Zampa di Leone: Deep Europe. Zampa di Leone, Boris Buden. Motto Books

Posted in illustration, Motto Books, politics, Zines on July 9th, 2021
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For the first time, this publication unites the English language work of Zampa di Leone with two sequences of comic strips and caricatures titled “Deep Europe” and “In the Arse of the Balkans”. Zampa di Leone wanted to offer a radical critique of the colonial tendencies embedded within the discourse of “Balkan” and “Eastern European” contemporary art as it had been articulated during the 1990s and 2000s in global cultural centres, first and foremost in Germany and Austria. The anonymous collective was mostly active in Serbia and Europe between 2001 and 2011, and produced a significant number of comic strips that were circulated at events and through internet forums or mailing lists.

This publication has been printed on the occasion of THE DREAMERS, 58th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale 2021, within the frame of the Reading Room bookshop. The comic strips are accompanied by Boris Buden’s text “The Madman Is Sleeping with the Lunatic”, which was first published in 2003 — a reminder of the historical context and the Balkanist discourse that served as a backdrop to Zampa di Leone’s activities.

Edition: 300

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Zweikommasieben #23. Guy Schwegler, Helena Julian, Mathis Neuhaus (Eds.). Präsens Editionen; Motto Books

Posted in magazines, Motto Books on June 3rd, 2021
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Frequent readers of zweikommasieben will know that the creative processes we highlight in our magazine are an eclectic gathering of influences that result in varied creative practices. This plurality informs a question we have repeatedly asked ourselves: what might be the common denominator connecting all the dots? For this issue, we would like to make the case for the discursive potential of personal experiences.

Once the personal is taken seriously, anecdotes provide major insights into an artist’s practice. A portrait on producer Malibu taps into memories of popular culture and traces musical experiences from her childhood to highlight the dedication she brings towards composing melodies and using samples. In their essay, the duo Space Afrika assembles recollections of their daily lives in north-west England to frame their artistic output over the years.

Highlighting subjective perspectives allows for the differentiation of what might appear similar at first. Both the collaboration of Andreas Bülhoff and Marc Matter featured in “Soundtexte” and the interview with Tygapaw refer to the use of poetry. The former condense language to its most basic units and present them as rhythmic building blocks for DJs. Taking a different approach, Tygapaw asked a poet to be the narrator of their album, expanding the tracks by embedding an additional layer of meaning.

zweikommasieben #23 also wishes to make visible the full range of its contributors. Annotations in the margins gesture towards the intuitive processes characteristic of this magazine: from an initial interest in an artist and their work, to the experience of exploring it in the context of a conversation, and to collaboratively reflect on text and photography with various people.

Full content:
-interviews with Bass Clef, Crystalmess, Flora Yin-Wong, Grand River, Ikonika, Jabu & Daniela Dyson, Meemo Comma, and Tygapaw
-portrait on Malibu
-essay by Space Afrika
-Contributes by Jessika Khazrik and Sara Berts
-columns: Soundtexte (poetry), “Art Review” (art review), and We are Time (photography)

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Ibis, Mimosa, Tchéring (…). Julien Carreyn. Motto Books; Crèvecœur; Anywave

Posted in Editions, Motto Books, photography on May 10th, 2021
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Box with six new A5 publications including: Ibis, Tchéring, Les Pharmacies du Sacré Cœur I, Blin, Mimosa, Les Pharmacies du Sacré Cœur II with three 10×15 photos.

Edition of 20 copies.

Numbered and signed by the artist.

Published by Motto Books; Crèvecœur; Anywave.

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Sustainable Societies for the Future. Stephanie Cristello, Kirse Junge-Stevnsborg (Eds.). Motto Books

Posted in Motto Books, writing on May 3rd, 2021
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How do we create ideas, paths, and actions for a more sustainable world? How can art function as a catalyst for change? The project Sustainable Societies for the Future is founded on some of today’s most complex and urgent challenges. This publication, released on the occasion of the concurrent exhibition on view at the Malmö Art Museum and a number of seminars and events, directly addresses issues surrounding how cities and human settlements can be transformed into inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable environments.

The statements in this book feature individual and collective contributions by artists and scholars from the Nordic and North American art scenes to awaken discussion, reflection, and perspectives that reflect sustainable pathways for the world. Designed by Olga Prader, the navigation of each text is conceptually categorized through a visual lexicon that follows the mission of the 11 Global Goals set out by the UN, including biodiversity, housing, and gender equality, health and safety, and environmental justice, among other key issues.

We are at a point where sustainability alone is not sufficient. As the pages within Sustainable Societies for the Future suggests, contemporary art can serve as a key speculation into how issues of ecological challenges, access to and preservation of natural resources, social exclusion, balance of economy, forms of protest, and collective responsibilities can be approached via a political and social lens.

The exhibition Sustainable Societies for the Future runs at Malmö Art Museum from 1 February to 23 May 2021.

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PROVENCE SS 2021: SCANDAL ISSUE. Olamiju Fajemisin, Philip Pilekjær, Tobias Kaspar (Eds.). Provence; Motto Books

Posted in magazines, Motto Books on April 12th, 2021
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We are excited to present the PROVENCE SPRING / SUMMER 2021. It’s filled with portfolios, essays, fashion editorials, and scandalous conversations between artists, curators, gallerists, and writers. Also included: a 150-page-long stream of installation views collected during the past twelve years of Contemporary Art Daily (CAD). Selected exclusively for PROVENCE by CAD founder, Forrest Nash.

It’s your screen detox.

PROVENCE. SPRING / SUMMER 21. CONTINUOUS CRISIS.

with contributions by Mitchell Anderson, Francis Bacon, Darren Bader, Emmanuel Balogun, Juliette Blightman, HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni-Ludovisi, Franco Bonera, Fabian Bremer, Claude Cahun, Giovanna Calvenzi, Corrado Calvo, Lou Cantor, Mateo Chacon-Pino, Talia Chetrit, Contemporary Art Daily, Contemporary Art Writing Daily, Caspar Coppetti, Dom Cum, Peter Cybulski, Veronika Dorosheva, Jimmie Durham, Elise Duryée-Browner, Buck Ellison, Olamiju Fajemisin, Gina Folly, FRZNTE, Bill Gates, Edgars Gluhovs, Raphael Gygax, Samuel Haitz, Unn Aurell Hansson, Roswitha Hecke, Swetlana Heger, Nelly Hoffmann, Nina Hollensteiner, Julian Irlinger, Astrit Ismaili, Tom Oliver Jacobson, Marc Jauss, Mirabelle Jones, Jone Kvie, Richard Lichtenber, Armin Linke, Alma Manssur, Mickael Marman, Michael Meier, Valentina Minnig, Ebecho Muslimova, Forrest Nash, Paola Paleari, The Performance Agency, Dushan Petrovich, Inigo Philbrick, Albrecht Pischel, Kemara Pol, Eva Presenhuber, Leif Randt, Federico Reyes, Rico & Michael, Carter Rinehart, Jimmy Robert, Jeffrey Rosen, Sarah Rosengarten, Yael Salomonowitz, Satan, Kenny Schachter, Allan Sekula, Colin Self, Shadow Brand®, Mariano Sulmoni, Claudia Valeriani, Steven Warwick, Jan Wenzel, Andrew Norman Wilson, Alexis Zavialoff, Zürich Art Memes.
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An Elaborate Gesture of Pastness: Three Films by Dani Gal. Motto Books; Blood Mountain Projects

Posted in Motto Books on April 10th, 2021
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The publication delves into Dani Gal’s trilogy produced between 2011 and 2018. Each film approaches the complexities of historical accounts between ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ in the context of German, Jewish and Arab histories from a different ‘blind spot’ in historical knowledge. Cinematic tools are applied to illuminate and stage these undocumented aspects of real historical events.

Contributions from Sabeth Buchmann, Burcu Dogramaci, Noit Banai and Sa’ed Atshan are accompanied by visual and literary material and references from Gal’s extensive research practice.

Night and Fog (2011) is a re-enactment of the night of 31 May 1962, based on an interview Gal made with Michael Goldman-Gilad, a Holocaust survivor and Israeli police officer, who had undertaken the secret mission of scattering the ashes of Adolf Eichmann into the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea after he was captured in Argentina and brought to trial and executed in Israel.

As from Afar (2013) is a fictionalised account of a meeting between Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who dedicated his life to bring Nazi criminals to justice, and Albert Speer, the chief architect of the Third Reich, using the letters they exchanged throughout the 1970s as a basis for the dialogue.

White City (2018) revolves around the complex character of Arthur Ruppin, a German Jew and one of the founders of the Zionist Settlement who promoted co-existence with the Palestinians before the establishment of the State of Israel; the film traces his visit to the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, and his 1933 meeting with Hans F. K. Günther, the leading German eugenicist of the time who became a major influence on National Socialist race theory.

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HaFI 014 – Harun Farocki: Hard Selling – Reframed by Elske Rosenfeld. Harun Farocki, Elske Rosenfeld, Doreen Mende. Harun Farocki Institut; Motto Books

Posted in Motto Books on March 31st, 2021
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“I also don’t know the five new federal states and, if I want to film there, I have to have a leading figure. It is the profiteer, development aid worker and missionary all in one. He breaks into the accession area from the West in army strength. The film is about such a salesman.” –– Harun Farocki, 1990/91
HaFI 014 publishes a typescript and archival materials related to the television film Hard Selling (1991) by Harun Farocki. For this unfinished project, Farocki documented an Adidas sales training in East Berlin in 1990. In the period after July 1991 he accompanied a West German Adidas salesman on his trade tour through Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Thus, Farocki explored the operational details of introducing the logic of free market in a country formerly trained in planned economy. Although the broadcast of Hard Selling was announced in the program booklet of the DFF—the successor to GDR television—for 13 November 1991, it did not take place. The TV-station was dissolved six weeks later.

The artist Elske Rosenfeld follows the film stills, fragments of conversations and announcement texts of Farocki’s Hard Selling. She mobilizes the figure of the “window” as a frame to transpose the languages and gazes at shop windows, screens and trainers into a poetic-analytical editing. In the resulting text/image essay Rosenfeld updates her ongoing archive of gaze-images. An editorial note by Doreen Mende introduces HaFI 014.

Elske Rosenfeld, born 1974 in Halle/S. (GDR), works in different media and formats. Her primary focus and material are the histories of state-socialism and its dissidences, and the revolution of 1989/90. Documents and archives are starting points for organising spaces in which these hi/stories can come to be present. Her ongoing project “A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures” investigates how political events manifest and come to be archived in the bodies of their protagonists.

„Auch kenne ich die fünf neuen Bundesländer nicht und muss, wenn ich dort filmen will, eine Leitfigur haben. Es ist der Geschäftemacher, Entwicklungshelfer und Missionar in einem. Er bricht in Armeestärke vom Westen aus in das Beitrittsgebiet ein. Im Film geht es um einen solchen Verkäufer.“ –– Harun Farocki, 1990/91

HaFI 014 publiziert ein Typoskript sowie Archivmaterialien, die im Bezug stehen zu dem Fernsehfilm Hard Selling (1991) von Harun Farocki. Für dieses nicht zuende gebrachte Projekt filmte Farocki im Jahr 1990 eine Adidas-Verkaufsschulung in Ost-Berlin. In der Zeit nach dem Juli 1991 begleitete er einen westdeutschen Adidas-Vertreter auf seiner Handelstour durch Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. So erforschte Farocki die operativen Details der Einführung der Logik des freien Marktes in einem ehemals planwirtschaftlich organisierten Land. Obwohl die Ausstrahlung von Hard Selling im Programmheft des DFF – dem Nachfolger des Fernsehens der DDR – für den 13. November 1991 angekündigt ist, kam es nie dazu. Der Sender wurde sechs Wochen später aufgelöst.

Die Künstlerin Elske Rosenfeld folgt den Filmstills, Gesprächsfragmenten und Ankündigungstexten von Farockis Hard Selling. Die Figur des „Fensters“ (im Sinne von frame) dient ihr als Instrument, um die Sprachen und Blicke auf Schaufenster, Bildschirme und Turnschuhe poetisch-analytisch zu montieren. In ihrem Text/Bild-Essay aktualisiert Rosenfeld ihr fortlaufendes Archiv von Blick-Bildern. Eine editorische Notiz von Doreen Mende führt in HaFI 014 ein.

Elske Rosenfeld (geb. 1974, Halle/S.) forscht als Künstlerin, Autorin und Kulturarbeiterin zur Geschichte der Dissidenz in Osteuropa und zu den Ereignissen von 1989/90. Ausgehend von historischen Dokumenten und Archiven organisiert sie Räume, in denen diese Geschichte/n gegenwärtig werden können. In ihrem aktuellen künstlerischen Forschungsprojekt “A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures” untersucht sie den Körper als Austragungsort und Archiv politischer Ereignisse.

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Theodora Allen: Saturnine. Stephanie Cristello (Ed.). Motto Books

Posted in Motto Books on March 19th, 2021
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Published by Motto Books

Catalogue of Theodora Allen’s solo exhibition Saturnine
Kunsthal Aarhus
14.05–18.07.2021

On a summer evening in July 1610, under the humid Padua sky, Galileo peered through his crude telescope to discover the rings of Saturn, the furthest planet then known. While Galileo set his sight on Saturn, it came into view slowly. Ancient Greek and Roman theory, and later medieval psychology, had correlated four planets with each of the elements and temporal ‘humours’; Jupiter’s persuasion prevailed in the blood and affected a sanguine nature; Mars ruled aggression; the moon was cause for an apathetic disposition. The fourth and final humour, inspired by ringed Saturn, was responsible for melancholy. It is for this reason we have the term ‘saturnine’ to describe sadness. The sight of Saturn is one of sorrow.

Kunsthal Aarhus presents Saturnine, the first institutional solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Theodora Allen. Interweaving the artist’s emblematic use of symbols, the exhibition engages with a history of Saturn, the celestial body said to have been the cause of a melancholic disposition – from ancient myth and the Middle Ages through to the present. At times appearing as itself, a large ringed orb, and at others as affect, the figure of the planet joins Allen’s representations of recurrent motifs that are informed by cultural and emotional influence.

Alongside Saturn, depictions of markers such as serpents, wildfires, moths, hourglasses and hallucinogenic plants present a language that is seen rather than uttered. Within the emblematic tradition – a form positioned squarely between visual arts and literature, grappling equally with both image and text – Allen’s compositions exist as propositions of impossibilities. As concepts, they transport the viewer elsewhere: into different times, different narratives. Steeped in mythmaking and iconography, the paintings are resonant with the visionary work of poets and painters in early Symbolist graphic arts, as well as resurgences of this aesthetic in the zeitgeist of 1970s California, addressing cyclical, enduring themes of human versus nature that withstand in our contemporary moment.

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Start Over Every Morning. Steve Bishop. Kunstverein Braunschweig; Motto Books; Floating Opera Press

Posted in Motto Books on March 12th, 2021
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Catalogue of Steve Bishop’s solo exhibition ‘Start Over Every Morning’ (2019) at Kunstverein Braunschweig:

In his artistic practice Steve Bishop explores how mental states can be materialized and conveyed in space, through installations often involving personal belongings and mementos. By subtly distorting familiar, often intimate domestic scenarios, Bishop creates intermediate worlds in which concepts of time are suspended, and clear boundaries between private and public space, exhibition and non-exhibition are blurred.

In the exhibition, we encounter the remnants of a celebration recently passed. Constructed in the main room is a simple white kitchen, which surreally extends over the entire length of the space. Here the profoundly everyday nature of the counter meets the attempt to grasp abstract concepts of infinity. A blankness pervades the room which is punctuated by a few scattered objects: leftover cake is carefully stowed away in Tupperware boxes, recordings of jazz instrumentals drift out from a radio, and outside garden furniture is already tucked in under its plastic cover. A longing to preserve fleeting situations repeatedly arises, no matter how temporary the moment might be. In a second room, found photographs are framed together with pages of text taken from a largely forgotten self-help organization called Re-evaluation Counseling. Slogans call for self-empowerment and optimization, and one might also discern from the neat surroundings that a desire for structure, for inner and outer clarity, seems to be as desirable as it is acutely endangered.

Publishers: Kunstverein Braunschweig; Motto Books; Floating Opera Press

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Y (59°54’54,76”N 10°44’46,03”Ø) (2LP). Alexander Rishaug. osloBIENNALEN FIRST EDITION 2019-2024; Motto Books

Posted in Motto Books, vinyl on May 25th, 2020
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Co-published by osloBIENNALEN, Agency for Cultural Affairs, City of Oslo and Motto Books.

The H-block, or Høyblokka as it is called in Norwegian, was the Government Quarter’s main building. The was building was completed in 1958. Architect Erling Viksjø was inspired by the French modernist Le Corbusier, and set out to create an elegant, monumental but sober functionalism.

On 22 July 2011 at 15:25:22 (CEST), a car bomb was detonated outside H-block. The car, a Volkswagen Crafter, was parked just outside the main entrance. The bomb killed eight people and injured a further two hundred. It also left a deep crater in the ground and caused major damage to the building, which nevertheless remained standing.

The terrorist then travelled to Utøya island outside Oslo, where the Labour Party Youth Wing, AUF – Arbeiderpartiets Ungdomsforening, held its annual summer camp. Disguised as a policeman, he killed sixty-nine innocent young people and injured another sixty-six before he was stopped by the police Delta Force Group seventy minutes later.

During two nights in October 2017, sound artist Alexander Rishaug was granted permission by Statsbygg (Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property) to enter Høyblokka and record the sound of the vacant building. All the interior, furniture and equipment had been removed, leaving the building completely empty and abandoned, like a ghost in the middle of Oslo city centre.

Equipped with a directional microphone, two DPAs, and a set of contact mics, Rishaug began to explore and monitor the building’s acoustics, vibrations and resonance. Y (59°54’54,76”N 10°44’46,03”Ø) is a sonic portrait of the Government Quarter, an investigation of Høyblokka’s psychoacoustic state, at a point in time between past and future, before it is renovated, refurbished, and put to new uses as a political and administrative centre. In the title of this soundscape, the Y represents the Y-block and the coordinates (59°54’54,76”N 10°44’46,03”Ø) locate the H-block and the Government Quarter
.

The album and art project is part of
 and co-produced by osloBIENNALEN, FIRST EDITION 2019 – 2024, curated by Eva González-Sancho Bodero and 
Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk. osloBIENNALEN is initiated and financed by the City of Oslo, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Norway.

The project could not have been realized without the funding and courage from URO / KORO and Bo Krister Wallström.

Recorded inside Høyblokka, Oslo:
29 October 2017, 05:38PM–11:45AM
30 October 2017, 03:30PM–06:47AM

Recording assistant: Ilay Bachke
Mixed and edited by Alexander Rishaug at SinZen Studio, Oslo, 2018 – 2019
Mastered by Helge Sten 
at Audio Virus Lab, Oslo
Mastercut by Helmut Erler at
 Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin
Design by Blank Blank / Petri Henriksson and Sandra Stokka
Photos by Arne B. Langleite and Alexander Rishaug, October 2017
Cover photo by Teigens Fotoatelier circa 1960, Dextra Photo/NorskTeknisk Museum.
Backside photo by Arne B. Langleite

Copy Editing by Martin Berner Mathiesen
Booklet printed by Livonia Print Ltd.
Vinyl pressing by Optimal Media
Vinyl manufacturing by handle with care

The dialogue with Statsbygg regarding the recording sessions in Høyblokka were coordinated by Charlotte Hagelund and Jan Christensen.

Thanks to 22. juli-senteret for their trust and support and for granting permission to record during closing hours.

Thanks to Ebba Moi for endless love and support, Per Henrik Svalastog for critical feedback, Statsbygg for granting permission, DSS – Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon for guiding us safely around the building.

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