the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of generational trauma. On Juneteenth of 2020, he released the album Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry on Planet Mu. His written work explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music, and has appeared in Artforum, Triple Canopy, NPR, CTM Festival, Mixmag, among many others. He has performed or presented work at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Camden Arts Centre, UK; Unsound Festival, Krakow; Sónar, Barcelona; Issue Project Room, New York; and elsewhere. Assembling a Black Counter Culture is Brown’s debut book.

Editor: Rachel Valinsky
Editorial Consultant: Ting Ding and Camille Crain Drummond
Designer: Scott Ponik
Copy Editor: Madeleine Compagnon

File under: Scott Ponik Rachel Valinsky DeForrest Brown Jr. Primary Information / New York Art Theory / Essay Sound / Music

Stockhausen Serves Imperialism
by Cornelius Cardew

2020, English
Softcover, 126 pages, 14 x 22.2 cm
Ed. of 2500,
Published by Primary Information / New York

$40.00 - Out of stock

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The American composer and writer John Cage, born 1912, and the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, born 1928, have emerged as the leading figures of the bourgeois musical avant-garde. They are ripe for criticism. The grounds for launching an attack against them are twofold: first to isolate them from their respective schools and thus release a number of younger composers from their domination and encourage these to turn their attention to the problems of serving the working people, and second, to puncture the illusion that the bourgeoisie is still capable of producing “geniuses.” —Cornelius Cardew

Originally published in 1974, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism is a collection of essays by the English composer Cornelius Cardew that provides a Marxist critique of two of the more revered avant-garde composers of the post-war era: Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage.

A former assistant to Stockhausen and a champion of Cage in England, Cardew provides a cutting rebuke of the composers’ works and ideological positions, which he saw as reinforcing an imperialist order rather than spotlighting and serving the struggles of the working class. The author also provides constructive criticism of his contemporaries Christian Wolff and Frederic Rzewski for utilizing politically progressive content, yet failing to work in a musical form that would appeal to the proletariat. Cardew’s music does not escape his own scrutiny: the book contains critiques and repudiations of his canonical compositions from the 1960s and early 1970s, Treatise and The Great Learning. After abandoning the avant-garde, Cardew devoted his work to the people’s struggle, creating music in service of his radical politics until his mysterious death in 1981.

Edition of 2500.

File under: Cornelius Cardew Karlheinz Stockhausen Cornelius Cardew Primary Information / New York Sound / Music Theory / Essay

Reader
by Constance DeJong

2022, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 14.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$40.00 - In stock -

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Reader is the first anthology to gather Constance DeJong’s diverse body of writing. Spanning from the 1980s to the present, the publication features eighteen works by DeJong, including out-of-print and previously unpublished fiction, as well as texts emanating from her new media sculptures, sound works, video works, and public art commissions.

An influential figure of the 1970s and ’80s downtown New York writing and performance scene, Constance DeJong has channeled time and language as mediums in her work for the last four decades, expanding the possibilities of narrative form and literary genre. From the earliest work collected here—a manuscript of DeJong’s 1982 prose text I.T.I.L.O.E.—to the digital project Nightwriters (2017-18), Reader assembles a range of experimental texts by the artist. The volume includes such works as the 2013 publication and performance, SpeakChamber and the script for Relatives (1988), a duet between a television and a performer made in collaboration with artist Tony Oursler. Never-before-published works including texts created for re-engineered vintage radios, aphorisms commissioned for a Times Square digital billboard, and transcripts for sound works originally installed along the Thames and Hudson rivers are also featured in the book.

Taken together, these works showcase how DeJong has helped define and push the boundaries of language in the visual and performing arts. The artist’s sustained exploration of language blurs the lines between many fields, and DeJong’s work has also had a long life in the literary world. In the late 1970s, she self-published the critically acclaimed novel Modern Love on her short-lived Standard Editions imprint. On the 40th anniversary of the novel’s original publication, the book was published in facsimile form by Primary Information and Ugly Duckling Presse, and has gone on to sell over 10,000 copies since its release in 2017.

Constance DeJong is a New York-based artist who has exhibited and performed internationally. Her work has been presented at the Renaissance Society, Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and in New York at the Dia Art Foundation; The Kitchen, Thread Waxing Space, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1983 she composed the libretto for Satyagraha, the Philip Glass opera, which has been staged at opera houses worldwide, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York; the Netherlands National Opera, Rotterdam; and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. She has permanent audio-text installations in Beacon, New York; London; and Seattle. DeJong has published several books of fiction, including her celebrated Modern Love (Standard Editions, 1977; Primary Information/Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017), I.T.I.L.O.E. (Top Stories, 1983), and SpeakChamber (Bureau, 2013), and her work is included in the anthologies Up is Up, But So is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Science, 1974-1991 (NYU Press, 2006); Blasted Allegories (New Museum/MIT, 1987), and Wild History (Tanam Press, 1985).

File under: Constance DeJong Primary Information / New York Art Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay

Michael Asher
Writings 1973–1983 on Works 1969–1979

2021, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 21.5 x 30.5 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$84.00 - In stock -

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Writings 1973–1983 on Works 1969–1979 is an essential document of a decade of formative work by Michael Asher. Originally published in 1983, the book presents 33 works through the artist’s writings, photographic documentation, architectural floor plans, exhibition announcements, and other ephemera.

Asher did not create traditional art objects; instead, he chose to alter the existing institutional apparatus through which art is presented, creating work dependent on the architectural, social, or economic systems that undergird how art is produced and experienced. For example, in 1974, he removed the partition wall dividing the office and gallery space of the Claire Copley Gallery in Los Angeles. In another work from 1978, Asher had a bronze replica of a nineteenth-century sculpture of George Washington moved from the exterior of the Art Institute of Chicago to a room in the museum that housed eighteenth-century art, changing its location, but also its function from a public monument to an indoor sculpture, as it was originally intended.

Due to its site specificity and immateriality, Asher’s work ceased to exist after an exhibition, which makes this highly sought-after book the definitive mode through which one can gain insight into the work he made during this period. As the artist states in the introduction: “This book as a finished product will have a material permanence that contradicts the actual impermanence of the art-work, yet paradoxically functions as a testimony to that impermanence of my production.”

Initiated by Kasper König, Writings 1973-1983 on Works 1969-1979 was originally co-published by the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and was largely shaped by Asher’s close collaboration with art historian Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, who succeeded König as editor of the press.

Managing Editor: James Hoff
Managing Designer: Rick Myers

File under: Michael Asher Michael Asher Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Primary Information / New York Art Theory / Essay Minimal Art Conceptual Art Sculpture / Installation

Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979

2020, English
Softcover, 480 pages, 20.3 x 23 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$62.00 - Out of stock

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A massive, groundbreaking, international anthology of concrete poetry by women, from Mira Schendel to Susan Howe.

This expansive volume is the first collection of concrete poetry by women in the groundbreaking movement’s early history. It features 50 writers and artists from Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States selected by editors Alex Balgiu and Mónica de la Torre.

Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 takes as its point of departure Materializzazione del linguaggio—the groundbreaking exhibition of visual and concrete poetry by women curated by Italian feminist artist Mirella Bentivoglio for the Venice Biennale in 1978. Through this exhibition and others she curated, Bentivoglio traced constellations of women artists working at the intersection of the verbal and visual who sought to “reactivate the atrophied tools of communication” and liberate words from the conventions of genre, gender, and the strictures of the patriarchy and normative syntax.

The works in this volume evolved from previous manifestations of concrete poetry as defined in foundational manifestos by Öyvind Fahlström, Eugen Gomringer, and the Brazilian Noigandres Group. While some works are easily recognised as concrete poetry, as documented in canonical anthologies edited by Mary Ellen Solt and Emmett Williams in the late ’60s, it also features expansive, serial works that are overtly feminist and often trouble legibility. Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 revisits the figures in Bentivoglio’s orbit and includes works by women practicing in other milieus in the United States, Eastern Europe, and South America who were similarly concerned with activating the visual and sonic properties of language and experimenting with poetry’s spatial syntax.

This anthology celebrates their legacy and recontextualizes word-image compositions by other figures working independently. It gathers work by 50 writers and artists, including Lenora de Barros (Brazil), Mirella Bentivoglio (Italy), Amanda Berenguer (Uruguay), Suzanne Bernard (France), Tomaso Binga (Italy), Blanca Calparsoro (Spain), Paula Claire (UK), Betty Danon (Turkey), Mirtha Dermisache (Argentina), Ilse Garnier (France), Anna Bella Geiger (Brazil), Bohumila Grögerová (Czech Republic), Ana Hatherly (Portugal), Susan Howe (USA), Tamara Jankovic (Serbia), Annalies Klophaus (Germany), Barbara Kozlowska (Poland), Liliana Landi (Italy), Liliane Lijn (USA), Françoise Mairey (France), Giulia Niccolai (Italy), Jennifer Pike (UK), Giovanna Sandri (Italy), Mira Schendel (Brazil), Chima Sunada (Japan), Mary Ellen Solt (USA), Salette Tavares (Portugal), Colleen Thibaudeau (Canada), Rosmarie Waldrop (USA) and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (Germany).

As New copy with some bumping.

File under: Lenora de Barros Mirella Bentivoglio Amanda Berenguer Suzanne Bernard Tomaso Binga Blanca Calparsoro Paula Claire Betty Danon Mirtha Dermisache Ilse Garnier Anna Bella Geiger Bohumila Grögerová Ana Hatherly Susan Howe Tamara Jankovic Annalies Klophaus Barbara Kozlowska Liliana Landi Liliane Lijn Françoise Mairey Giulia Niccolai Jennifer Pike Giovanna Sandri Mira Schendel Chima Sunada Mary Ellen Solt Salette Tavares Colleen Thibaudeau Rosmarie Waldrop Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt Primary Information / New York Art Fiction / Poetry Feminism Group Shows / Collections

Yvonne Rainer
Work 1961-73

2020, English
Softcover, 344 pages, 19.7 x 25.5 cm
Ed. of 3000,
Published by Primary Information / New York

$82.00 - Out of stock

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Originally published in 1974 by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Yvonne Rainer’s Work 1961-73 documents the artist’s landmark early works at the intersection of dance, performance, and art. The publication provides multifaceted insight into some of the artist’s most celebrated choreographic works, including Terrain (1962), Trio A (1966), Continuous Project-Altered Daily (1970), War (1970), Street Action (1970), and This is the story of a woman who … (1973), among many others.

Assembled ostensibly as a survey, Work 1961-73 features a multitude of documentary forms, including scripts, excerpts from the artist’s notebooks, press reviews, correspondence, photographic documentation, literary excerpts, contextualizing texts by the artist, diagrams, film stills, floor plans, scores, and more. As such, the publication resembles an artist book that generously gives the reader access to Rainer’s modes of working, as well as the social and political context around which the work was made. The publication is also a book of writing, with the artist’s frank, witty, and sometimes humorous prose intimately leading the reader through each work.

As the artist states in the book’s introduction: I have a longstanding infatuation with language, a not-easily assailed conviction that it, above all else, offers a key to clarity. Not that it can replace experience, but rather holds a mirror to our experience, give us distance when we need it. So here I am, in a sense, trying to ‘replace’ my performances with a book, greedily pushing language to clarify what already was clear in other terms. But, alas, gone. This has seemed one good reason to compile a book ‘out of’ the remains of my performances, letting the language fall where it may. Let it be said simply “She usually makes performances and has also made a book.”

Work 1961-73 is an indispensable publication for anyone interested in the artist and the radical developments in dance and performance in the 1960s.

Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934) is a dancer, choreographer, writer,and filmmaker. She is a co-founding member of the Judson Dance Theater and worked primarily as a dancer and choreographer from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. Her choreographic work is widely recognized for blurring the lines between performers and non-performers, incorporating gestural and pedestrian movements, as well as classical dance steps and theatre. In 1972, Rainer began making films, producing seven experimental features, including Lives of Performers (1972), Privilege (1990), and MURDER and murder (1996). She returned to dance in 2000, producing new works commissioned by the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation, the Performa Biennial, and The Museum of Modern Art. She is the author of several books including Feelings Are Facts: A Life (2006), A Woman Who…: Essays, Interviews, Scripts (1999), and Poems (2012). She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheim Awards, The Foundation for Contemporary Art’s Merce Cunningham Award, and a USA Grant.

Edition of 3000

File under: Yvonne Rainer Primary Information / New York Performance / Dance / Theater Art Theory / Essay

Art-Rite

2019, English
Softcover, 678 pages, 21.5 x 27.5 cm
Ed. of 2000,
Published by Primary Information / New York

$89.00 - Out of stock

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Out of print.

Edited by Walter Robinson, Edit DeAk, and Joshua Cohn, Art-Rite was published in New York City between 1973 and 1978. The periodical has long been celebrated for its underground/overground position and its cutting, humorous, on-the-streets coverage and critique of the art world. Art-Rite moved easily through the expansive community it mapped out, paying homage to an emergent generation of artists, including many who were—or would soon become—the defining voices of the era. Through hundreds of interviews, reviews, statements, and projects for the page—as well as artist-focused and thematic issues on video, painting, performance, and artists’ books—Art-Rite’s sharp editorial vision and commitment to spotlighting the work of artists stands as a meaningful and lasting contribution to the art history of New York City and beyond.

All issues of Art-Rite are collected and published here.

Featured artists include Vito Acconci, Kathy Acker, Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Gregory Battcock, Lynda Benglis, Mel Bochner, Marcel Broodthaers, Trisha Brown, Chris Burden, Scott Burton, Ulises Carrión, Judy Chicago, Lucinda Childs, Christo, Diego Cortez, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Ralston Farina, Richard Foreman, Peggy Gale, Gilbert & George, John Giorno, Philip Glass, Leon Golub, Peter Grass, Julia Heyward, Nancy Holt, Ray Johnson, Joan Jonas, Richard Kern, Lee Krasner, Shigeko Kubota, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Babette Mangolte, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Rosemary Mayer, Annette Messager, Elizabeth Murray, Alice Neel, Brian O’Doherty, Genesis P-Orridge, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Judy Pfaff, Lil Picard, Yvonne Rainer, Judy Rifka, Dorothea Rockburne, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, David Salle, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Serra, Jack Smith, Patti Smith, Robert Smithson, Holly Solomon, Naomi Spector, Nancy Spero, Pat Steir, Frank Stella, Alan Suicide (Vega), David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Hannah Wilke, Robert Wilson, Yuri, and Irene von Zahn.

File under: Vito Acconci Kathy Acker Bas Jan Ader Laurie Anderson John Baldessari Gregory Battcock Lynda Benglis Mel Bochner Marcel Broodthaers Trisha Brown Chris Burden Scott Burton Ulises Carrión Judy Chicago Lucinda Childs Christo Diego Cortez Hanne Darboven Agnes Denes Ralston Farina Richard Foreman Peggy Gale Gilbert & George John Giorno Philip Glass Leon Golub Peter Grass Julia Heyward Nancy Holt Ray Johnson Joan Jonas Richard Kern Lee Krasner Shigeko Kubota Les Levine Sol LeWitt Babette Mangolte Brice Marden Agnes Martin Gordon Matta-Clark Rosemary Mayer Annette Messager Genesis P-Orridge Brian O'Doherty Judy Pfaff Lil Picard Yvonne Rainer Judy Rifka Dorothea Rockburne Ed Ruscha Robert Ryman David Salle Carolee Schneemann Richard Serra Jack Smith Patti Smith Robert Smithson Holly Solomon Naomi Spector Nancy Spero Pat Steir Frank Stella David Tremlett Richard Tuttle Andy Warhol William Wegman Lawrence Weiner Hannah Wilke Robert Wilson Yuri Irene von Zahn Elizabeth Murray Alice Neel Nam June Paik Charlemagne Palestine Alan Vega Gregory Battcock Brian O’Doherty John Giorno Patti Smith Kathy Acker Lucy R. Lippard Babette Mangolte Primary Information / New York Feminism Art Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Fluxus Sculpture / Installation Painting Fiction / Poetry Conceptual Art Minimal Art Photography Theory / Essay Group Shows / Collections Pop Art Performance / Dance / Theater Film / Video

Broken Music

2019, English
Softcover (w. flexi-disc), 280 pages, 26 x 21 cm
Ed. of 2500,
Published by Primary Information / New York

$65.00 - Out of stock

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Broken Music is an essential compendium for records created by visual artists. The publication was edited by Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier and originally published in 1989 by DAAD. Broken Music focuses on recordings, record-objects, artwork for records, and record installations made by thousands of artists between WWII and 1989.

It also includes essays by both editors as well as Theodor W. Adorno, René Block, Jean Dubuffet, Milan Knizak, László Moholy-Nagy, Christiane Seiffert, and Hans Rudolf Zeller, as well as a flexi disc of the Arditti Quartet performing Knizak’s “Broken Music.” The centerpiece of the publication is a nearly 200-page bibliography of artists’ records.

Works chosen for the publication revolved around four criteria: (1) record covers created as original work by visual artists; (2) record or sound-producing objects (multiples/editions/sculptures); (3) books and publications that contain a record or recorded-media object; and (4) records or recorded media that have sound by visual artists.

Artists documented in the volume include Vito Acconci, albrecht/d., Laurie Anderson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Karel Appel, Arman, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, John Baldessari, Hugo Ball, Claus van Bebber, John Bender, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Claus Böhmler, Christian Boltanski, KP Brehmer, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Henning Christiansen, Jean Cocteau, William Copley, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Hanne Darboven, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fischli and Weiss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Bernard Heidsieck, Holger Hiller, Richard Huelsenbeck, Isidore Isou, Marcel Janco, Servie Janssen, Jasper Johns, Joe Jones, Thomas Kapielski, Allan Kaprow, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Cheri Knight, Milan Knizak, Richard Kriesche, Christina Kubisch, Laibach, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Annea Lockwood, Paul McCarthy, Meredith Monk, Josef Felix Müller, Piotr Nathan, Hermann Nitsch, Albert Oehlen, Frank O’Hara, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, A.R. Penck, Tom Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, The Red Crayola, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Gerhard Richter, Jim Rosenquist, Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Robert Rutman, Sarkis, Thomas Schmit, Conrad Schnitzler, Kurt Schwitters, Selten Gehörte Musik, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Strafe für Rebellion, Jean Tinguely, Moniek Toebosch, Tristan Tzara, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, Emmett Walsh, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner.

Ursula Block is a curator living in Berlin, Germany. From 1981 until 2014, she ran gelbe Musik, a gallery and record shop in Berlin that featured work by artists at the crossroads between music and art.

Michael Glasmeier is a professor, writer, and editor living in Berlin, Germany. Since the early 1980s, he has curated dozens of shows that explore the intersection between the visual arts, music, film, and language.

File under: Vito Acconci albrecht/d. Laurie Anderson Karel Appel Arman Antonin Artaud John Baldessari Hugo Ball Claus van Bebber John Bender Harry Bertoia Jean-Pierre Bertrand Joseph Beuys Mel Bochner Claus Böhmler Christian Boltanski John Cage Henri Chopin Henning Christiansen Jean Cocteau William Copley Philip Corner Merce Cunningham Hanne Darboven Jim Dine Marcel Duchamp Max Ernst Lawrence Ferlinghetti Buckminster Fuller Fischli & Weiss Peter Fischli Peter Fischli & David Weiss David Weiss Allen Ginsberg Philip Glass Jack Goldstein Peter Gordon Hans Haacke Richard Hamilton Bernard Heidsieck Holger Hiller Richard Huelsenbeck Isidore Isou Marcel Janco Servie Janssen Jasper Johns Joe Jones Thomas Kapielski Allan Kaprow Martin Kippenberger Per Kirkeby Cheri Knight Milan Knizak Richard Kriesche Christina Kubisch Laibach John Lennon Sol Lewitt Roy Lichtenstein Annea Lockwood Paul McCarthy Meredith Monk Josef Felix Müller Piotr Nathan Hermann Nitsch Albert Oehlen Frank O’Hara Claes Oldenburg Yoko Ono Dennis Oppenheim Nam June Paik Charlemagne Palestine A.R. Penck Tom Phillips Robert Rauschenberg The Red Crayola Ursula Reuter Christiansen Gerhard Richter Jim Rosenquist Dieter Roth Gerhard Rühm Robert Rutman Sarkis Thomas Schmit Conrad Schnitzler Kurt Schwitters Selten Gehörte Musik Richard Serra Robert Smithson Michael Snow Keith Sonnier Strafe für Rebellion Jean Tinguely Moniek Toebosch Tristan Tzara Ben Vautier Yoshi Wada Emmett Walsh Andy Warhol William Wegman Lawrence Weiner Jean Arp (Hans Arp) K. P. Brehmer William S. Burroughs Ursula Block Michael Glasmeier Theodor W. Adorno René Block Jean Dubuffet Milan Knizak László Moholy-Nagy Christiane Seiffert Hans Rudolf Zeller Guillaume Apollinaire William S. Burroughs Primary Information / New York Art Sound / Music Fluxus Conceptual Art Dada Arte Povera Counterculture Bauhaus Performance / Dance / Theater Minimal Art Pop Art Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Curatorial Group Shows / Collections Objects / Ephemera / A/V

Lee Lozano
Notebooks 1967-70

2018, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 23 x 28 cm
Edition of 1500,
Published by Primary Information / New York

$68.00 - Out of stock

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This publication is a compilation of Lee Lozano’s notebooks from 1967 to 1970. The three notebooks included here contain her seminal “Language Pieces” and drawings for her paintings, including 12 studies for her 11-panel masterpiece, “Wave Series.”

Lee Lozano (1930-1999) was an enigmatic artist making a diverse body of drawings, paintings, and conceptual works. While prolific, her production was limited to her time in New York from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. She was very actively engaged with other artists in New York until she decided to leave the art world in 1972. Until recently, much of her work has been difficult for the public to access. From the time of her boycott of the art world until her death, Lozano was an artist working conceptually even though she did not participate actively in the commercial art world for the last three decades of her life.

The pages of the notebooks contain notes and sketches related to her abstract paintings and also contain her texts, which were known as “Language Pieces.” The artist’s work in the books reveal her desire to live and create art within a structured system. Lozano considered the individual pages of her notebooks to be drawings, and they were sometimes separated and exhibited. Twenty-five years ago, the notebooks were photocopied and it is that record which serves as the basis for this book.

Notebooks 1967-70 was first published by Primary Information in 2010. This is the second printing.

File under: Lee Lozano Primary Information / New York Art Conceptual Art Feminism Painting

Black Art Notes

2021, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 21 x 21 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$38.00 - In stock -

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Black Art Notes is a collection of essays edited by artist and organizer Tom Lloyd. Originally published in 1971, the book was conceived as a critical response to the Contemporary Black Artists in America exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art but grew into a “concrete affirmation of Black Art philosophy as interpreted by eight Black artists,” as Lloyd notes in the publication’s introduction.

Published on the 50th anniversary of the original printing, Black Art Notes features writings by Lloyd, Amiri Baraka, Bing Davis, Melvin Dixon, Jeff Donaldson, Ray Elkins, Babatunde Folayemi, and Francis and Val Gray Ward. “If there is one lesson the post–civil rights period has taught us, it is that those most likely to shape the destiny of Black Americans in the next decade are activists and artists, who may possess additional skills as organizers,” write Ward in “The Black Artist—His Role in the Struggle.”

The artists featured in the publication position the Black Arts Movement outside of white, western frameworks, and articulate the movement as one created by and existing for Black people. Their essays condemn the attempts of museums and other white cultural institutions to tokenize, whitewash, and neutralize Black art, and call for immediate political and institutional reform and the self-determination of Black cultural producers. While the publication was created to respond to a particular historicized moment, the systemic problems that it addresses remain pervasive, making the artists’ potent critiques both timely and urgent.

Tom Lloyd (1929–1996) was a kinetic artist and organizer whose electronically programmed light works were chosen for the inaugural exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 1968. In 1971, Lloyd founded the Store Front Museum in New York, a cultural center that hosted exhibitions, concerts, classes, and lectures for the predominantly Black community of Jamaica, Queens, for over a decade. The center acted in tandem with his call for the marriage of social action and aesthetics in Black Art Notes, published the same year.

File under: Tom Lloyd Amiri Baraka Bing Davis Melvin Dixon Jeff Donaldson Ray Elkins Babatunde Folayemi Francis and Val Gray Ward Primary Information / New York Art Theory / Essay Group Shows / Collections

Douglas Huebler
Variable Piece 4: Secrets

1978 / 2017, English
Softcover, 94 pages, 22 x 14 cm
ed. of 1000,
Published by Primary Information / New York Printed Matter Inc. / New York

$30.00 - Out of stock

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Variable Piece 4: Secrets is a facsimile edition of Douglas Huebler’s classic artist book, which was originally published by Printed Matter in 1978. Simple and salacious, the publication collects over 1,800 secrets written anonymously by visitors to the 1970 Software exhibition at the Jewish Museum. In doing so, the book provides a fleeting glimpse into the cultural, political, and social preoccupations of the era while showcasing Huebler’s open-ended and variable approach to art making—an approach that sought to undermine the dominance of object-oriented practices in favor of a text-driven conceptualism that relied on variables outside of the artist’s control.

Pioneers of the artists’ books medium, of which Huebler was one, predicted that one day artists’ books would be sold next to detective and romance novels in drugstores and supermarkets throughout America. While this dream was never realized, Variable Piece 4: Secrets could easily find its place amongst these popular genres; a true page-turner that delivers the whodunit in succinct statements, ripped from real life, without the hassle of narrative arcs, prefaces, or chapters.

Douglas Huebler (1924–1997) began work as a painter and Minimalist sculptor before focusing attention on language-driven conceptual art in the late 1960s. Examining themes such as duration, location, and social environments, Huebler’s work sought to move beyond the physical object, incorporating photography, text, maps, and drawings to document everyday activities, often carried out over specific periods of time. From 1970 until his death, Huebler worked on Variable Piece #70, which attempted to document every living person. The failure of this project underscored Huebler’s views on the limitations of photography. In the 1980s and 1990s, the artist incorporated painting and comic strips into his conceptual practice, exploring the idea of the masterpiece through the “correction”—or forgery—of works.

File under: Douglas Huebler Primary Information / New York Printed Matter Inc. / New York Art Conceptual Art Minimal Art Performance / Dance / Theater

David Wojnarowicz
In the Shadow of Forward Motion

2020, English
Softcover, 54 pages, 21.6 x 28 cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$44.00 - Out of stock

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David Wojnarowicz’s In the Shadow of Forward Motion was originally published in 1989 as a limited-run zine/catalog to accompany an exhibition by the artist at P.P.O.W gallery.

Despite its meagre print run of just 50 copies, the publication has garnered a legendary status, and for good reason. In it we find Wojnarowicz’s writing and visual art—two mediums for which the artist is renowned—sitting side by side for the first time, playing off each other in equal measure. We glimpse the artist’s now-iconic mixed media works, with motifs of ants, locomotives, money, tornadoes, and dinosaurs, juxtaposed with journal entries and other texts that examine historical and global mechanisms of power symbolized through the technology of their times. Wojnarowicz uses the fractured experience of his day-to-day life (including dreams, which he recorded fastidiously) to expose these technologies as weapons of class, cultural, and racial oppression.

The artist’s experience living with HIV is a constant subject of the work, used to shed light on the political and social structures perpetuating discrimination against not only himself, but against women and people of color, who faced additional barriers in their efforts to receive treatment for the illness. Rooted in the maelstrom of 1980s art, politics, religion and civil rights, the book provides a startling glimpse into an American culture that we have not yet left behind.

Félix Guattari provides an introduction.

David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. Wojnarowicz channeled a vast accumulation of raw images, sounds, memories and lived experiences into a powerful voice that was an undeniable presence in the New York City art scene of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s. Through his several volumes of fiction, poetry, memoirs, painting, photography, installation, sculpture, film and performance, Wojnarowicz left a legacy, affirming art’s vivifying power in a society he viewed as alienating and corrosive. His use of blunt semiotics and graphic illustrations exposed what he felt the mainstream repressed: poverty, abuse of power, blind nationalism, greed, homophobia and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related complications on July 22, 1992 at the age of 37.

File under: David Wojnarowicz Felix Guattari Primary Information / New York Art Fiction / Poetry Eros LGBTQ+

The Matrix Poems: 1960-1970
by Norman H. Pritchard

2021, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 14 x 21cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$40.00 - Out of stock

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The Matrix by Norman H. Pritchard (1939–1996) gathers a selection of the Concrete and Black Arts poet’s work from 1960 to 1970. The seventy-one poems collected here might be regarded, as Charles Bernstein has written, as “sound” poems, being tethered not only to the literature of the Black Arts Movement but also to jazz culture and urban life in New York. Drawing as much from the visual arts and concrete poetry as from sound-based experimentation and music, Pritchard utilized the simple tools of spacing and typography to create syncopations, vibrations, and musical rhythms. What emerges is nothing less than a self-contained system of mimetic codes that challenge modernist modes of perception and representation. Formally innovative and anticipating what Michael Riffaterre would come to call the semiotics of “ungrammaticalities,” the book is a syntactical and visual experience in repetition, stutters, and structure.

Norman Henry Pritchard was born in New York City in 1939 and studied at New York University and Columbia University. His work has been published in two collections: The Matrix Poems: 1960–1970 (1970) and Eecchhooeess (1971). His poetry was featured in the journals Umbra and The East Village Other, performed on the jazz poetry compilation New Jazz Poets (1967), and anthologized in The New Black Poetry (1969) and In a Time of Revolution: Poems from Our Third World (1969). Pritchard taught poetry at the New School for Social Research and was a poet-in-residence at Friends Seminary. He died in eastern Pennsylvania on February 8, 1996.

“Here’s a truth to which the black experiment is especially foregiven: “words are ancillary to content.” The converse is also true, indicating mutual aid and mutual trouble. When words and content get together, there’s enough room in the vast, infinitesimal blur not in between them for poetry to make its dispersive, displacing way. Norman H. Pritchard loves that non-Euclidean neighborhood. He keeps bullet time there, after hours, in a club, which is an open cell, called The Matrix. Welcome to this “huge/entering” of concrete breath—unprecedented, unsurpassed.” — Fred Moten

File under: Norman H. Pritchard Primary Information / New York Art Fiction / Poetry

Dan Graham
Theatre

2021, English
Softcover, 52 pages, 15 x 21cm
Published by Primary Information / New York

$32.00 - In stock -

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Theatre is an artist book that documents seven early performances by Dan Graham taking place from 1969 to 1977 with notes, transcripts, or photographs for each work. Originally published in 1978, and produced here in facsimile form, the publication focuses on several key works that interrogate or undermine the psychological and social space created by, or between, individuals inside the performance venue.

Like most of Graham’s work, they also serve as a critique of cultural norms, with many of the performances utilizing quotidian, social acts that are amplified over time. For example, in Lax/Relax (1969), Graham’s subversion of West Coast new ageism, the artist chants “relax” in sync with a recording of a woman saying “lax” in a meditative manner, which implicates the audience into a group breathing exercise or hypnosis over the course of 30 minutes.

Throughout the ’70s, the artist engaged in a series of works that subverted the prescribed roles of the audience and performer by creating conditions in which each simultaneously functions as both (creating a type of feedback loop). Remarking on another work form this period, Graham once stated, “It begins with Minimal Art, but it’s about spectators observing themselves as they’re observed by other people.”* This paradigm is extended even further in Performer/Audience Sequence (1975) and Performer/Audience Mirror (1977), in which the artist performs by describing the audience as well as himself, creating conditions whereby the audience is performing for the artist as well as themselves.

Like (1971), Past Future Split Attention (1972), and Identification Projection (1977) are also featured in the publication.

Dan Graham (b. 1942) is an artist based in New York. Since the 1960s, he has produced a wide range of work and writing that engages in a highly analytical discourse on the historical, social, and ideological functions of contemporary cultural systems. Architecture, popular music, video, and television are among the focuses of his investigations, which he articulates through essays, performances, installations, videotapes, and architectural/sculptural designs.

Managing Editor: James Hoff
Managing Designer: Rick Myers

File under: Dan Graham Primary Information / New York Art Performance / Dance / Theater Sculpture / Installation Conceptual Art