Often there are only seconds between the ignition of a blasting charge and the collapse of a building, but the planning for such a demolition can take weeks. Blasting is a profession that relies on experience, and that is conveyed through the medium of the image. The blaster, before he destroys the building, makes a complex technical drawing of the progression. The detonation itself is then recorded by several cameras from different view points. Afterwards the drawings are superposed over the photographs in order to control the blast. A permanent calibration, an optimization between the idea and the reality by the means of drawing and photography. In her artistic work, Alina Schmuch also mostly uses the medium of photography. For the project Script of Demolition she worked with the extensive image archive of the blaster family Fink. The publication includes different imaging media — from 8mm film to digital photography. The book presents movement sequences of collapsing chimneys, TV towers and buildings that have been recorded following explicitly nonaesthetic criteria.

German and English, including numerous drawings
Gestaltung: Jan Kiesswetter
Heike Schuppelius, Armin Linke (Hrsg.)
Leipzig 2014
36.00 €

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An ensemble which contends that the meaning of the Anthropocene is less a geological re-formation than it is trans-formation of both land and animal; once exposed to some of the parameters defining this transition, the reader-as-exhibition-viewer may begin to discern erratic rhythms generated by the creatures of nonconformity that inhabit, with their violence, struggles, and love the vast, machinic reality called Earth.

Land & Animal & Nonanimal turns the attention from the built space of cultural repositories to the postnatural landscapes of planet Earth. In his interview about urban soils of the Anthropocene, landscape architect Seth Denizen considers a history of land use practices that is also reflected in artist Robert Zhao Renhui’s photographs of Singapore as a scenario of continuous development. Inspired by a recent visit to the environment of Wendover in the Utah desert, Richard Pell and Lauren Allen of Pittsburgh’s Center for PostNatural History make a case for a postnatural imprint upon the geologic aspects inherent in the concept of the Anthropocene. By encountering “the last snail,” environmental historian and philosopher Thom van Dooren considers the meaning of hope and care in the context of species extinction. And while curator Natasha Ginwala’s paginated series with contributions by Bianca Baldi, Arvo Leo, Axel Staschnoy, and Karthik Pandian & Andros Zins-Browne turns to cosmological and ancestral human-animal scenarios, sound artist and researcher Mitchell Akiyama explores philosophies of consciousness against the background of the phonogram in nineteenth-century simian research.

Co-edited by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin

Design by Katharina Tauer

13 color + 39 black/white images

€15.99

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Fantasies of the Library

… is a sequence of pages wherein the reader-as-exhibition-viewer learns, rather surprisingly—but with growing conviction—that the library is not only a curatorial space, but that its bibliological imaginary is also a fertile territory for the exploration of paginated affairs in the Anthropocene.

Fantasies of the Library inaugurates the intercalations: paginated exhibition series. Virtually stacked alongside Anna-Sophie Springer’s feature essay “Melancholies of the Paginated Mind” about unorthodox responses to the institutional ordering principles of book collections, the volume includes an interview with Rick Prelinger and Megan Shaw Prelinger of the Prelinger Library in San Francisco; reflections on the role of cultural memory and the archive by Hammad Nasar, Head of Research and Programmes at the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; a conversation with media theorist Joanna Zylinska about experiments on the intersections of curatorial practice and open source e-books; and a discussion between K’s co-director Charles Stankievech and platform developer Adam Hyde on new approaches to open source publishing in science and academia. The photo essay, “Reading Rooms Reading Machines,” presents views of unusual historical libraries next to works by artists such as Kader Attia, Andrew Beccone, Mark DFantasies of the Libraryion, Rodney Graham, Katie Paterson, Veronika Spierenburg, Andrew Norman Wilson, and others.

published by K. Verlag, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Paperback, thread-bound, 160 pages
30 color + 15 black/white images
ISBN: 9780993907401

15.99€
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Casting Jesus

Christian Jankowskis erstes Künstlerbuch bei Edition Taube basiert auf der gleichnamigen Videoarbeit „Casting Jesus“ aus dem Jahr 2011.

Es zeigt eine 3-köpfige Jury aus Vertretern des Vatikans, die in einer Art Casting-Show aus 13 professionellen Schauspielern den perfekten Jesusdarsteller auswählt.

Die renommierte Jury setzt sich zusammen aus dem Vatikan-Priester Monseñor José Manuel del Rio Carrasco, dem Kunstkritiker der vatikanischen Zeitung ‚L’Osservatore Romano‘ Sandro Barbagallo und dem Journalisten und Geschäftsführer der Kommission für Filmbewertung der italienischen Bischofskonferenz Massimo Giraldi.

Unter ihren kritischen Augen absolvieren die Kontrahenten verschiedene Aufgaben, wie zum Beispiel das Brot zu brechen, ein Wunder zu vollbringen, das Kreuz zu tragen oder aber auch das dramatische Darbieten von bekannten Jesus-Zitaten.

In mehreren Castingdurchgängen im römischen Complesso Santo Spirito in Sassia verdichtet sich das Bewerberfeld nach und nach bis am Ende ein strahlender Sieger fest steht. Die Performance konnte Video-Livestream kann ein separates Publikum von 300 Zuschauern das Casting verfolgen.

Das Buch beinhaltet neben zahlreichen farbigen Abbildungen eine Predigt von Karl-Eugen Fischer, sowie Texte von John Beeson und Dirk Rustemeyer.

Die ersten 20 Bücher der Auflage sind als Special Edition mit einem signierten Unikat-Print erhältlich.

29€

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GAGARIN
29/2014

The Artists in their Own Words

with original texts by
Valentin Carron
Chiara Fumai
Erik Van Lieshout
Oscar Murillo
Goshka Macuga
Leo Copers
Jananne Al-Ani
Sven ‘t Jolle

GAGARIN
The Artists in their Own Words

is a recent artist’s magazine (°2000), entirely dedicated to thepublication of especially written and unpublished texts by artists whoare now working, anywhere in the world. Each issue contains a number ofartists’ writings, if possible from an equal number of countries. Thetexts are published in their original language and alphabeticalwriting, with unabridged translations in English added. Advertising andvisual material are deliberately kept out. In collaboration with theResearch Centre for Artists’ Publications / Archive for small Press& Communication (ASPC) at the Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen(Germany), GAGARIN features a supplementary Index of Artists’ Writingspublished world wide. GAGARIN is indexed in Art Biography Modern ABM byCambridge Scientific Abstracts, Oxford, UK. GAGARIN is aimed at thosewho do not tend to wait until everything is accepted and synthesisedand those who are prepared to leave the road to search for stimulatingart and ideas while they are still fresh. GAGARIN does not restrictitself to a particular period or import and runs trough the codes thatare applied in the world of art. Its orientation is artistic,documentary and historical. GAGARIN also aspires to provide an accuratesource of information about the collaborating artists, using their ownwords.

17€

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Distributed on the occasion of the exhibition ‘The Museum of Mistakes: Contemporary Art and Class Struggle’, conceived by Pierre Leguillon and bringing together works he has created over the last fifteen years from reproduced images, this folding brochure/poster continues in this spirit by mimicking the economy of means and autonomy of images Leguillon deploys in his work. It proposes an exhibition model that attempts to foil or declassify the hierarchies of art, as each work is informed by a principle of movement, or even reversibility, and reflects a perpetual process of emitting and receiving information, spurring us to rethink the conditions of the reception of art.

15€

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For her first solo exhibition in Belgium, acclaimed Italian artist Rossella Biscotti draws a trajectory across spaces that evoke important historical processes and links them to the sciences of the mind. This book, published in conjunction with the exhibition, follows this example by interweaving narratives in relation to the concrete and discrete architecture of memory, dreams, and ideas. While revisiting sites of punishment, the gathering of works embodies the ability of the human mind to resist oppression, tracing individual destinies or collective endeavours through a combination of materials, language, and scientific techniques. With a text by Adam Kleinman. Design: Louis Lüthi.

25€

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João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, with Alberto Salvadori, eds.

Texts by Mattia Denisse, Luigi Fassi, Chris Fitzpatrick, Xavier Franceschi, Massimiliano Gioni, João Maria Gusmão, Katia Mazzucco, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Olivier Michelon, Alice Motard, Pedro Paiva, Gonçalo Pena, João Ribas, Alberto Salvadori, Antonio Scoccimarro, and Marcus Steinweg
For almost 15 years now, the two Portuguese artists João Maria Gusmao + Pedro Paiva have been constructing an imaginative journey through films, photographs, installations, and sculptures that encapsulate philosophical, existential, and conceptual issues.
Produced in conclusion to a series of exhibitions—which began in 2011 with “Alien Theory” at frac île-de-france, and le plateau in Paris, by way of Museo Marino Marini in Florence, and ended with “Papagaio”, 2014–15 (premiering at HangarBicocca in Milan then moving on to the Camden Arts Centre in London)—Teoria Extraterrestre is the most complete monograph to date on João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, condensing nearly four years of work and thought that have been compiled into a film cosmogony by the artists themselves.