“Healing The Museum” is a mid-career monograph looking at Grace Ndiritu’s diverse practice over the last twenty years, which encompasses performance, film, shamanism, social actions, painting, publications, textile work, and collection research. The large selection of artworks included in the publication are in a dialogue with each other, further enriched by in-depth conversations with Brook Andrew, Gareth Bell-Jones, and Philippe Van Cauteren, and written contributions from Ifeanyi Awachie, Ann Hoste, and Hammad Nasar. The monograph’s publication coincides with the eponymous exhibition at S.M.A.K.–Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent.
In 2019, Karolin Meunier presented the performance Aller-retour et aller for the first time at Arsenal Cinema in Berlin. This was followed by a screening of the film Wanda (1970) by Barbara Loden, one of the most important works of independent filmmaking by female directors. For HaFI 017, Meunier documents her performance script. Among other references, she engages with Nathalie Léger’s book Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden (2012) by translating text excerpts in dialogue with a friend. In this essayistic novel, Léger follows the traces of the film in her search for the actress and director Barbara Loden.
In HaFI 017: Aller-retour et aller, Meunier’s artistic gestures of experimental translation echoes the intertwining of these three women’s quest by dissolving the biographies of the film character, the actress, and the novelist: “A woman telling her own story through that of another woman.” (Nathalie Léger). The pamphlet includes an afterword by Clio Nicastro.
Motto is pleased to announce its participation to 28 November, from 26 to 28 November 2022.
28 November purveys texts (new, used, bootlegged) that relate to independence, anarchy, spaces of exception, desire, withdrawal, noncompliance, self-management, forms of identification, love.
A selection of music for the micro closed-circuit radio station broadcast during the Tirana Book Fair November 2022, this mix features sounds from:
Koray Kantarcıoğlu Ferox Maw Yannick Dauby Canon singing from MIEN (YAO) hill tribes in China, Vietnam, and Laos, released on Sublime Frequencies nula.cc Amelia Cuni Cheba Wahida Barney Wilen Sugai Ken Michel Redolfi 154 Inoyama Land
Motto Books is pleased to invite you to the presentation of Panya Routes, hosted by the African Centre for Cities and Stokvel Gallery with guest Mokena Makeka.
22 October 2022 from 12pm
Stokvel Gallery *NEW ADDRESS* 27 Boxes 4th Ave, Melville Johannesburg, South Africa
Independent art spaces on the African continent have flourished, particularly over the past twenty years in tandem with a youthful population in fast-urbanising cities. This book takes the reader on a journey to discover their DIY-DIT working principles: horizontality, second chance, elasticity, performativity and convergence. The itinerary begins at an empty plinth in Cape Town to closely track the performative and artistic afterlife of a colonialist statue whose toppling turned public space into common space. Next stop: Nairobi, Accra, Cairo, Addis Ababa and Dar es Salaam — all rapidly changing cities of flux. The author visits five non-profit platforms that build narratives in public space by stitching together art and everyday life. They create their own panya routes, or backroad infrastructures of divergent kinds, in response to prevailing uncertainty. Working largely in collaborative economies and solidarity networks through refusal and reimagination, these “off-spaces” demonstrate institution building as artistic practice. By thinking and dreaming beyond the status quo, they fast-forward to creatively inhabit city futures that have already arrived in the global South. The key platforms featured in the book’s research are: The GoDown Arts Centre, ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge, Townhouse Gallery, Zoma Museum and Nafasi Art Space.
Edited by Mika Hayashi Ebbesen Graphic design by Márcia Novais Published by Motto Books, 2022
When starting to work on the 25th issue of our magazine, we were discussing whether there should be some sort of content to celebrate this milestone and the past ten years leading up to it. But, as further reading will indicate, there are no texts praising past issues or reflections on the musical developments we documented over the years. However, the anniversary helps in presenting the underlying theme of this issue. As loyal readers might know, zweikommasieben started out as a fanzine and aspired to keep this character somewhat alive. Therefore, in zweikommasieben #25, we would like to reflect on various aspects of what fandom entails.
As fans, the authors, editors, and photographers of this magazine are dependent on artists — niche or mainstream — to be willing to have their practice documented. To put it bluntly: if they don’t want to speak to us, there is not much we can do. Likewise, and without overestimating the impact of our small publication, it might have positive consequences for artists to be featured in zweikommasieben, which is not simply a unidirectional channel between fans and artists: over the years some artists highlighted their own fandom, interviewing other artists they admire for this very magazine, while some contributors developed artistic practices which led them to having fans on their own.
Such an ever-changing web of dependencies is highlighted on the following pages. This edition features a text by media theorist and artist DeForrest Brown Jr. dedicated to the multiple talents of singer-songwriter Dawn Richard: an exploration of why fans could be drawn to her practice over the past 15 years. Jasmin Hoek visits a new museum in Amsterdam that is dedicated to techno and club culture to investigate whether such an institution can be true to something we all have been fans of. In Anna Froelicher’s interview with Price, the artist elaborates on how he plays with both institutions’ and fans’ conceptualization of his music. The complexities of being a fan not only relate to other people and institutions but also to oneself and one’s personal development. In a new essay, Friedemann Dupelius uses his ever-evolving fascination with trance to reflect on the genre’s current status quo.
Motto is pleased to announce its participation to Dropcity, from 7th to 12th of June.
Dropcity is a new centre for Architecture and Design that will be developed along Via Sammartini in Milan.
Over 10,000 square metres, divided across 28 tunnels, hosting: exhibition galleries production workshops, carpentry, robotics and advanced prototyping laboratories. In addition, a large area will be dedicated to research, teaching and office space for industry professionals.
A materials library and a public library, focusing on architecture and design topics, will complete the program.
You’ll find Motto with our books and vinyls selection at tunnel #60, in Via Sammartini, 20125 Milano.
with contributions by Susanne Mierzwiak, Moritz Scheper and a conversation between Lucie Sotty and Robert Brambora.
Graphic design: Paul Bowler
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Robert Brambora (born in 1984, Germany) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He completed his studies in the class of Rebecca Warren at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2015.
The work of the artist takes as its subject the current neoliberal system and its impact on the individual, as measured under Marxist analysis. It particularly approaches issues such as working conditions, school dropouts, stress-related illnesses, anxiety and loneliness, the housing crisis, and overpopulation as so many causes leading to alienation in our contemporary societies. Also at the heart of his questioning is the analysis of a sense of loss of points of reference, of a form of time distortion generated by these stress conditions. The artist seeks to extract the waking hallucination – the onirism – from these crisis situations. Robert Brambora practice primarily develops itself in two ways: he creates on the one hand paintings and ceramics, in the realm of traditional techniques and media, and on the other hand large format panels upon which texts are laser-engraved. The most recent text works address issues such as the real estate market crisis and financial speculation. These texts are based on political journals, excerpts of conversations and comments from internet forums, as well as personal notes. The artist draws equally from scientific articles from medical journals, evoking afflictions related to anxiety, as well as theoretical essays on the economic competition faced by individuals. These extracts are then reworked, superimposed on each other to create a three-dimensional pictorial space, which sometimes evokes the outlines of architecture.
