Harvard Design Magazine #45. Jennifer Sigler, Leah Whitman-Salkin (Eds.). Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Posted in magazines, Motto Berlin store, Theory, writing on April 26th, 2018

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harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_3harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_4harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_5 harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_6harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_7harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_9 harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_8harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_10 harvard_design_magazine_2018_into_the_woods_motto_11Harvard Design Magazine 45 – Into the Woods | Spring/summer 2018

To go “into the woods” is to enter both nightmare and wonderment, chaos and serenity. The woods are the threatening realm of wolves and witches, yet also a space of peace and introspection. They confound and illuminate, disorient and clarify, endanger and protect. The woods are where we “come to our senses,” and where we embrace our wilder selves. They are a space of complex life forms and ecological destruction; of growth and decay; of fantasy and ritual; of secrets and control; of hiding and? the hidden.

The woods are often framed as a nonurban place; an entity separate from, and opposed to, the city—even the world; an eternal refuge that can smoothly be entered and exited, gone into and back out of. But how much of our woods still remains to go into—and on what terms?

As designers, we encounter the woods as building site, as obstacle, and as resource—territory to be cleared, but also to be preserved, cultivated, tamed, or simulated. Wood itself—along with its products like lumber, wood pulp, silvichemicals, and charcoal—fuel the building industry and feed architecture. In a period of accelerated climate change, the planet’s woods are disappearing, burning up, threatening and threatened by human existence. How can we holistically address the woods and its ecosystems, and the life and life-giving power they contain?

This issue of Harvard Design Magazine treks into the woods to come to terms with its precarious status as habitat and resource, and to challenge assumptions about wood as material. We won’t be “out of the woods”—this looping conundrum—any time soon, even if the woods as we once knew it, and might still imagine it, has ceased to exist. At the intersection of wilderness, urbanization, and myth, “Into the Woods” embraces contradiction, challenges destruction, and revisits our roots, biological and architectural alike.

“Into the Woods” combines contributions by noted critics and theorists including Milica Topalovic, Lawrence Buell, T. J. Demos, Rosetta Elkin, Jack Halberstam, and Maria Tatar; practitioners Dogma, Alexander Brodsky, Dilip Da Cunha, Eelco Hooftman, and Paulo Tavares; as well as artists Tang Chang, Maria Thereza Alves, Janet Cardiff, and Bas Princen; anthropologists Anna Tsing and Eduardo Kohn; and philosopher Giorgio Agamben.

Harvard Design Magazine 45 is edited by Jennifer Sigler and Leah Whitman-Salkin, and published by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD).

Language: English
Pages: 248
Size: 30.5 x 22 cm
Weight: 810 g
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 725274577118

Kirchgängerbanger. Slavs and Tatars. Westfälischer Kunstverein, Motto Books.

Posted in Motto Berlin store, Motto Books, Theory, writing on January 31st, 2018
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On the occasion of their exhibition at the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Slavs and Tatars present Kirchgängerbanger: a new, bi-lingual (Eng/DE) reader on Johann Georg Hamann, the 18th century polemicist, frenemy of Kant, and proto-Postmodernist who critiqued the Enlightenment with an unlikely mix of Lutheran theology and vulgar sexuality, enough to make even Bataille blush: “My coarse imagination has never been able to conceive of the creative spirit without genitalia.” With an introduction by Slavs and Tatars and a selection of Hamann essays including the triple-platinum hits “New apology of the Letter H” and “New Apology of the Letter H by Itself”.

 

Co-Published by Westfälischer Kunstverein & Motto Books
English / German
Pages: 92
Size: 20 x 14 cm
Weight: 136 g
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9782940524709

 

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Anti-Book – On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing. Nicholas Thoburn. University of Minnesota Press

Posted in history, Theory on January 4th, 2018
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A major new look at experimental political writing and publishing
Presenting what he terms “a communism of textual matter,” Nicholas Thoburn explores the encounter between political thought and experimental writing and publishing. He takes a “post-digital” approach to a wide array of textual media forms, inviting us to challenge the commodity form of books—to stop imagining books as transcendent intellectual, moral, and aesthetic goods unsullied by commerce.

 

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,you asshole. Alina Lupu.

Posted in Theory, writing on August 1st, 2016
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“An intelligent and literarily written account of ‘the art of assholedom’, shining light on all-encompassing and ruthless art as/is life as represented in the acts of Kippenberger, Lee Lozano, Andy Warhol.”
– the northern committee

“Truly unapologetic assholery of which (and because) the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ remain hard to grasp – leaving those who try with nothing but a blank stare: why accelerate on a dead end street? Is there a way out – a secret, or a lie? But told by the beholder it still remains a bitter fairytale.”
– substantial times

“So there is a moral after all, despite the critique of art world mechanism that is convoluted and captivating with a discernible joy for provocation.”
– amsterdam tribune

“A voice that we can’t help but think is yet too cautious to actually touch upon the unknown knowns.”
– the moral observer book review

 

€13.00

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ART AGAINST ART – Taslima Ahmed and Manuel Gnam (eds.)

Posted in politics, Theory on January 11th, 2016

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London, Paris, New York, Milan, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Palo Alto – art is moving faster than capital like a god wind that no-one can stop let alone control. Meanwhile a lot of art writing and ‘critical theory’ is stuck in the comfort zone of the 70-90s when there actually was an avant garde or subculture. For art writing to get back on track it needs to shake out of this nostalgia and start engaging with the nuances of what is going on by covering the new breeds of involvement that have emerged since 2009 – the new sincerities and ironies, the more subtle art practices and social variations of market participation that have developed to deal with the institutional grip. For some time an aesthetic suspension of disbelief helped to provide an alibi that allowed us to participate as if we did believe the market was the key to “validation”, but then quickly vanished into feelings of depression after any agency seemed like an impossibility. As the contradictions got wider, different problems have emerged such as whether art is concurrent with the transitional moments of our present culture or technology, or whether art altogether has reached its informational limit. The art world has slowly transitioned from modernist pretensions that seem like delusional excuses to the public, to developing a new sensibility – one of silent, shared communion, retributions and confessions. It has taken the step into a reality that is more in keeping with the real world of business, design and branding than creating stark ‘alternatives’. Beyond short-term pragmatism and adaptability, how can artists aesthetically work alongside their authentic desire to participate in a logic of the market that by necessity must scale? How can we realistically judge the work of art institutions if they are frozen into following instrumental logics rather than relevance? With the availability of information online, there is no way these logics are not transparent to a committed internet user. Narratives like these happened in Pop Music years ago. Just as the Music Industry had to face up to its own protocols, the Art Industry needs to be judged on its changing developments; the ways art is being used as a financial instrument, art’s new marketing techniques, art as representation of different sociological interests, art as access to power, status, fame, participation and the rest of it. Until art writing gets really into these driving forces, it won’t be able to say anything interesting about art. It also won’t be able to grow or be writing that anyone really wants to read. Art Against Art marks a turning point – the one that says by breaking from the overbearing logic of what seems like an inevitability, we can get closer to the conceptualizations we would like society to experience but don’t. The Editors

9€

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Fillip #20, Kristina Lee Podevsa (Ed.)

Posted in magazines, Theory, writing on September 11th, 2015
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In this Issue:

Ken Becker: Not Just Some Canadian Hippie Bullshit: The Western Front as Artists’ Practice
Nathan Crompton: Elegy of the Non-event
Zanna Gilbert: The Human Letter: Mail Art Exchanges between East Berlin and Northeast Brazil in the 1970s
Paul Branca and Jesi Khadivi: Social Networks and Soft Crimes
Lois Klassen: Arriving at Nowhere: Reflecting on Chris Kraus’s Radical Localism
Philip Monk: Battle Stances: General Idea, CEAC, and the Struggle for Ideological Dominance in Toronto, 1976–78
Melanie O’Brian: A Wicked Problem: Fogo Island Dialogues
Nina Power: Decapitalism, Left Scarcity, and the State
Mohammad Salemy, Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams: Speed Trials: A Conversation about Accelerationist Politics
Chantal Pontbriand and Amy Zion: Parachute: 1975–2007 and Its Afterlife
Yvonne Rainer, Hand Movie

€10.00

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Black Mountain. Eugen Blume, Matilda Felix, Gabriele Knapstein, Catherine Nichols (ed.). Spector Books

Posted in history, Theory, writing on June 18th, 2015
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The Black Mountain College (BMC), founded in 1933 in North Carolina, is considered by its multidisciplinary and experimental education thought as one of the most innovative schools in the first half of the 20th century. Visual arts, economics, physics, dance, architecture and music were taught here on an equal footing; Teachers and students lived together in a democratically organized community. The first rector of the school was John Andrew Rice, among many other gifts here Josef Albers, John Cage, Walter Gropius and Buckminster Fuller courses. At BMC, many avant-garde concepts were developed. The image-rich band appears on the exhibition Black Mountain. He is the first comprehensive publication on the Black Mountain College in the German-speaking countries and traces the history of this legendary school in its basic features after.

Eugen Blume, Matilda Felix, Gabriele Knapstein, Catherine Nichols (ed.)

Language: German

€34.00

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Cosmonauts of the Future. Nebula Books & Autonomedia. Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen (Ed.)

Posted in history, Theory, writing on April 7th, 2015
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Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere
Edited by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen and Jakob Jakobsen
Publisher: Nebula Books & Autonomedia
Language: English
ISBN: 9788799365180
€25.00

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Curating Research. Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson (Eds.). Open Editions.

Posted in Theory on December 12th, 2014
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Curating Research. Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson (Eds.). Open Editions.

This anthology of newly commissioned texts presents a series of detailed examples of the different kinds of knowledge production that have recently emerged within the field of curatorial practice.

Language: English
Pages: 266
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9780949004031

€24.00
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Surpllus: Talk and book launch @ Motto IMA. 01.11.2014.

Posted in Events, graphic design, Motto IMA, Theory on October 29th, 2014
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Surpllus: Talk and book launch @ Motto IMA. 01.11.2014.

IMA and Motto present a talk by Melbourne-based designer and publisher Brad Haylock.

Haylock is program manager of the newly updated Master of Communication Design program at RMIT University, and founding editor of Surpllus, an independent publishing imprint that focuses on critical and speculative practices across art, design, architecture and writing. This talk will consider the politics of publishing and the contested significance of print in the digital age.

Haylock’s talk will be followed by the Brisbane launch of Surpllus #17, Tom Nicholson’s Cartoons for Joseph Selleny, an artist’s book produced as a part of the solo exhibition of the same name at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and shown in the exhibition Allegory of the Cave Painting at Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp, both in 2014.

Saturday 1st November, 4pm

Motto IMA
Institute of Modern Art
Ground Floor, Judith Wright Centre
420 Brunswick Street
Fortitude Valley
Brisbane QLD 4006
Australia