“Dialogues” – a film by Owen Land
Edited by Philippe Pirotte and Julia Strebelow.

Co-published by Paraguay Press and Kunsthalle Bern on the occasion of the exhibitions:

Owen Land:
“Dialogues”
Kunsthalle Bern
4.4. – 17.5.2009

Owen Land:
“How can you believe anything he says?”
KW Berlin – Kunst-Werke Berlin e.V.
– Institute for Contemporary Art
22.11.2009 – 24.1.2010

D 18€

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The series of images Bruno Serralongue produces, explains critic Pascal Beausse, “are the result of protocols which lead him to confront the concrete conditions under which information is produced and disseminated. Breaking with the supposed self-sufficiency of art, he travels regularly to places where news is happening.” Working alongside photojournalists or on commissions, he uses these professional procedures to produce his work while at the same time readily abandoning some of the prerogatives and decisions that are usually attached to artistic activity. “His pronounced refusal,” says Beausse, “of his own signature effects, places him in a clear documentary lineage. His critical approach to the status of news images is that of a line of thinking deriving from Conceptual art and the interventionist strategies of the early 1990s.”

This publication offers an overview on Serralongue’s work, organized in series and by typologies. It is accompanied by a discussion between the artist and curators Marta Gili and Dirk Snauwaert, as well as with a new essay by Carles Guerra.

Published by JRP Ringier with Jeu de Paume, Paris; Wiels, Brussels; and La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona..

D 40€
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mono.kultur #26 – Manfred Eicher, Recording ECM

mono.kultur #26 is dedicated to Manfred Eicher, the mastermind behind the highly prestigious jazz and classic label ECM Records. Founded in 1969, ECM have by now released more than 1,000 albums, many of which were produced by Eicher personally.
Based in Munich, ECM has a long history of reviving and tirelessly promoting the avant-garde of contemporary Jazz, hosting the likes of Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek or Pat Metheny. At a time when Jazz was on its wane, ECM introduced a decidedly European notion to this primarily American genre, exploring new sound and different approaches to a stagnating phenomenon.
In 1984, Eicher expanded into contemporary classical music with his line ECM New Series, releasing seminal works by Arvo Pärt or Steve Reich. Both imprints have changed the face of their respective genres forever, due to the audacious release schedule, the high production standards and the aesthetic appearance of the label. All aspects attest to the personal touch of a relentlessly perfectionist visionary.
In a high-minded and challenging conversation, Manfred Eicher talked with mono.kultur about sound, silence and everything inbetween.

D 4€
EU 5€
WW 6€

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Erft Book
Ludomir Franczak

This is an identity project. I want to reveal the family secret, according to which, my real grandfather was a Hungarian doctor named Erft. It is a complicated story from the II World War, which my grandmother- Wanda told her son (my father)- Antoni in a secret. This is a story which little pieces pass by my ears from the beginning of my childhood. My grandmother died in 1996, but she left some documents. My aunt- Bozena who was with her in Budapest in 1944 is still alive…
I want to reveal the real story- by searching Wanda’s papers, looking for some historical documents, talking to Bozena, and looking for the doctor’s family. In the same time I’m interested in the process of remembrance. I want to investigate how the historical facts are being remembered, and modified in a climat of family secret- something whispered behind the closed door.
The story of my grandmother’s escape from Poland in an ambulance- smuggled through the Polish- Hungarian border by her beloved, then living in a camp for Poles in Budapest, finally giving birth to my father in a work camp in Dessau in march 1945 is a great movie story- yet it is just one of many war stories. In the same time it is the story of my family, of my identity.
The purpose of my residence in Budapest is obvious- I want to find my grandfather, my “lost” family. In the same time I’m interested in revealing of the whole process of searching and creating a legend from real story. I’ll collect the documents, record all my conversations with family members in Poland, and people that I’ll find on my way. I also want to create a hypothetical bedroom of my grandmother Wanda, and the Erft grandfather. What if they lived together after the war (Wanda was learning Hungarian in Budapest)? How would it be? How would they home look like? Would I be brought to the world if my father was born in Hungary?

D 12€
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Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus- Mary Shelley

“He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.”

Text in English and German

Designed by jungundwenig, Berlin
Published by Lubok Verlag, Leipzig

D 49€

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Digital Folklore

Edited by Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied
Designed by Manuel Buerger
Published by Merz & Solitude

Technical innovations shape only a small part of computer and network culture. It doesn’t matter much who invented the microprocessor, the mouse, TCP/IP or the World Wide Web; nor does it matter what ideas were behind these inventions. What matters is who uses them. Only when users start to express themselves with these technical innovations do they truly become relevant to culture at large.
Users’ endeavors, like glittering star backgrounds, photos of cute kittens and rainbow gradients, are mostly derided as kitsch or in the most extreme cases, postulated as the end of culture itself. In fact this evolving vernacular, created by users for users, is the most important, beautiful and misunderstood language of new media.
As the first book of its kind, this reader contains essays and projects investigating many different facets of Digital Folklore: online amateur culture, DIY electronics, dirtstyle, typo-nihilism, memes, teapots, penis enlargement …

D 34.50€

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Alone, Desperate and Going Nowhere – Paul Haworth

Alex ‘Abs’ Brenchley is back. The seven-foot tragedy opens the sequel to Silk Handkerchiefs with the words “2008 was the worst year of my life.” This is the story of that year.

Neon and doors – I’m dead, hell, we’re being pumped in by the dozen – I don’t belong here! – yes you do, sex fiend – to a tight passage – bundles of us trying to get out – bottle-necked against a tunnel of lights – the triple-X, neon and doors, passages to perdition – I shuffle with the masses – nearly there – I notice…a woman – or she notices me – our eyes meet, skinny, late thirties, she is squatting in a doorway, eating a burger, she speaks: “Do you have trouble with the ladies, sir?”

Alone, Desperate and Going Nowhere sweeps our hyper-emotional hero across England, into the depths of despair and deranged behaviour, towards a mythical destination – The Lady Field – a fabled area of Hampstead Heath where it isn’t just men who are cruising. Carnforth yobs, Sex and the City: The Movie, dogging fanatics, Christian Slater, Community Support Officers and the Page Street Gang – these are just some of the forces Alex is up against as he seeks to find the manhood, absolution and purpose in life that will empower him to win the love of Trevoreesia, his Absqueen.

All the while, the economy is collapsing – “My life had been in crisis for so long and now the world was catching up,” observes Alex – and the soundtrack to this far-gone era is Take That’s cruel taunt: THIS COULD BE THE GREATEST DAY OF OUR LIVES. Does that day come for Alex Brenchley or will he remain, always and forever, Alone, Desperate and Going Nowhere?

Mixing Cockney, teen lingo, Victorian slang and inventive wordplay, Haworth’s colourful style makes for an exhilarating and addictive read. This is the second part in a trilogy of comedic novels about Alex Brenchley.

Published by True True True
Edition of 1000
D 10€

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If A then b, Notes on Translation, Issue 1

Edited by Pablo Larios
Designed by John McCusker and Sara Hartman

Contributors: David Gutkin, VVORK, Eve Essex, Justin Katko, Hailey Silverman, Kenneth Haynes, Ida Hattemer-Higgins, Helen Dewitt, Ulf Stolterfroht/ Rosmarie Waldrop, Guy Davenport, Lindsay Lawson, Anne de Vries

D 15€

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Livre un: le début d’une belle frénésie, G. W. Sok
Laurent Kropf (Ed.)
68 pages (fr./engl.)
Published by Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne

G. W. Sok was the singer for The Ex from 1979 to 2008, and Laurent Kropf compiled his lyrics in this book deisnged by Coline Sunier and Charles Mazé. This is the first book in a series of publications to be coming out in the next 2 years, and to be assembled in a boxset in the end.

D 11.60€
CH 15chf

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Kaiserin: A Magazine For Boys With Problems #09, Premier Semestre 2011

This issue includes contributions from Erik van der Weijde, Florian Gaité, Didier Fitan, Jorinde Voigt, Matthieu Gafsou, Jérôme Lobato, Arthur Eskenazi, David Lenhardt, Manuel Segade, Lionel Bandiera and Ahmad Hosni.

D 11€
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