The Ruin to Come, Essays from a protracted war. Walid Sadek. Motto Books & Taipei Biennial 2016.

Posted in Motto Books, writing on February 8th, 2017
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These collected essays, written in Beirut over a period of 10 years between 2006 and 2016, look at the conditions of living under a temporality theorized as the “protracted now” of a civil war, one structurally capable of perpetuating the conditions of its own dominance. This protracted now, these essays argue, remains untranquil in the many unfinished strains of a troubled history that resist falling back into a settled and distant past.

What unites the diverse essays of this book is an investment in the concept of labor, understood as both interminable and his­torical: the labor of min, the labor of the corpse, the labor of near­blindness and the labor of missing. These labors are interminable since they persist in a disinclination to join the various calls for regeneration and resurrection implicit in state-sanctioned and market-driven projects for the reconstruction of Lebanon. They are also historical since they frame this disinclination as an anti-historicist position open to a non-linear conception of memory that attempts to name the many pasts slighted by a forward-looking rush towards better futures.

Together, these labors develop into a critique of hope as a reac­tionary sentiment that numbs collective action in the present and propose that within the folds of war lie moments of political significance that can be recovered and thought through, in order to initiate a livable living built with the unwelcome but necessary knowledge shouldered by unreconciled survivors.

Written by Walid Sadek

Published by Motto Books & Taipei Biennial 2016

Language: English
Pages: 253
Size: 13 x 20.5
Weight: 198 g
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9782940524563

€15.00

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Animality. Jens Hoffmann. Marian Goodman Gallery.

Posted in painting, photography, writing on February 7th, 2017
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Our relationship with animals is fraught and contradictory: we simultaneously mythologize, venerate, sacrifice, and exploit those who are not of our species. This paradox suggests that our connection with animals might be more complicated, and far richer, than commonly thought, and that the distinction between human and animal is not at all clear-cut. By laying down a novel artistic and theoretical framework, Animality, devised by Jens Hoffmann in conjunction with Marian Goodman Gallery, looks to examine this complex relationship. Written to accompany an exhibition of the same name, it includes more than seventy participants, mostly from the world of art, but also covering film, literature, philosophy, and science.

A fully illustrated catalogue designed by A Practice for Everyday Life.

Cast of Creatures:

Giorgio Agamben, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, John Baldessari, Stephan Balkenhol, Georges Bataille, Pierre Bismuth, Cosima von Bonin, Marcel Broodthaers, Balthasar Burkhard, Maurizio Cattelan, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Charles Darwin, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mark Dion, André Marie Constant Duméril, Albrecht Dürer, Elmgreen & Dragset, Roe Ethridge, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Étienne de Flacourt, Michel Foucault, Conrad Gessner, J. J. Grandville, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, Ernst Haeckel, John Halas and Joy Batchelor, Petrit Halilaj, Charley Harper, Carsten Höller, Roni Horn, Marine Hugonnier, Peter Hujar, Luce Irigaray, Malia Jensen, Sarah Jones, Jamian Juliano-Villani, E’wao Kagoshima, Karen Kilimnik, Louise Lawler, Jochen Lempert, Emmanuel Levinas, Klara Liden, Carl von Linné, Robert Longo, Steve McQueen, Maria Sibylla Merian, Annette Messager, Eadweard Muybridge, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gabriel Orozco, George Orwell, Jean Painlevé, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Louis Renard, Henri Rousseau, Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, Albertus Seba, Wael Shawky, George Shiras, Yinka Shonibare, Taryn Simon, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Emily Sundblad, Adrián Villar Rojas, Danh Vō, Peter Wächtler, William Wegman, Franz West, Harrison Weir, Alexander Wilson, Jordan Wolfson, Cerith Wyn Evans, Jakub Julian Ziolkowski.

Language: English
Pages: 203
Size: 22.5 x 29.7
Weight: 944 g
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9780944219348

€50.00

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E.R.O.S. Issue 8. Sami Jallili (ed). EROS Press.

Posted in magazines, writing on January 4th, 2017
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Issue 8 – Self/Love

Sally O’Reilly, Daniella Valz Gen, Victor Burgin, Olivier Richon, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Tim Etchells, Adrian Paci, Philippa Snow, Lara Konrad, Hannah Regel, Naomi Segal, Alice Hattrick, Sophie Calle, Megan Nolan, Alex Cecchetti, Anthony Auerbach, Oisín Byrne, Patrick Coyle, Isobel Wohl, Marine Hugonnier & Michael Newman, Adrian Rifkin, Jessica Worden, Ann-Marie James, Tai Shani, Francesco Pedraglio and Lauren De Sa Naylor.

Edited by Sami Jallili.
Published by EROS Press

Size: 18.7 x 12.7 cm
Weight: 348 g
Binding: Softcover

€14.00
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Shifter 23: Withdrawn: A Discourse. Thom Donovan, Sreshta Rit Premnath (Eds). Shifter Magazine.

Posted in magazines, photography, writing on December 20th, 2016
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A book of metadiscourse, Withdrawn: A Discourse consists of 50 letters composed by Thom Donovan to the proper names of living personages which appear in his currently unpublished second book of poems, Withdrawn. In response to his letters and copies of Withdrawn in manuscript, thirty-two addressees offer images, letters, drawings, poems, essays, dream journal entries, art works, documents, and manifestos. Withdrawn: a Discourse also includes Donovan’s correspondence for the project; an essay regarding the “authorless” book; as well as a review of Withdrawn by poet and translator, Ian Dreiblatt.

Other contributors include: Adam Pendleton, Not an Alternative, Ben Kinmont, Bhanu Kapil, Brandon Brown, Brian Holmes, Brian Whitener, Bruce Andrews, CA Conrad, Charles Bernstein, Chase Granoff, Claire Pentecost, cris cheek, David Buuck, Dodie Bellamy, Jordan Scott, Eléna Rivera, Etel Adnan, Fred Moten, Fred Tomaselli, Gregory Sholette, Jennifer Scappettone, Kathy Westwater, Mary Austin Speaker, Melissa Buzzeo, Rigo 23, Rob Halpern, Robert Kocik, Sanford Biggers, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Stephen Collis, and Tyrone Williams.

Edited by Thom Donovan & Sreshta Rit Premnath

€25.00

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Archäologie der Instabilität / Unearthed Foundations. Christoph Brünggel. edition fink.

Posted in photography, writing on December 13th, 2016
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Archäologie der Instabilität / Unearthed Foundations

by Christoph Brünggel

Design by Ben Brodmann and Georg Rutishauser.
Text by Daniel Morgenthaler (German / English translation)

224 pages, 327/16 Fig., of which 280 in colour, perfect bound, paperback with dust jacket.
edition fink, Zürich 2015

Language: German, English
Pages: 224
Size: 21 x 16 cm
Weight: 382 g
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9783037462027

€24.00

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RAB-RAB JOURNAL #03. Sezgin Boynik, Gregoire Rousseau (Eds). Rabrab Press.

Posted in magazines, photography, writing on December 6th, 2016
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Rab-Rab: journal for political and formal inquiries in art

In almost 400 pages the third issue of Rab-Rab departs from Karl Marx’ essay on the law on the forest theft. The singularity of this essay is in its style; written in 1842, with the means of poetic abstraction it intervenes in the appropriation of the common resources by the private capital. By actualising poetry and abstraction as devices of political engagement, the third issue of the journal focuses on the question of subjectivity in art and politics. Among the diverse contributions the third issue includes texts and drawings on poetic configurations of Communist Manifesto, anti-fascist hallucinations of Artaud, neoliberalism of pirate radios, suburban riots, materiality of the film, representation of Stalin, communist sensuality, Last Futurist exhibition, documentary abstraction, declaration of East, Kazimir Malevich, the Black Square as organising principle, theory and militancy, Hegel and conceptualism, critique of objectivity of landscape, communism for children, hard-core punk, Art & Language, non-figuralism of art in self-management socialism, mathemes of cinematic experiments, the lesson of Rodolfo Walsh, and critique of ideological interpellation.

Edited by Sezgin Boynik and Gregoire Rousseau

Designed by: Nicolas Schevin (El-Sphere)

Contributors: Bini Adamczak, Marc Angenot, Alain Badiou, Sezgin Boynik, Diego Bruno, Igor Chubarov, Roque Dalton, Ralf Hamman, Vladan Jeremic, Ketevan Kinturashvili, Gal Kirn, Aino Korvensyrjä, Kalle Lampela, Kazimir Malevich, Ilya Orlov, Alejandro Pedregal, Martina Mino Perez, Judith Polett, Rena Rädle, John Roberts, Kerstin Schrödinger, Alberto Hijar Serrano, Caspar Stracke, Darko Suvin, Niloufer Tajeri, Vahit Tuna, Margaret Tupitsyn, Manuela Unverdorben, Elina Vainio, and Ben Watson.

Size: 17,5 x 25 cm
Weight: 780 g
Binding: Softcover

ISBN: 9772342488006

€18.00

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Objektiv #14. Nina Strand (ed). Objektiv Forlag AS.

Posted in magazines, photography, writing on November 30th, 2016
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Our issues in 2016 carry the same title: The Flexible Image. They examine the (photographic) image as it expands into two distinct yet related directions: the image as text/sign and the image as operation. In this issue, PART II, we ponder the image as text. Inspired by Aperture’s issue Lit., we ask whether the image has taken over from the word, and if gestures are in turn replacing images. This is something that Nancy Newhall wrote about in Aperture’s first issue, back in 1952: ‘Perhaps the old literacy of words is dying and a new literacy of images is being born. Perhaps the printed page will disappear and even our records [will] be kept in images and sounds.’

This issue includes a conversation with Nicholas Muellner and Catherine Taylor from the Image Text initiative – on your suggestion, Lucas – and Taylor agrees with Newhall’s statement that ‘photograph-writing’ might become ‘the form through which we shall speak to each other, in many succeeding phases of photography, for a thousand years or more’. And, like Newhall, she concedes the continuing importance of text, saying, ‘The association of words and photographs has grown into a medium with immense influence on what we think, and, in the new photograph-writing, the most significant development so far is in the caption.’ This summer saw the new Photo-Text Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles, rewarding the best book combining images and texts, which suggests that we’re likely to see more work in this genre in the time to come. Lucas, could you describe your relationship to images and text?

Objektiv #14
Editor: Nina Strand
Publisher: Objektiv Forlag AS.
Language: English/Norwegian
Pages: 114
Size: 27 x 22 cm
Weight: 460 g
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9771891619022

€16.00

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032c #31. Joerg Koch (ed). 032c Workshop.

Posted in Fashion, magazines, photography, writing on November 24th, 2016
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Issue #31 — Winter

2016/2017

HELMUT LANG

From 1986 to 2005, Helmut Lang systematically deconstructed every assumption about clothing and the way it is worn and communicated. As he himself once said, “I kept all the traditions and shades that were good — and then re-thought it all.” The Austrian designer’s lists of “firsts” is so long it could double as conceptual art. Lang was one of the first designers to collaborate with visual artists. The first to show clothing for men and women in a single presentation. The first to pioneer backstage photography as we know it today with Juergen Teller. The first to move a fashion house across the Atlantic… and the list goes on. In a 48-page dossier, 032c Issue 31 explores THE HELMUT LANG LEGACY and how his abrupt exit from the industry in 2005 has been felt like phantom limb in the world of fashion. The comprehensive study features essays by Ingeborg Harms and Ulf Poschardt, a roundtable with Tim Blanks, Olivier Saillard, and Neville Wakefield, an interview with Lang himself, as well as rare material from the Helmut Lang archive.

“People say this is vandalism.” 032c’s Bianca Heuser and photographer Nadine Fraczkowski take us inside ANNE IMHOF’s Angst, a grand and opaque artwork that has drifted across the world like a low-pressure system. Furnished with smoke machines, sleeping bags, razors, and bongs, the three-act immersive opera is a training camp for the denizens of hyper-capitalism.

Editor: Joerg Koch
Publisher: 032c Workshop
296 pages
20 x 27 cm
962 g
Softcover

€12.00

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Crude. Sally O’Reilly. Eros Press.

Posted in literature, writing on November 23rd, 2016
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In a country called Academia, art critic Ida O’Dewey is at the top of her game –until she misjudges the limit between satire and irresponsibility, live on radio. She must retrieve her public reputation and avoid professional extinction, but sources of power and methods of persuasion are never clear-cut. An enigmatic group of radical sensualists, with an occult attraction to a glossy black substance and a deep contempt for mainstream conceptualism, present a possible way out. This stuff called ‘oil’, Ida intuits, could be the perfect subject for a block-busting thesis.

Crude relates the non-sequiturs and irrational connections that make up
a complex society, where even the most specialised and experienced cannot
profess to be in control of their immediate future.

“In Crude, Sally O’Reilly sets up a relationship between academia
and the oil industry. What emerges in this ingenious novel is an
ever-expanding exploration of how art historical and literary
theory can become embedded within our everyday realities.
O’Reilly utilises the double-meanings of its title in order to
explore the slippery and sticky underflow of rhetoric, social
networks and in-fighting within the art world. The result is a work
that oscillates between fiction and reality. Crude is a revelation.”
— Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Cover image:
Brian Griffiths, some basic treatment, 2016

Eros Press
ISBN 9780993426889
Softcover
390 g
19.8 x 12.9 cm
328 pages

€14.50

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Taking a Line for a Walk. Nina Paim (ed). Spector Books.

Posted in graphic design, writing on November 15th, 2016
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Assignments can give instructions, describe an exercise, present a problem, set out rules, propose a game, stimulate a process, or simply throw out questions. Taking a Line for a Walk brings attention to something that is often neglected: the assignment as a pedagogical element and verbal artefact of design education. This book is a compendium of 224 assignments, edited by Nina Paim and coedited by Emilia Bergmark. A reference book for educators, researchers, and students alike, it includes both contemporary and historical examples and offers a space for different lines of design pedagogy to converge and converse. An accompanying essay by Corinne Gisel takes a closer look at the various forms assignments can take and the educational contexts they exist within. Taking a Line for a Walk derived from an exhibition of the same name at the International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno 2014.

Taking a Line for a Walk

Nina Paim (ed.)
Spector Books
272 pages
22.5 x 25.5 cm
Softcover

34€

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