The process of preparing this book began with looking at photographs of large meeting tables around which Chinese and Singaporean public officials gathered during the many Chinese government study missions to Singapore throughout the 1990s. While such images might seem unremarkable today, the appearance of former revolutionaries of the Maoist era as sedentary technocrats marks the historic emergence of a distinct political imaginary in a time when “the economy” was displacing class struggle as the primary subject of governance in China.

It was at the table that these technocrats, having extricated themselves from the masses, devised the concept of the socialist market economy to frame the economic reforms that were launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. As they insisted on the compatibility of the market economy with the prevailing socialist social contract, the reformers articulated their turn towards the market as a decision informed not by the “invisible” manner through which the market allocates its resources, but by the assumed transparency of its information flows, which they believed would make visible what the party-state had been previously unable to see.

Yet, to the extent that this process of “seeking truth from facts”, as the reformers put it, is founded upon a set of separations—the party-state from the masses, information from ideology, the economic from the political—what ultimately underwrites the total visibility apparently provided by the table is the concealment of that which must not be allowed to appear as information in order for the logic of the market to obtain: the exploitation of labour.

It is on this basis that the factory can be construed as the table’s forgotten origin and impenetrable interior, and the gate that circumscribes the compound the limit of the market’s capacity for making things visible. Designed to spatially contain industrial labour and hide their exploitation from the public sphere, the factory gate is as close as the technocrat would get, as seen during the factory’s opening ceremony, to the world of labour under a capitalist mode of production. In thus proposing a convergence between tables and factories and examining their respective regimes of (in)visibility across the contexts of Singapore and Reform-era China, this collection of images and texts seeks to understand how the seemingly disparate worlds centred around these two objects in fact call forth each other to produce our deeply unsettled contemporary condition—one where the recognition that accrues to visibility has replaced freedom from exploitation as the most that the people can ever demand after the revolution’s untimely end.

Order here

This collection of incomplete essays is what we call the ecology of everything. We think of complexity like an astrayed arrow hitting no target. Line and dots. A dashing constellation of things. Everything is not directly related to everything, but everything is related to something.

These ideas are a vestige of a fragmented ecosystem. A marginal third nature that manages to live in the interstices of capitalism. They are a recollection of brief awe, not able to finish their growth and already being torn into pieces by social media, memes, podcasts, YouTube videos, video games, and a constant urge for disaster. A little codex sent from planet Earth in times of destruction. And so, we find them. Sporulating at the End of the World is Holobiont; me, you, and everything in between.

Numbered edition of 50.

Order here

Contributors: Ramon Amaro, Calum Bowden, Jaya Klara Brekke, Mitchell F. Chan, Cade Diehm, eeefff, Carina Erdmann, Primavera De Filippi, Charlotte Frost, Max Hampshire, Lucile Olympe Haute, Sara Heitlinger, Lara Houston, Cadence Kinsey, Nick Koppenhagen, Kei Kreutler, Laura Lotti, Jonas Lund, Massimiliano Mollona, MetaObjects, Rhea Myers, Omsk Social Club, Bhavisha Panchia, Legacy Russell, Tina Rivers Ryan, Nathan Schneider, Sam Skinner, Sam Spike, Hito Steyerl, Alex S. Taylor, Cassie Thornton, Suzanne Treister, Stacco Troncoso, Ann Marie Utratel, Samson Young

First publication to document the use and potential of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations in the arts that use blockchain technology and build on NFT innovations.

Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) offer unique tools for translocal peers to encode rules, relations and values into their joint ventures using blockchain technology. This new book, edited by Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty, who have been at the forefront of investigations into the relationship between DAOs and the arts, constitutes over 5 years of research with essays, interviews, exercises and prototypes from leading thinkers, artists and technologists across this emerging field.

Radical Friends is an urgent book for the 21st Century and beyond. It shows us, in the spirit of the legendary poet and artist Etel Adnan, that the technology of the future needs to be about “togetherness, not separation. Love, not suspicion. A common future, not isolation.”
–Hans Ulrich Obrist

How things are run is often more important than what is done. It may not be easy to establish alternative formats and infrastructures, but it’s certainly necessary… This collection shows that it is possible too.
–Sadie Plant

This book is about friendship, despair and hope — a beautiful, must-read for all people who are asking unanswerable questions about life, love and the end of the world.
–Franco “Bifo” Beradi

Order here

Edition Schwimmer’s booklets, Hofter Monthly and TheSchwimmer by Sibylle Hofter are available in Motto.

Hofter Monthly and TheSchwimmer are monthly photography publications drawing from Sibylle Hofter’s work and archive.

With contributions by Wolfgang Hofter, Sophie Holz, Mania Lohrengel, Patricia Nya Njaounga, Sheney Okan, Christian Seidel, Daniel Sellek and Anna Tietz.

Sibylle Hofter is a Berlin based visual artist exploring film, text, site-specific sculpture, installation in public space, and photography, participatory and individual. She is also a curator of various projects, and co-founder with Sven Eggers, of the on-going political, media-critical semi-participatory photo project Agentur Schwimmer (Swimmer Agency), that she currently runs with Daniel Sellek. Hofter process usually includes extensive research on extra-cultural fields. Since 2011 she edits Hofter Monthly booklets and TheSchwimmer booklets on paper. She focuses on emancipatory, post-colonial, collaborative work.

The booklets are sold individually or in a special edition box set.

Order here

A leading voice in Lebanon’s cultural diaspora, Rabih Mroué’s acclaimed body of work addresses the contested memory of historical events that include the Lebanese civil war, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian Revolution. Spanning theater, art, and literature, his diverse oeuvre is situated at the intersection of personal and political imaginaries, media critique, and concepts of authorship: Through scripted conversations, confessions, reports, and questions, Mroué ceaselessly interrogates ways of speaking.

Published to coincide with his major solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, marking his receipt of the 2020 Schering Award for Artistic Research, this anthology of interviews frames the past 20 years of Mroué’s practice. Additionally, a suite of newly commissioned interviews and an introductory essay by the curator Nadim Samman draw a portrait of the artist.

Order here

Publication Director: Bisi Silva
Art and Editorial Director: Stephanie Baptist
Designers: Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Julia Novitch
Contributors include: Stephanie Baptist, Antawan I. Byrd, Eddie Chambers, Tamar Garb, Phillipe Pirotte, Nontobeko Ntombela, Amilcar Packer, Gabriela Salgado and Bisi Silva.

“In 2010, the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos started Àsìkò, an innovative programme designed to redress the frequently outdated or non-existent artistic and curatorial curricula at tertiary institutions across Africa. Each year a cohort of approximately 12-15 emerging African artists and curators join an international faculty of practicing artists, art historians, curators and writers, for an intensive thirty-five-day course of study in art and curatorial history, methodologies, and professional development. Moving between models of laboratory, residency, and academy, Àsìkò privileges experimentation over conventional approaches to art making and curatorial inquiry, encouraging participants to workshop ideas, proposals and projects for long-term development and implementation.

Àsìkò: On the Future of Artistic and Curatorial Pedagogies in Africa chronicles six editions of the programme: the first two editions having taken place in Lagos, Nigeria and the subsequent four editions in Accra, Dakar, Maputo, and Addis Ababa, the capitals of Ghana, Senegal, Mozambique and Ethiopia, respectively. The publication documents each unique but related iteration of the programme, and indexes the work and reflections of the more than 70 cultural producers (from 15 African countries) who have participated in Àsìkò from 2010-2016. The book embodies the multifaceted structure of Àsìkò by interweaving documents specific to each edition with a range of material including commissioned essays on alternative strategies of artistic and curatorial practice; interviews, artworks and reflections by participants and faculty. Àsìkò: On The Future of Artistic and Curatorial Pedagogies in Africa explores many of the themes and issues that have concerned African artists over the last several decades, and offers a foundation for new debates on visual culture in Africa, and methods for articulating, presenting, documenting, and historicizing cultural practices in the future. The publication offers bold reflection on the interdisciplinary ethos at the heart of Àsìkò, and considers how diverse formats including film, literature, theatre, dance and visual art can be more effectively used in moving forward an appreciation of contemporary art, art history, and visual culture across the continent.” – Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos

Order here

Winter/Spring 2022

Log 54: Coauthoring gathers essays by and conversations with architects, curators, historians, and collectives that, as guest editors Ana Miljački and Ann Lui write, begin to “imagine the field of architecture orienting around coauthoring instead of authoring” and “challenge the model of architectural authorship that dominates both architectural discourse and the market.” In so doing, the contributors to this 176-page thematic issue “enter the space of political and identity negotiations to relinquish absolutes and to open up to multiple forms of agency.” These forms of agency manifest in numerous ways, from the Fluxus Manifesto to the words of an Enlightenment painter, from bats to spider webs, from cartography to geological deep time, from AI-generated toys to PowerPoint and Miro boards.

Miljački and Lui talk with Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers from Dream the Combine; J. Yolande Daniels and Amanda Williams from the Black Reconstruction Collective; architect and curator Andrés Jaque, and 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial curator David Brown about their collaborative practices. Sumayya Vally and Moad Musbahi transcribe site-specific music, while Curtis Roth uses gig workers’ gestures to create paintings. The Architecture Lobby and Dark Matter University discuss the implications of coauthorship through their cowritten dialogues; Timothy Hyde and Lisa Haber-Thomson study Welsh building codes; Sarah Hirschman looks at US copyright law; and De Peter Yi and Laura Marie Peterson document how residents use the Detroit Land Bank. Historians Anna Bokov, S.E. Eisterer, and Michael Kubo recount coauthorship in Soviet education, resistance in gestapo prisons, and today’s anonymous architectural megacorporation.

Order here

Galería La Monja es un proyecto cooperativo de acondicionamiento, implementación y desarrollo de un espacio móvil para la experimentación, investigación y difusión de arte contemporáneo, desde la Región de Los Lagos, Sur de Chile.

Ediciones La Monja es una extensión del colectivo de artes visuales, cuyo fin es la exploración de soportes editoriales como contenedores de sentido, capaces de facilitar la circulación de investigaciones, procesos y obras. Entendemos la edición material como una estructura de autonomía, que expande las posibilidades espacio-temporales y sus limitaciones, constituyéndose en un campo de autodeterminación.

Order the books here

Please join us to welcome artist duo and cultural association, HAWAPI, for a presentation of their publications and discussion with curator Harm Lux. 

Thursday 23rd June, 2022
from 7 to 9pm

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin

7:00 until 7:45pm > HAWAPI introduce their work (intro by Harm Lux), followed by Audience Talk

7:50pm > Presentation of HAWAPI’s Publications

8:20pm > Open Discussion

*HAWAPI’S WORK PROCESS*

After some preliminary regional research, knowledge exchange and a get together, a concept grows and HAWAPI (Susie Quillinan & Maxim Holland) invite colleagues to participate in order to carry out artistic research and actions on site.

Two examples: In northern Peru, in the mountainous region of Sorochuco, lies the property of the weaver Maxima Acuna (family). The latter is now increasingly surrounded by Conga mining, a mining company that is not afraid to appropriate and privatise public water sources. Thirteen artists worked on site several times, and results were presented to the public.

In the “Pondores” project, 12 artists stayed – for longer periods of time – in the Colombian FARC transitional settlements to develop Empathy-building, playing and acting together with these young ex-combatants. 

We will also be presenting new publications from La Monja, books from Arequipa based artist- designer-theoretician, Sebastián Baudrand.

Order HAWAPI books here
Order La Monja books here

Bibi Salme by HOUSE is an expanded facsimile of the first English version of ‘Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar’, published by D. Appleton, New York in 1888. Released with no author and circulating mostly as ‘harem literature’, the Memoirs are in reality an autobiography penned by Emily Reute | Sayyide Salme bint Said, who was born Princess Sayyide Salme bint Said, one of the thirty six children of Sayyid bin Sultan (1791-1856), ruler of Muscat and Oman and of Zanzibar. Her recollections offer a complex historic narrative on family, the ‘nature of women in the East’, Islam, East-West dichotomies, governance, and the slave-labor relationships maintained by settler Omanis in Zanzibar and the east coast of Africa during the 19th century.

The treatment of the memoirs by 19th and early 20th century publishers presented her life as more of an Oriental fantasy than a factual, autobiographical account. Since its first printing, Bibi Salme’s work has been published as an academic-style text, numerous print-on-demands, a romance novel and a Victorian Erotica Kindle book. In rare cases, such as the romance novel, the text has been altered, but in most cases the transformation has been an act of repackaging and advertising. In this edition, we attempt to reconstruct the circulation of her memoirs but also present them as a rebuke to the Orientalist worldview that she had always intended it to be.
–HOUSE

Order here