“When childhood ends, only sights, sounds and smells remain. I will never again reach that brilliance and pure fear. I am stuck in an uncertain and dark time. Now there is only a “Hezeyan” filled with images.”
–Rasul Guliyev

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The first creation of the new Berlin based imprint bleu. is a book of J.J. Zana that required a rigorous and collective production process. Writer and translator Katie Archer (USA), designer Alan Bolumar and printer Che Huber (Switzerland), all worked hand in hand in order to create an original artwork, in both substance and form. Because indeed, Cycles seem to be, in today’s literature, hardly possible to classify—though it clearly follows a fragmentary aesthetics, explores the borders of narration, and introduces a certain form of thinking in the eleven sections of the book. The result is a text based on the theories of art and madness (or desire) that breaks, or intents to break the concept of genre—or gender.

J.J. Zana (born 1985 in Marseille) is an artist whose main medium is writing. His first text (a translation from Spanish made in collaboration with Dani Zelko and Marie Bardet) has been published by Museum Reina Sofia (Madrid). He lives and works in Berlin. Bleu. is a new experimental project aiming to produce contemporary literature and music, initiated in Berlin by Nemo Ripoli.

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Dear friends,

Motto and Sans titre (2016) are pleased to invite you to the opening of

« Retro »
a solo show by Robert Brambora

Saturday 2nd July, 2022
from 6pm

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


*The exhibition will be on view until 31.08.2022

Pages Magazine Set

Pages, the bilingual, Farsi and English, artist magazine since 2004.

Edited by Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi.

– Pages #1: Public & Private
– Pages #2: Play & Locations
– Pages #3: Desire & Change
– Pages #4: Voice
– Pages #5: On the Verge of Vertigo
– Pages #6: Eventual Spaces
– Pages #7: In Translation
– Pages #8: When Historical
– Pages #9: Seep
– Pages #10: Inhale

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A Female Gaze explores the paintings and drawings of contemporary artist Caroline Walker through the lens of Laura Knight, arguably Nottingham’s most famous artist and the first woman to be elected a Royal Academian.

Seperated by 100 years, both artists are united through their observations of women in everyday life, from moments of motherhood to women at work and the mundanity of domestic life.

With essays by Jennifer Higgie and Tristram Aver, this book contributes to rebalancing the gender bias legacy within art history, while celebrating the powerful artistic qualities of two extraordinary painters.

This book was published to accompany a major Nottingham Castle Trust exhibition, ‘Laura Knight and Caroline Walker: A Female Gaze.

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bloom

/bluːm/ noun

The flower of a plant.

Flowers collectively: The bloom of the cherry tree. State of having the buds opened: The gardens are all in bloom.

A flourishing, prospering condition.

To bloom, blooming, bloomed. What does “bloom” mean to you?

BLOSSOM is the accumulation of work from 30 artists from around the world who were asked what the word “bloom” means for them.

1/3 of revenues earned from BLOSSOM will be donated to @REDCOMUNITARIATRANS, a community-based organization led by transgender women that work to defend the rights of trans people in Colombia. During the last six years, they have worked hand in hand with trans women who are victims of the armed conflict, deprived of liberty, homeless people, sex workers and drug users.

Featuring Aguacero – She/Her @aguacerito0o, Raisa Alava – She/Her @raisalava, Chaz Aracil / Aza – They/Them (trans/ NonBinary/two-spirit) @azamorxx / @chaz_aracil, LEE BULLITT @mooodyblack, Kyle Canyon @kyle_canyon, Coco Latex – They/them @Cocolatex_tattoo, Irene Fernandez Arcas @irene_f_arcas, Momo Gordon – They/them @slippypeach, Paula Grenouille – She/her @paulagrenouille, Anna Hoffman – She/her @annahofm_nn, Dana Kearley – She/they @danakearley, Annabelle Theresa Kuhm – They/she @not_buff_enuff, Clare Lewis – She/Her @clarelewlew, S Lister-Hernández @obscuredself, Stefhany Y. Lozano – She/Her @stefhanyylozano, Lony Mathis – she/her @_lony_mathis, Kaja Meyer – She/her @_kajameyer_, Nina Muro – She/her @nninamuro, Amy Palmer, MOONSIE @pigratdog, Daniela Restrepo @darares_93, Sophia Prieto – She/Her @sophiaprieto.v, Kitty Short – She/Her/They @kittyshortsh, Alexandra Šliková – She/Her @pu.uf, Gaja Vičič – she/her @happyplantsberlin / @gajavicic, Oasis of Hate (Anna) – She/her @oasis_of_hate, Nico Wilting – They/he @Babysbabybaby, Weishan Yang – she/they @mass_97_, Madiza Zalewa – She/her @zalevajka, Inka Zivana Torvund – She/They @oceanpebble.

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Beginning with a meditation on the affirmative potential of no alongside the dissident capacity of yes-saying as a species of refusal. The Yes of the No advocates different models of daily practice through which to perform everyday life – the as is – in the subjunctive key of what if or even what might be.

Existing in the space between imaginative proposition and a call to action, The Yes of the No is an assemblage of provocations, proposals and potential ways of operating – ranging from navigating the city and inhabiting the margins to errant acts of reading; from preparing for the unexpected to learning how to ‘not know’, from minor acts of singular sedition to collective expressions of an insurgent ‘we’.

One of the most unique books by one of the most compelling artist-writers today, The Yes of the No is the first collection of writings by Emma Cocker. The book draws together selected fragments of writing produced in dialogue with, parallel to and as art practice (from between 2007–2016). The book is organised into 111 pieces of highly playful and poetic prose. Emma Cockers work wittily explores many themes; actions like ‘doing and undoing’, concepts like the fabric of time and interpreting the real meaning of words, common and uncommon.

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„I once heard a song and the lyrics to me sounded like: « use your other eyelid ».
(…) D enters the waiting room. Name some of your angels here : Write them down or say them out loud or think them to yourself.
If it’s not ok, then it’s not the end, thoughts getting cut cut and cut”

25 exemplars, numbered

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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.

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