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.
2011, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$39.00 - In stock -
A foundational classic of Surrealist literature, The Leg of Lamb: Its Life and Works brings together the arch-Surrealist Benjamin Péret’s short prose: a smorgasbord of automatic writing and fantastical narratives that play on a medley of registers, employing everything from the cinematic antics of Buster Keaton and slapstick animation to the storytelling devices of detective novels, alchemical operations, and mythology. The Leg of Lamb consists of twenty-four delirious narratives, including the novella-length works … And the Breasts Were Dying… and There Was a Little Bakeress…. Péret’s adult fairy tales bear equal allegiance to Lewis Carroll and the Marquis de Sade, and present one of the clearest examples of Surrealist humor, in which the boundaries between character and object blur, and where a coat rack, artichoke, or a pile of manure is just as likely as Napoléon, El Cid, or Pope Pius VII to take on the role of hero and adventurer.
Péret himself edited this collection toward the end of his life. Originally published in French in 1957, almost all of the stories in this collection had been written in the 1920s, half of them even preceding André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism. The Leg of Lamb offers not just a highpoint of Surrealist automatic writing, but a key chapter in the genesis of the Surrealist movement. Here, Péret’s unfettered imagination does not so much represent Surrealism as constitute it, and describes a world defined by childlike delight and aggression—a world in which metamorphosis is endless and death is dream.
Benjamin Péret (1899–1959) was a Surrealist’s Surrealist, audaciously baroque and incessantly irreverent, a founding member of the Surrealist movement and its only member besides André Breton to remain a Surrealist to the end. He was Salvador Dalí’s favorite poet, an inspiration to Luis Buñuel, and a major influence on Octavio Paz. Péret fought in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the Durutti Column, but also fought every literary current he came up against in his lifetime. He was a fierce antinationalist, a true revolutionary, and a lifelong insulter of priests.
“One of the most extraordinary poets of our time.”—Salvador Dalí
“Humor gushes here as if from the source.”—André Breton
“[T]he quintessential surrealist poet; his work seems to flow freely, untrammeled by any cultural effort, from a hidden source of inspiration, spontaneously recreating a wholly new and different world.”—Luis Buñuel
Translated, with an introduction, by Marc Lowenthal
2022, English
Softcover, 210 pages, 21.7 x 28 cm
$35.00 - Out of stock
The Art & Crime issue.
Spike #72 puts the art world's money launderers, tax evaders, forgers, and brutes on trial. But it doesn't stop there. Inquisitiveness leads to bigger questions, like: Is "crime" only defined by its evil twin "justice?" Are our rights and wrongs only norms to be probed? How do we rewrite past injustices? But then, isn't rupture needed for change? Is acting outside the law the only way to dream of a better world?
Grab a copy of "Art & Crime" and dirty your mind with the liberty of villains, Russian high rollers, the metaphysics of shoplifting, prison literature, fashion crimes, psychopaths, and more.
In Spike #72 we learn what James Bridle’s favorite queer podcast and sea animal are, why Marlene Dumas keeps haunting Övül Ö. Durmusoglu, and what it was like for Denys Zacharopoulos to curate Cady Noland’s psychotic exhibition at documenta 9. The issue continues with Francesco Tenaglia and Tommaso Pincio discussing Caravaggio the murderer, Tobias Timm investigating the places where artworks are only ever seen by the empty gaze of CCTV cameras, and Estelle Hoy making a case that some of the greatest world literature was written in the clink.
What’s crime got to do with seduction, freedom, and the past are questions answered by Brad Phillips, Steve Hall, Arlette-Louise Ndakoze. Mug shots of “criminal” artists like Darja Bajagić (by Ingrid Luquet-Gad), Stéphane Mandelbaum (by Colin Lang), and the art collective Asco (by Isabella Zamboni) are taken, and Dan Mitchell’s image contribution will get you humming the theme from Cops.
Artur Klinau depicts a time when art was a crime in Russia, Sam Kriss makes a case for the great grifters of our age, and Cara Schacter pontificates on the values of shoplifting. Biz Sherbert then gives advice on one of the most committed crimes: bad fashion. As ever, there are views from exhibitions, postcards, and things we like, and Tea Vlahovic Hacic closes the issue with Gesellschaft am Ende.
1977, English
Softcover, 100 page, 22 x 30 cm
Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Ballantine Books / New York
$10.00 - Out of stock
The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher, published in 1971 at the height of Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher's new-found appreciation, and only a year before his death in 1972. Born in 1898, Leeuwarden, Netherlands, Escher made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Escher was for most of his life neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. His popularity in the 1960's amongst hippies, admiring Escher's prints for their psychedelic qualities, ushered in a wider appreciation in the late twentieth century, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world. Today he's seen as a precursor of chaos theory and cyberspace for his Moebian diagrams and weird doppelgangers. This popular book presents 76 of his most beloved graphics, mostly in b/w, some colour.
Average copy with wear, cover creases.
1976, English
Softcover, 234 pages, 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Da Capo Press / New York
$15.00 - Out of stock
First softcover edition of this heavy volume from 1976, Pattern: A Study of Ornament in Western Europe 1180-1900 ( Volume I: The Middle Ages), first published by Clarendon Press in Oxford in the 1930s. Profusely illustrated throughout, this extensive study traces the development of European ornamental art from the beginning of the Gothic period in France to the end of the Middle Ages, explaining and illustrating in fascinating detail the Pastoral vision of nature used in art of every sort, as well as the rise of Decorative Heraldry. Includes bibliographical references.
Good copy with light wear to covers.
1983, French
Softcover, 110 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Centre Georges Pompidou / Paris
$70.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this scarce, long out-of-print 1983 catalogue on Richard Serra, published by Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in conjunction with an exhibition exhibition survey. Profusely illustrated throughout with texts by Yve-Alain Bois, Rosalind Krauss and Alfred Pacquement. Includes full list of artworks, biography, exhibition history, bibliography, and much more. Texts in French.
Richard Serra (b. 1938) is an American artist commonly associated with Minimalism and the Process Art movement. Though perhaps best known for his monumental works made from industrial steel, Serra has also worked extensively in painting and printmaking. After attending the University of California, Berkeley, he earned his MFA from Yale, where he became friends and collaborators with classmates such as Frank Stella, Chuck Close and Nancy Graves, to whom Serra was married for five years. Later working in New York, Serra was inspired by Minimalist contemporaries such as Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt, who valued the work of creation more than the finished artwork itself.
Good copy with light wear to covers/spine, interior Very Good throughout.
1983, English / Japanese
Softcover, 36 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Akira Ikeda Gallery / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
Very rare Richard Serra catalogue published on the occasion of his Japanese solo exhibition 'New Sculpture' at Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo, June 6-July 30, 1983. This handsome publication, rather than illustrating the exhibited works, surveys many of Serra's works spanning 1969-1983, illustrated in full-page monochrome throughout, and accompanied by introduction by author, architect, and Master of Architecture Yale University, Maki Kuwayama, portrait of the artist, list of works, biography, bibliography, exhibition list. All texts in English and Japanese.
Richard Serra (b. 1938) is an American artist commonly associated with Minimalism and the Process Art movement. Though perhaps best known for his monumental works made from industrial steel, Serra has also worked extensively in painting and printmaking. After attending the University of California, Berkeley, he earned his MFA from Yale, where he became friends and collaborators with classmates such as Frank Stella, Chuck Close and Nancy Graves, to whom Serra was married for five years. Later working in New York, Serra was inspired by Minimalist contemporaries such as Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt, who valued the work of creation more than the finished artwork itself.
Serra’s work is installed permanently at the Guggenheim Bilbao, and can also be found in the collections of Dia:Beacon, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Tate, London.
Very Good copy, only light tanning to spine, otherwise fine throughout.
1971, German
Hardcover (cloth-bound), 264 pages, 18.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Propyläen-Verl / Berlin
$15.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this catalogue raisonne of lithographs by German painter, sculptor and graphic artist, Paul Wunderlich (1927—2010). Illustrated heavily throughout, this wonderful and extensive reference book of graphic works by Wunderlich was compiled by the artist, together with gallerist Dieter Brusberg, and accompanied by texts from art historians and philosophers Max Bense, Hanns Theodor Flemming, Fritz J. Raddatz, Frank Whitford, and others.
Paul Wunderlich (1927—2010) is known for his erotic, Surrealist-inspired paintings, prints, and sculptures featuring mythological imagery. A pioneer of Magic Realism, Wunderlich received the Japan Cultural Forum Award and the Kunstpreis des Landes Schleswig-Holstein among other accolades. Despite his iconic works being held in some of the world’s most prominent museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Wunderlich remains an “artist’s artist.” He studied graphic arts at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg; he later learned printmaking techniques from Oskar Kokoschka and Emil Nolde. His early paintings displayed an abstract, Tachist style, although he embraced figuration in the late 1950s and he developed his characteristic style. He portrayed dismembered figures and sexually provocative imagery reminiscent of the Surrealists, but also influenced art movements such as Art Deco and Art Nouveau. His work was critically received as so scandalous that, in 1960, his lithograph series Qui s’explique (1959) was seized by authorities in Hamburg, and he often had trouble with raids that destroyed his works. Paul Wunderlich was married to photographer Karin Székessy in 1971, and the couple pursued art projects together.
Average copy as the fragile glue has deteriorated and many pages are loose, though all are present.
1997, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 830 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
documenta / Kassel
$80.00 - Out of stock
First English edition of this monumental 830 page book for documenta X, the last documenta of the twentieth century and the first directed by a woman, the French curator Catherine David, brings together the work of more than 100 of the world's foremost thinkers, writers, and artists in an extraordinary anthology of seminal texts and images of, on, and about the development of Western cultural and critical theory since 1945.
The book "seeks to indicate a political context for the interpretation of artistic activities at the close of the twentieth century, through a montage of images and documents from the immediate post-war period to the present. The range of material treated here is not encyclopaedic; it represents a polemical attempt to isolate specific strands of artistic production and political endeavour which can be taken as references in the contemporary debate over the evolution of our societies. Drawing from distinct yet interrelated territorial and linguistic domains, the book singles out complex cultural responses to the unifying processes of global modernity."—from the book jacket.
A comprehensive work in itself, rich with enmeshed texts and illustrations of artworks, film stills, historical documents throughout in colour and in black and white.
Writers include: Theodor W. Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paul Celan, Amílcar Cabral, Masao Miyoshi, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jacques Rancière, Tadao Sato, Youssef Ishaghpour, Josef Beuys, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rem Koolhaas, Sandra Álvarez de Toledo, Witold Gombrowicz, Herve Joubert-Laurencin, Jean-François Chevrier, Marguerite Duras, Edward Said, Henri Alleg, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Uwe Johnson, Jerzy Grotowski, James Clifford, Primo Levi, Pierre Clastres, Andrea Branzi, Fabrizio Gallanti, Gérard Chaliand, Stig Björkman, Daniel Defert, Saskia Sassen, Catherine David, Benjamin Buchloh, Paul Virilio, Serge Daney, Étienne Balibar, Nadia Tazi, and many others.....
Artists include : Archigram, Martin Kippenberger, Archizoom Associati, Art & Language, Hans Haacke, Oyvind Fahlström, Samuel Beckett, Franz West, Andrea Zittel, Heimo Zobernig, Nancy Spero, Jean-Luc Godard, Marcel Broodthaers, Lygia Clark, Jörg Herold, Fischli & Weiss, Dan Graham, Robert Adams, Peter Friedl, Paweł Althamer, Liam Gillick, Mike Kelley & Tony Oursler & Diedrich Diederichsen, Stan Douglas, Harun Farocki, Ed van der Elsken, Walker Evans, Aldo van Eyck, Heiner Goebbels, William Kentridge, Ulrike Grossarth, Richard Hamilton, Vito Acconci, Raymond Hains, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Siobhán Hapaska, Ecke Bonk, Carsten Höller & Rosemarie Trockel, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Lois Weinberger, Hélio Oiticica, Gabriel Orozco, Olaf Nicolai, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Schütte, Marc Pataut, Gordon Matta-Clark, Christian Philipp Müller, Matt Mullican, Antoni Muntadas, Jean-Luc Moulène, Reinhard Mucha, Álvaro Siza, Toyo Ito, John C. Portman Jr., Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Mariella Mosler, Josef Beuys, Steve McQueen, Chris Marker, Lothar Baumgarten, Jean Dubuffet, Kerry James Marshall, Maria Lassnig, Rem Koolhaas, Joachim Koester, Suzanne Lafont, Sigalit Landau, Helen Levitt, Garry Winogrand, Brassaï, Le Corbusier, Antonin Artaud, and so many more...
Very Good coy, light wear. Good dust jacket with some creasing and edge wear.
1985, English
Softcover (folded catalogue and poster), 75 x 50 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Boilerhouse Project / London
Victoria and Albert Museum / London
Miyake Design Studio / Tokyo
$170.00 - Out of stock
Stunning and extremely rare Issey Miyake exhibition poster / publication for the exhibition produced by Miyake Design Studio and held at the Boilerhouse, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, February 27 - April 9, 1985. Issued as a folded publication: one-side photography (by Gilles Tapie, Kazumi Kurigami, Tsutomu Wakatsuki, Marcus Leatherdale, Daniel Jouanneau) and texts about Issey Miyake (by Stephen Bayley, James J. Nelson), the verso a gorgeous 75 x 50 cm poster advertising the exhibition, with photography by Gilles Tapie, a well-known French photographer who is married to ballerina Sylvie Guillem. Design by Bill Womack, London and Studio Aile, Tokyo.
Very Good condition. Small pin holes in corners from previous use (not impacting cover side), general light fold/edge wear.
2014, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. postcard and sticker), 166 pages, 25 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Toei / Japan
$100.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful hardcover catalogue of the extraordinary Japanese 2014 travelling exhibition "Moomin! Moomin Exhibition: Tove Jansson's 100th Anniversary", organised with the collections of the Tampere Art Museum. This profusely illustrated book is very special in that it concentrates it's contents on Jansson's sketches and illustrations for her famous Moomintroll books and other productions. Over 200 illustrations spanning 1940s-1970s, in pencil, ink, gouache and watercolour, throughout which Jansson's message is clear: "She wanted people to be friendly and helpful, open-minded and adventurous. She loved nature, especially the sea and all its creatures. She would have wanted us to take care of our environment and the people living on earth. There is still a lot learn from the Finnish family Moomintroll." Also includes an illustrated biography, portraits of Jansson in Finland and Japan, and further images of her dolls, animation models, other paintings, etc. Texts in Japanese with introduction in English. A book that will not disappoint any Moomin fan.
Tove Marika Jansson (1914 – 2001) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. Brought up by artistic parents, Jansson studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Stockholm, Helsinki and Paris. Her first solo art exhibition was in 1943. She continued to work as an artist and a writer for the rest of her life, and it was with the creation of her much-loved Moomin characters that she become known around the world. Jansson wrote the Moomin books for children, starting in 1945 with The Moomins and the Great Flood. Her books became international classics translated to 35 languages. For her work as a children's writer she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966.
Fine copy w. inserted exhibition postcard and sticker.
1994, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
A.D. (Architectural Design) / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1994 and long out-of-print, this volume presents a view of recent developments in Russian art and architecture in the context of the critical debates of postmodernism and national cultures. The return to popular national sources in the 1960s through the 1980s was a means for Soviet artists in a multi-ethnic state to avoid submersion in the official ideology of "Socialist-Realism". The transition from totalitarianism to pluralism is evident in the diversity of work featured by both artists and architects from different regions of the former USSR. The essays presented here are by leading Russian and Western art and literary critics, including Charles Jencks, Alexander Rappaport, Alexei Tolstoy, and Nadezhda Yurasovskaya. They provide a critical, historical and personal context for a survey of the work produced in Russia since the fall of Communism.
Very Good copy, only light wear, small split to spine edge.
2018, English / French
Softcover, 384 pages, 19 x 24 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$85.00 - In stock -
Fabio Mauri (1926-2009) is the epitome of the artist-intellectual in Italy. His oeuvre, which spans the latter half of the 20th century, unclassifiable, stands apart from the principal movements of Italian contemporary art. It is a diverse and colossal work to which the archives preserved at the Studio Fabio Mauri in Rome bear witness. 'Fabio Mauri: The Past in Acts' is the first study dedicated to this artist's performative work, which began in the early 1970s, and continued up to the 2000s.
Fabio Mauri is one of the masters of the Italian avant-garde of the post-war period. In 1942 he founded the Il Setaccio magazine with writer/director/frequent collaborator Pier Paolo Pasolini. In the seventies, Mauri worked on installations, performances and art books, focusing on Italian social and political events. A profound connoisseur of the publishing world, he was president of two major publishing houses and in 1967 he founded the magazine Quindici with Umberto Eco, Edoardo Sanguineti and Angelo Guglielmi. Fabio Mauri weaves the dimension of performance, to the space of history. The use of the body as a screen in " The Gospel according to Matthew" by/on Pier Paolo Pasolini, at the Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna, remains an unforgettable work. In it the same Pasolini, seated on a chair with a white shirt, had his own film of 1964 projected on his chest The Gospel according to Matthew. For 20 years he taught Aesthetics of Experimentation at the Academy of Fine Arts in L'Aquila. He was invited to the Venice Biennale in 1954, 1974, 1978, 1993, 2003, 2013, 2015 and in 2012 at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.
2022, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 21 x 27 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$60.00 - In stock -
Retrospective monograph of the pioneer of Turkish contemporary and conceptual art, Füsun Onur.
Once upon a time..., a new installation conceived for the Pavilion of Turkey at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Bige Örer, exemplifies not just the artist's recent work, but the narrative and autobiographical elements that have characterized her art for more than half a century. A companion to the exhibition, this book is the most comprehensive monograph ever published on the artist. It details almost all of her works, and includes twenty-six new essay by leading figures in the international art world, as well as archival fragments and interviews.
Füsun Onur (born 1938 in Istanbul) began her art practice in the 1960s, producing works that what beyond the traditional confines of painting and sculpture, giving form to her art through instinct and intuition and creating a language beyond time. In the decades since, she has become a leading figure in Turkish contemporary art, both through her inclusion of everyday, ephemeral materials in her works and through her conceptual and minimalist approach. Her practice, which can be understood through the lens of feminist art history, draws on her private life and employs traditional and domestic media, such as weaving and textiles.
Edited by Bige Örer and Nilüfer Şaşmazer.
Texts by Ahu Antmen, Alev Ersan, Anna Boghiguian, Anne Barlow, Aslı Seven, Ayşe Erek, Bige Örer, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Chus Martinez, Defne Ayas, Deniz Gül, Fatih Özgüven, Gregory Volk, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, HG Masters, Iwona Blazwick, İz Öztat, Kevser Güler, Leyla Gediz, Misal Adnan Yıldız, Murat Alat, Necmi Sönmez, Paolo Colombo, Rabia Çapa, Sally Tallant, Selim Birsel, Seza Paker, Tolga Tüzün.
2021, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 20.3 x 14 cm
Published by
Rab-Rab Press / Helsinki
$38.00 - Out of stock
The book Marx in the Woods presents the first English translation of Jacques Rancière’s early philosophical text “The Dialectic of Reason and Private Interest”, originally published in 1963. Written under the influence of Louis Althusser, the text is discussing the forms of law in Karl Marx’s writings on the “debates on the law on thefts of wood”. As a break from the idealist philosophy, Marx’s writings on thefts of wood is considered to be a turning point in the history of communist theory.
In his text, Rancière does not only discuss the complex structure of Marx’s early concepts, but he does this by such ‘wild formalism’ that opens the communist horizon towards unfamiliar realms.
Defending this approach still today, Rancière in the new introduction written to the book gives also some clues about his difficult relationship with Althusser.
The book is translated by Jussi Pamussari, who also wrote an afterword where he discusses the way Rancière subjects time and history to a certain formalisation through spatiality.
Designed by Ott Kagovere.
Edition of 600.
2019, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 20 x 27 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$86.00 - In stock -
From 1970 Luigi Ghirri roamed around the houses, streets, squares and suburbs in his adoptive town of Modena and built a body of early work which contains within it signposts to many of the directions his practice would subsequently take. Most of the time he worked in Modena, only occasionally travelling further afield to the beaches of Rimini on the Adriatic or the Swiss Lakes. He began to map out projects and themes – some specifically grouped around a subject, others gathered around a more poetic organising principle. One of the latter was Colazione sull’Erba (Breakfast on the Grass) in which he bought together photographs made between 1972 and 1974 on the outskirts of Modena which he states he “visited in an ironic and anxious manner”. His focus was the juncture of nature and artifice in the man-made environment; the symmetries of cypress trees, well-kept lawns, the personalising touch of plants in pots, palm trees and cacti with their promise of somewhere else.
Modeled on Kodachrome, Ghirri’s seminal paean to photography which he self-published in 1978, this volume is the first book in a planned series which will take Ghirri’s original categories for his own work as the basis for a collection elaborating the great photographer’s oeuvre.
2015, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 19.8 x 13 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$23.00 - In stock -
'I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves'
Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso, taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity, political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and endless, gnawing addiction. One of the most shocking novels ever written, Naked Lunch is a cultural landmark, now in a restored edition incorporating Burroughs' notes on the text, alternate drafts and outtakes from the original.
William S. Burroughs was born in 1914 in St Louis. In work and in life Burroughs expressed a lifelong subversion of the morality, politics and economics of modern America. To escape those conditions, and in particular his treatment as a homosexual and a drug-user, Burroughs left his homeland in 1950, eventually living in Mexico City, Tangier, Paris and London. By the time of his death he was widely recognised as one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century. His numerous books include Naked Lunch, Junky, Queer, Nova Express, Interzone, The Wild Boys, The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine.
2011, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 19.8 x 13 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$23.00 - In stock -
'Queer is a major work, Burroughs's heart laid bare'—Allen Ginsberg
Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985 due to its outspoken depiction of homosexual desire, Queer is an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscating political novel, Burroughs's only realist love story and a comic-grotesque fantasy that paved the way for his masterpiece, Naked Lunch.
Set in Mexico City during the early fifties, Queer follows William Lee's hopeless pursuit of an apathetic young man called Eugene Allerton from bar to bar in the American expat scene. As Lee breaks down, Burroughs's trademark voice emerges; a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humour and the Ugly American at his ugliest. A haunting tale of possession and exorcism, Queer is also a novel with a history of secrets, as this new edition reveals.
The definitive 25th anniversary edition of Burroughs's legendary second novel
William S. Burroughs was born on February 5, 1914 in St Louis. In work and in life Burroughs expressed a constant subversion of the morality, politics and economics of modern America. To escape these, and in particular his treatment as a homosexual and a drug-user, Burroughs left the US in 1950, and soon after began writing. By the time of his death he was widely recognised as one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century. His numerous books include Naked Lunch, Junky, Queer, Nova Express, Interzone, and The Wild Boys. After living in Mexico City, Tangier, Paris, and London, Burroughs finally returned to America in 1974. He died in 1997. Oliver Harris edited The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945-1959 and Penguin's fiftieth anniversary edition of Junky.
2008, English
Softcover, 166 pages, 19.8 x 13 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$23.00 - In stock -
Burroughs' first novel, a largely autobiographical account of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses, remains the most unflinching, unsentimental account of addiction ever written.
Through junk neighbourhoods in New York, New Orleans and Mexico City, through time spent kicking, time spent dealing and time rolling drunks for money, through junk sickness and a sanatorium, Junky is a field report (by a writer trained in anthropology at Harvard) from the American post-war drug underground.
A cult classic, it has influenced generations of writers with its raw, sparse and unapologetic tone. This definitive edition painstakingly recreates the author's original text word for word.
William S. Burroughs was born on February 5, 1914 in St Louis. In work and in life Burroughs expressed a lifelong subversion of the morality, politics and economics of modern America. To escape those conditions, and in particular his treatment as a homosexual and a drug-user, Burroughs left his homeland in 1950, and soon after began writing. By the time of his death he was widely recognised as one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century. His numerous books include Naked Lunch, Junky, Queer, Nova Express, Interzone, The Wild Boys, The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine. After living in Mexico City, Tangier, Paris, and London, Burroughs finally returned to America in 1974. He died in 1997.
2012, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 19.8 x 13 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$23.00 - Out of stock
'Bataille is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century'—Michel Foucault
'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely. These literary profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and the writings of Sade, Kafka and Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transgression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument.
Translated by Alastair Hamilton.
'Bataille intellectualizes the erotic, as he eroticizes the intellect . . . reading him can be a disturbing kind of game'—The New York Times
2020, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$23.00 - Out of stock
Classic science-fiction tales from the twentieth century's master of the weird.
In the deep glens of Massachusetts, in the wild hills of Vermont, and in Australia's sandy wastes, unfathomable things lurk. Things that shine with an unnatural light, that speak and buzz strangely in the night, that prowl in the mind. Things not of our Earth.
Widely considered to be the most significant writer of supernatural tales in the twentieth century, H.P. Lovecraft made a profound contribution to science fiction. From their singularly creepy atmospheres to their portrayal of extraordinary creatures and happenings, the three stories included in this collection - 'The Colour Out of Space', 'The Whisperer in the Darkness' and 'The Shadow Out of Time' - are peerless examples of the genre.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island on August 20, 1890. His father, a traveling salesman, suffered a nervous breakdown three years later and was hospitalised until his death in 1898, from a form of syphilis. Lovecraft's family experienced financial difficulties after the death of his grandfather in 1904, and the shame of this deeply affected the young writer. His relationship with his mother was severely troubled, and she was also hospitalised after a nervous breakdown in 1919. After a brief marriage and a period living in Brooklyn where he first began publishing his stories in the magazine Weird Tales, Lovecraft returned to Providence where he continued to write stories, and supported himself through ghost-writing. He continued to be plagued by money problems, and died in relative poverty on March 15, 1937. His numerous stories, novellas and poem were never collected and properly published during his lifetime.
2022, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 19 x 12.1 cm
Published by
Diaphanes / Zürich
$29.00 - In stock -
Translated by Clayton Eshleman. Afterword by Stephen Barber.
"Here Lies" preceded by "The Indian Culture" collects two of Antonin Artaud's foremost poetic works from the last period of his life. He wrote both works soon after his release from the psychiatric hospital of Rodez and his return to Paris, and they were published during the flurry of intensive activity and protests against his work's censorship. The Indian Culture is the first and most ambitious work of Artaud's last period. It deals with his travels in Mexico in 1936 where Artaud sets aside his usual preoccupations with peyote and the Tarahumara people's sorcerers to directly anatomize his obsessions with gods, corporeality, and sexuality. Here Lies is Artaud's final declaration of autonomy for his own body from its birth to its imminent death, won at the cost of multiple battles against the infiltrating powers amassed to steal that birth and death away from him. Both works demonstrate Artaud's final poetry as a unique amalgam of delicate linguistic invention and ferociously obscene invective.
"Here Lies" preceded by "The Indian Culture" was translated by the award-winning translator Clayton Eshleman, widely seen as the preeminent translator into English of Artaud's work, with its profound intensity and multiply nuanced language. For the first time since its first publication, this bilingual edition presents the two works in one volume, as Artaud originally intended. This edition also features a contextual afterword by Stephen Barber as well as new material, previously untranslated into English.
2014, English
Softcover, 408 pages, 15 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$45.00 - In stock -
An autobiographical incantation of adolescent shame, religious masturbation, and the salvation embodied in the creative act.
I believe that destiny is the hesitation between whorehouse writing and poetry, Evil and Good. In my body almost deadened to stupidity by its growing length, I am carrying that destiny.—from In the Deep
A hypnotic account of three days and nights plucked from the summer of 1955, In the Deep maps the origins, development, and meaning of Pierre Guyotat's creative vocation. To read it is to inhabit the life of an adolescent boy who is just discovering his calling to write, while also tormented by the questions left unanswered by his Catholic upbringing. Faced with his faith's failure, he feels the need to invent another one—one much darker and conflicted—which he believes will be his destiny. In the Deep leads us through the foundations of Guyotat's infamous “beat-sheet”: the masturbatory writing practice that caused a scandal in the 1970s when he first disclosed it, and which—although he has since disowned it—remains fundamental to any understanding of Guyotat's oeuvre.
Unlike Guyotat's other works, which deploy the sustained and taxing invention of an altogether other language—and another reality beyond any notion of morality-—In the Deep is written in an almost classical language, borrowing its timeless rhythmic prose from Latin syntax, and riddled with interrogatives that are part of a French tradition harking back to Rabelais. Nonetheless, as a contemporary De Rerum Natura, at once comic and profound, this narrative explores the same issues that run through all of Guyotat's writing: the always precarious grounding to sex, humanity, ethics, and God.
2010, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 15 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$45.00 - Out of stock
Long ago, in childhood, when Summer reverberates and feels and throbs all over, it begins to circumscribe my body along with my self, and my body gives it shape in turn: the "joy" of living, of experiencing, of already foreseeing dismembers it, this entire body explodes, neurons rush toward what attracts them, zones of sensation break off almost in blocks that come to rest at the four corners of the landscape, at the four corners of Creation. --from Coma
The novelist and playwright Pierre Guyotat has been called the last great avant-garde visionary of the twentieth century, and the near-cult status of his work--because of its extreme linguistic innovation and its provocative violence--has made him one of the most influential of French writers today. He has been hailed as the true literary heir to Lautreamont and Arthur Rimbaud, and his "inhuman" works have been mentioned in the same breath as those by Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud.
Winner of the 2006 prix Decembre, Coma is the deeply moving, vivid portrayal of the artistic and spiritual crisis that wracked Guyotat in the 1980s when he reached the physical limits of his search for a new language, entered a mental clinic, and fell into a coma brought on by self-imposed starvation. A poetic, cruelly lucid account, Coma links Guyotat's illness and loss of subjectivity to a broader concern for the slow, progressive regeneration of humanity. Written in what the author himself has called a "normalized writing," this book visits a lifetime of moments that have in common the force of amazement, brilliance, and a flash of life. Grounded in experiences from the author's childhood and his family's role in the French Resistance, Coma is a tale of initiation that provides an invaluable key to interpreting Guyotat's work, past and future.
2018, English
Softcover, 360 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$29.00 - In stock -
Essays on the contemporary continuum of incarceration: the biopolitics of juvenile delinquency, predatory policing, the political economy of fees and fines, and algorithmic policing.
What we see happening in Ferguson and other cities around the country is not the creation of livable spaces, but the creation of living hells. When people are trapped in a cycle of debt it also can affect their subjectivity and how they temporally inhabit the world by making it difficult for them to imagine and plan for the future. What psychic toll does this have on residents? How does it feel to be routinely dehumanized and exploited by the police?—from Carceral Capitalism
In this collection of essays in Semiotext(e)'s Intervention series, Jackie Wang examines the contemporary incarceration techniques that have emerged since the 1990s. The essays illustrate various aspects of the carceral continuum, including the biopolitics of juvenile delinquency, predatory policing, the political economy of fees and fines, cybernetic governance, and algorithmic policing. Included in this volume is Wang's influential critique of liberal anti-racist politics, “Against Innocence,” as well as essays on RoboCop, techno-policing, and the aesthetic problem of making invisible forms of power legible.
Wang shows that the new racial capitalism begins with parasitic governance and predatory lending that extends credit only to dispossess later. Predatory lending has a decidedly spatial character and exists in many forms, including subprime mortgage loans, student loans for sham for-profit colleges, car loans, rent-to-own scams, payday loans, and bail bond loans. Parasitic governance, Wang argues, operates through five primary techniques: financial states of exception, automation, extraction and looting, confinement, and gratuitous violence. While these techniques of governance often involve physical confinement and the state-sanctioned execution of black Americans, new carceral modes have blurred the distinction between the inside and outside of prison. As technologies of control are perfected, carcerality tends to bleed into society.