Tales 37, Lago di Braies, Dolomiti, Italy, September 2011
Published by Motto Books and ENSP Arles
numbered edition of 500
PROVENCE AW 19/20 is more than punk adjacent. We spent an afternoon at home with Pietro Mattioli, poring over portraits of club-goers he took during the last years of the 1970s at Club Hey, Zürich’s first punk and new wave nightclub. These images are juxtaposed with more recent shots of patrons at House Of Mixed Emotions, a series of club nights in Zürichs Longstreet Bar.
Punk manifests in many ways, and apolitical it is not. A study of the genre could not have been dedicated to paper without considering its intersectional nuance. In two interviews, Big Joanie, the Black-British feminist punk trio and Sissi Zoebeli of Thema Selection discuss the inevitability of activist pursuit as marginalized people in specific creative and temporal contexts. In conversation with Anne Gruber, Ulrike Ottinger waxes nostalgic on her feminist and decolonial education, as well as her seminal 1977 film, Madame X—An Absolute Ruler. The two met at Ottinger’s home on Bodensee, at the foot of the Alps.
Six postcards, conceived by Edgars Gluhovs, showing different crops of an image of the long-missing Lord Lucan have been scattered freely amongst the pages of this publication. Some things you’ve got to work for, others simply drop into your lap.
In the LITERATURE section of this punk-themed edition of PROVENCE, writer, curator, publicist, and editor, Hans-Christian Dany, offers a translated excerpt from his latest book, MA-1 Mode und Uniform, which is dedicated to the bomber jacket. “Deception and camouflage are part of the game when no one is supposed to know all too well how anyone else pays the rent”. Overleaf, in a passage from When Surface Was Depth (2002), London-based novelist Michael Bracewell reflects on the relationship between art, counter-cultures and subcultures, and their liquidation into a mainstream.
We have no less than three editorials in ART & FASHION, two of which are dedicated to a single designer. Mikael Gregorsky shoots Aganovich, avant-garde haute-couture, styled by Alessia Ansalone; Kristina Nagel takes her lens to experimental designer Lou de Bètoly’s latest collection, styled by our fashion editor Nina Hollensteiner; lastly, Nadine Fraczkowski journeys to a small village near Düsseldorf to capture Leila, a nineteen-year-old gymnastics enthusiast.
IN-HOUSE furthers our investigation into the nature of the contemporary gallery, which we pursued in the previous two issues. This time, we explore the phenomenon of in-house magazines founded by galleries and art institutions. We speak with Lionel Bovier, director of the MAMCO in Geneva, and Randy Kennedy, executive editor of Ursula, Hauser & Wirth’s new publication, to gain insight as to this recent art world industry trend.
To control which stories are and are not told is a great responsibility. Kari Rittenbach offers a view from the other side of the desk, with a distillate of her rejected pitches and unfinished articles—the stories that never reached a platform beyond the inboxes of her editors.
Following this course, we’ve included REVIEW, a section comprising contributions by artists, curators and critics who we invited to challenge the format of the contemporary exhibition review.
On a trip to Hangzhou, China, we visited Li Lin, the art collector and founder of JNBY. Meanwhile, in Beijing, curator Egija Inzule spoke to Anna Eschbach and Antoine Angerer of I: project space about their latest initiative, The Nightlife Residency, an interdisciplinary project focused on extracting the social potential of the city’s club-culture through a contemporary art practice. Further south, Wang Gongquan, proprietor of the Tsingpu Retreat offered advice as to the tricky business of balancing a public civil rights activism presence with a foray into the luxury hospitality business—what’s a man to do?
Hannes Grassegger wears flip-flops and makes notes on Bitcoin from Richard Branson’s island refuge, and over in Austria, our deputy editor Olamiju Fajemisin questions Ei Arakawa and Sarah Chow on the union of magic and concept from a medieval castle-cum-summer school atop a hill in the middle of Salzburg. Read all about it in REPORT.
PROVENCE. Biannual. Subscribe. Sorry.
Kathy Acker (1971-1975)
Presentation:
This book is the first attempt to produce a critical edition of a large number of Kathy Acker’s unpublished early works. Apart from the posthumous publication, in 2002, of the early manuscript Rip-off Red, Girl Detective and The Burning Bombing of America: The Destruction of the U.S. by Amy Scholder and Grove Press in one volume, in 2002, as well as Gabrielle Kappes’ chapbook, no other important publication had been attempted in this field.
These – mostly unpublished – texts were all composed between 1969 and 1976. Yet they are representative of Acker’s published output only for the period running from 1971 to early 1974. These texts all exist as “clean” typewritten copies, probably intended to be kept, shown, maybe even published. The editor chose not to include Acker’s manuscripts. The transcriptions in this volume were made directly from the original typescripts. Original pagination, manuscript addenda, missing pages and other idiosyncrasies of each file have been preserved; our editorial notes at the end of the texts all feature a material description of the source version used.
The organization of this volume is chronological. The texts’ respective date of composition is often the result of an estimate based on their content and form (an estimate that is then justified and defended).
Such a collection shows how prolific, diverse and always in-progress Acker’s production was in those years. It isn’t, however, Acker’s complete early works. More typescripts exist at the Fales Library which aren’t featured or alluded to in this book. Their publication and analysis may in the future suggest a whole new set of interpretations that will, or might not, contradict the present editor’s exegesis. Moreover, the comparison of the typescripts with manuscript versions will undoubtedly inspire new perspectives on Acker’s creative process and intentions during those years.
Table of contents:
Acknowledgements and Foreword – Editor
Are You Surprised that Kathy Acker Was an Aries Because I’m Not — Claire Finch
The Golden Woman (ca. 1969-1970) — Kathy Acker
Section from: Diary (1-2/1971) — Kathy Acker
Portraits (7/1971) — Kathy Acker
Portraits and Visions (ca. summer 1971) — Kathy Acker
Diary Warmcatfur (1/1972) — Kathy Acker
Politics (pub. 5/1972) — Kathy Acker
For H. (ca. 5/1972) — Kathy Acker
Revolutionary Diary of an Anarchist (ca. 5/1972) — Kathy Acker
Journal Black Cats Black Jewels (summer 1972) — Kathy Acker
Gold Songs for Jimi Hendrix (ca. summer 1972) — Kathy Acker
Breaking Up (ca. summer 1972) — Kathy Acker
[Letters to Bernadette Mayer] (summer-fall 1972) – Kathy Acker
Homage to LeRoi Jones (fall 1972) — Kathy Acker
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (ca. fall 1972) — Kathy Acker
Entrance into dwelling in paradise (fall 1972) — Kathy Acker
[Exercises] (fall 1972) — Kathy Acker
Stripper Disintegration (2-3/1973) — Kathy Acker
Section from Diary (3/1973) — Kathy Acker
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (6 / 2? / 1973) — Kathy Acker
The beginning of the Thesmophoriazusae (7-9/1973) — Kathy Acker
Part I of Breaking Through Memories into Desire (11 / 1973) — Kathy Acker
Part II [of Breaking Through Memories…] (ca. 1 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
Conversations (1/1974) — Kathy Acker
Talking as Music (2/1974) — Peter Gordon
From Part III of Breaking Through Memories… (2-3 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
[Letters to Alan Sondheim] (2-3 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (3 / 3 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
[Untitled Tape] (3/1974) — Kathy Acker & Alan Sondheim
[About the Untitled Tape] (ca. 3/1974) — Emily Cheng
[Untitled Tape 2] (ca. 3/1974) — Kathy Acker & Alan Sondheim
Various Memory Experiments, I (4/1974) — Kathy Acker
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (4-7 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
[Postcard to Kathy Acker] (7/24/1974) — Alan Sondheim
[Letters to Bernadette Mayer] (10 / 1974-10 / 1975) — Kathy Acker
[Songs] (1974-1975) — Jill Kroesen
[Flyer for the Whitney Museum] (11/1976) — Kathy Acker & Alan Sondheim
About the “Blue Tape” (2012) — Alan Sondheim
[About the Untitled Tape 1] (2018) — Emily Cheng
14th Street studio and Fun City (2019) — Justin Gajoux
Kathy Acker and Sex Work in the Section from Diary (2019) — Justin Gajoux
Porno-graphing Actions of the “Blue Tape” (2019) — Anna Maria Pinaka
Afterword — Matias Viegener
Pages: 656
Language: English.
First critical edition of Kathy Acker’s unpublished early writings from (1969-1976). Comprises almost all the typescripts from that period present in the Kathy Acker’s archives.
Features also the transcription and presentation of Acker’s two 1974 experimental videos.
Editor: Justin Gajoux.
Critical notes: Justin Gajoux & Claire Finch.
Also with texts of: Alan Sondheim, Emily Cheng, Jill Kroesen, Peter Gordon, Claire Finch, Anna Maria Pinaka, Matias Viegener, Justin Gajoux.
Artwork: Satarina Cantos.
Isbn: 979-10-97450-03-8.
Print run: 500 numbered copies. Offset printed, on paper Munken Print White 80g and Arjowiggins Popset 240g; signatures sewn, cold glue.