Mad Marginal—Cahier #2: The Inadequate – Dora Garcia – Sternberg Press

Posted in photography, writing on July 6th, 2011
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Mad Marginal—Cahier #2: The Inadequate – Dora Garcia – Sternberg Press

Mad Marginal is a project started by artist Dora García in November 2009. Mad Marginal wants to research a form of artistic practice, using the tradition of antipsychiatric and anti-institutional movements as a prism to look at the work of artists who have either consciously chosen to remain outsiders or been defined as outsiders by others.

The publication appears in the form of cahiers. Mad Marginal—Cahier #2: The Inadequate is the second cahier, presented as the publication for the Spanish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale 2011.

English / Spanish
432 Pages

D 25€

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Pétunia #3

Posted in graphic design, magazines, writing on July 6th, 2011

Pétunia #3

Pétunia presents artists’ proposals and texts in French or English. Pétunia’s issues are organised around subjective emergencies. Pétunia avoids using author’s texts as illustrations of a main topic chosen by the chief editors. There is no editorial or publisher’s statement. Each issue will be autonomous, and does not connect with territorial issues and current matters or trends. There are no chapters or sections, but diverse textual forms, from theoretical texts to diary entries to pure fiction or comics, mostly concerning contemporary art. 
The layout of Pétunia will be an important part of each issue; its graphic design will be very present and proclaimed. Pétunia wants to bean unclassified object that paradoxically affirms a strong identity in focusing foremost on the work of women critics, curators, artists…


From this perspective, Pétunia is a feminist publication playing the game of affirmative action, as a response to the constant imbalance of the role and place of women in the art world. Pétunia also reactivates — hopefully with nostalgia and humour — the forms of ideological engagement of women regarding art and critical production, while enriching its view of three decades of “women studies”, “black studies”, post – colonial studies and, of course, post – feminist studies.

Contributors in #3: Katarina Burin, Frances Stark, Laetitia Paviani, Lina Viste Gronli, Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Géraldine Gourbe, Dorothée Dupuis, Emmanuelle Lainé, Clara Meister, Kitty Kraus, Lili Reynaud Dewar, Kathy Acker, Fiona Jardine, bell hooks, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Sisters of Jam, Spartacus Chetwynd, Elizabeth Diller.

Design: Change is Good
Pages: 94

D 5€

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The Ramallah Lecture – Jakob Jakobsen – Nebula

Posted in history, politics, travel, writing on July 4th, 2011

The Ramallah Lecture – Jakob Jakobsen – Nebula

This book is based on a blog written by the visual artist and political activist Jakob Jakobsen during a six-week stay in Ramallah and the West Bank.

“In the summer of 2008 I visited Palestine. ArtSchool Palestine had invited me over for the purpose of meeting and working with local artists and other people in the occupied territories. As the theme of my visit was relatively open, my Palestinian host explained that my stay here could be understood as a type of artistic research. That suited me fine as I had worked with activist investigations and artistic research in The Copenhagen Free University for almost six years.

I’ve followed the situation in Palestine for many years and the Palestinian cause has persistently challenged my political sense of justice. Since September 11th 2001 the conflict has been spun more and more into the War against Terror and life for the Palestinians appears to have become even more troublesome. But what do you really know as an outsider and a media consumer in the West? In terms of the struggles over territory that go on in and around this small piece of land some call Palestine, what actually shapes the scenery that is produced in the public sphere? My stay in Palestine was an opportunity to get closer to the everyday conditions in the occupied territories, although I was constantly asking myself about my own role as an artist and a political person in this situation of conflict.” – From the introduction of ‘The Ramallah Lecture’

Jakob Jakobsen is an artist, organizer and activist. He ran the Copenhagen Free University, co-founded the artist run TV-station tvtv and has participated in exhibitions and projects all over the world. He has been visiting and working in Palestine at several occasions.

D 14€

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Architecture Words 7 – Modernity Unbound, Detlef Mertins. AA Publications

Posted in Motto Berlin store, writing on June 24th, 2011
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Architecture Words 7 – Modernity Unbound, Other Histories of Architectural Modernity. Detlef Mertins. AA Publications

For almost 20 years, Detlef Mertins has been a critical voice in renewing our understanding of architectural modernity. Architect, historian, professor, his essays have often taken up familiar themes in order to redress inaccuracies and release energies that we were unaware of.

These essays elaborate on such key modernist tropes as transparency, glass architecture, organicism, life and event, sameness and difference. Previously published in a variety of different venues, from journals to anthologies – including such noted books as Lars Spuybroek’s NOX: Machining Architecture and FOA’s Phylogenesis – they are now assembled for the first time in this volume.

D 15€

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SAN ROCCO #2 / The Even Covering of the Field

Posted in magazines, Motto Berlin store, writing on June 24th, 2011
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SAN ROCCO #2 / The Even Covering of the Field

San Rocco was the product of the collaboration of two young architects. San Rocco did not contribute to the later fame of its two designers. It is neither “standard Grassi” nor “standard Rossi”. Somehow it remains between the two, strangely hybrid, open and uncertain, multiple and enigmatic.

The purity and radicalism of the design does not involve any intolerance. San Rocco suggests an entirely new set of possibilities. It seems to be the beginning of a new type of architecture, or the first application of a new type of architecture, or the first application of a new – and happy – design method that has not been developed further.

San Rocco proposes the possibility of reusing architectural traditions that lie outside of private memory (contrary to Rossi’s usual approach) without erasing personal contributions (contrary to Grassi’s usual approach). In San Rocco, common does not mean dry, and personal does not mean egomaniacal. San Rocco seems to suggest the possibility of an architecture that is both open and personal, both monumental and fragile, both rational and questioning.

Editor: Matteo Ghidoni
Contributors SAN ROCCO #2: Simon de Dreuille & Sam Jacob, Giovanni Piovene, Freek Persyn, Oliver Thill & Bas Princen, Mathias Gunz, Giorgio Talocci, Ignacio Uriarte, Giovan Battista Salerno, Michele Bonino and Subhash Mukerjee, Jonathan Sergison, Andrea Zanderigo, Erica Overmeer, Luca Trevisani, Florian Beigel and Philip Christou, Ioanna Angelidou, Virginia Chiappa Nunes and Pietro Pezzani, Joseph Grima, Yellowoffice, Anton Ginzburg, Kersten Geers, Eric Troussicot, Matilde Cassani, Pier Vittorio Aureli, 2A+P/A, Andrea Branzi, Nicholas de Monchaux, Francesca Pellicciari and Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Vittorio Gregotti, Rolf Jenni, Christian Muller Inderbitzin and Milica Topalovic, Stefano Grazian

D 15€

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Kaleidoscope Issue #11 – Summer 2011

Posted in Exhibitions, magazines, music, writing on June 24th, 2011
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Kaleidoscope Issue #11 – Summer 2011

HIGHLIGHTS: Steven Shearer by Dieter Roelstraete; Slavs & Tatars by Carson Chan; Kaari Upson by Quinn Latimer; Alina Szapocznikow by Chris Sharp; Greg Parma-Smith interview by Nicolas Guagnini.

MAIN THEME: POP RIGHT NOW: Roundtable with Bettina Funcke, Massimiliano Gioni, John Miller, moderated by Joanna Fiduccia, with a postscript by Boris Groys, and artworks by Darren Bader; Justin Bieber by Francesco Spampinato; Rashid Johnson interview by Alessio Ascari; The Dark Side of Hipness Mark Greif and Richard Lloyd in conversation.

MONO: MARK LECKEY: Lost in the Supermarket by Barbara Casavecchia; The Browser Is a Portal by Isobel Harbison; Special Project by Mark Leckey; Art Stigmergy interview by Mark Fisher.

COLUMNS: PIONEERS: Morgan Fisher by Simone Menegoi; FUTURA: Helen Marten interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist; MAPPING THE STUDIO: Simon Denny by Luca Cerizza; CRITICAL SPACE: Douglas Coupland interview by Markus Miessen; ON EXHIBITION: Jeff Koons’ “The New” by Paola Nicolin; LAST QUESTION: And What About Pop Music? answer by Scott King.

D 7,50€

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Seeing with Eyes Closed – Association of Neuroesthetics

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, Exhibitions, Theory, Uncategorized, writing on June 17th, 2011
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Seeing with Eyes Closed – Association of Neuroesthetics

Seeing with Eyes Closed brings together contributions from the participants of the symposium organized by the Association of Neuroesthetics, Berlin, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, on 2nd June 2011.

The symposium takes its title from an interdisciplinary project by artist Ivana Franke and neuroscientist Ida Momennejad, conceived through the support of Alexander Abbushi and the AoN. The project concerns the visual experience of flowing images induced by stroboscopic light behind closed eyes. Being aware that the seen images have no foundation in external reality, one experiences them as hallucinatory. This ‘conscious quasi-hallucinating’ challenges our sense of the real in its alternation and its permeability with the imaginary. Each person’s experience differs from that of others, and each ascribes different dimensions to the perceived space in constant transformation. Communicating the content of this ephemeral flux of unpredictable percepts stretches the limits of acquiring subjective report to extremes, and challenges the scientific aspiration to precisely measure the timing of conscious phenomena.
Edited by Elena Agudio and Ivana Franke.
Graphic Design by Sibilla Ferrara / Makingthinkshappen

Published by the Association of Neuroesthetics, Berlin.
89 pages.

D 15 €

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C Magazine #110 – Food

Posted in food, magazines, photography, writing on June 17th, 2011
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C Magazine #110 – Food

Issue 110 includes Mark Clintberg’s essay “Hungry Eyes: Feasting on Food Photography from elBulli and Beyond,” Nicole J. Caruth’s “Kitchen Studio: A Recipe for Disaster,” Leah Modigliani’s “Collaborating on Conceptual Art: An Aesthetics of the Impossible” and Swapnaa Tamhane’s “The Performative Space: Tracing the Roots of Performance-Based Work in India.” This issue also include an interview by Pandora Syperek with Fiona Kinsella and artist projects by Keesic Douglas and Aislinn Thomas. The reviews section includes writing about exhibitions by Karen Azoulay, Marcel Dzama, Jessica Eaton, Sean Martindale, John Monteith, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland and Diane Arbus, and Douglas Scholes.

56 pages, 29 x 21 cm.

D 5€

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Bulletins of the Serving Library #1 – Sternberg Press + Dexter Sinister

Posted in graphic design, typography, writing on June 10th, 2011

Bulletins of the Serving Library #1 – Sternberg Press + Dexter Sinister

Bulletins of The Serving Library is the new biannual publication from Dexter Sinister, which continues where the final issue of their previous house journal DOT DOT DOT left off. It will be published under the umbrella of their nascent Serving Library, a non-profit institution founded on a cooperatively-built archive that assembles itself by publishing. The pilot issue addresses the twin themes of Time generally and Libraries specifically, and includes texts by Angie Keefer, Rob Giampietro and David Reinfurt, and Bruce Sterling.

Edited by David Reinfurt, Stuart Bailey, Angie Keefer
Published by Sternberg Press (Europe) and Dexter Sinister (U.S.A.)
96 pages

D 10€

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Manifesta Journal # 11 – The Canon of Curating

Posted in magazines, writing on May 30th, 2011
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Manifesta Journal # 11 – 2010/2011 – Journal of contemporary curatorship

At the heart of MJ’s 11th issue, “The Canon of Curating,” lies the question on how the canon of curating is to be defined. If “a history of exhibitions” must be written what should its parameters be? In art history, the canon has been losing ground since the 1960s, when the study of “great artists” began to be replaced slowly by the study of the conditions surrounding artistic practice. This shift was also demonstrated by curators of the time. Nevertheless, within the practice of curating, the canon seems to occupy a noteworthy position—if only because some curators still feel the need to “curate outside the canon.” In the Historiography section, Bruce Altshuler explores the discussion and research around the complex establishment of an exhibition canon. Simon Sheikh notes in his contribution that it is important to keep the inclusionary and exclusionary mechanisms of a canon in mind and reconsider the writing of a history of the exhibition canon through ideas and concepts rather than events. In the Studies section, different scholars explore canonical exhibitions from the last century that took place in England, Italy, and Brazil: Elena Crippa investigates the curatorial strategies of the first International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 at the New Burlington Galleries in London; Paola Nicolin explores the canon of exhibitions in Italy in 1967 and 1968; Inti Guerrero examines the 1998 anthropophagic São Paulo Biennial and its aftermath; and Francesca Franco directs our attention to the curatorial model of the Venice Biennale, focusing on the 1968 and 1974 editions. In an interview with Cristina Freire, Walter Zanini describes his anticanonical curatorial approach for the sixth Jovem Arte Contemporânea exhibition in Sao Pãolo. And in Positions, Bassam El Baroni proposes that a new universality should become the center of curatorial debates, and Jelena Vesić makes five comments on the canons of contemporaneity. MJ #11 includes contributions by Bruce Altshuler, Bassam El Baroni, Elena Crippa, Francesca Franco, Cristina Freire, Inti Guerrero, Milena Hoegsberg, Fieke Konijn, Olga Kopenkina, Paola Nicolin, Jean-Marc Poinsot, Simon Sheikh, Jelena Vesić, and Walter Zanini.

D 15 €

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