(80*81 vol. 1-7 presentation @ Motto Zürich / Perla-Mode. Saturday 24.09.2010)

Künstlerhaus Stuttgart 1-30.10.2010
Opening on Thursday, September 30, 2010, 7pm

In the Middle of Affairs
Aesthetics of Distribution

Nairy Baghramian, Ulises Carrión, Nicolas Ceccaldi, IFP, Nina Könnemann, John Knight, Silvia Kolbowski, Louise Lawler, Hans-Christian Lotz, Ghislain Mollet-Viéville, Bonny Poon, PROVENCE, Readymades Belong to Everyone/Philippe Thomas, Udio

Curated by Egija Inzule, Tobias Kaspar and Axel J. Wieder
Reader and showcases in collaboration with Maja Wismer

The exhibition “In the Middle of Affairs” presents works, projects and documents, which share an interest in forms of distribution and alternative fields of activities for artistic practice, and investigates them as an inherent part of the production of meaning and value. The works in the exhibition consciously relate to the language of design and advertising, operate in commercial media and adopt or reflect its methods and techniques.

A series of works from the last 30 years, by artist Louise Lawler and the agency Readymades Belong to Everyone for example, are presented as historical points of reference, as well as a collection of archival material from the Paris-based collector Ghislain Mollet-Viéville. New works, partially produced specifically for the exhibition, continue and re-adjust the investigation about distribution and self-positioning.

“In the Middle of Affairs” is not only the title of the exhibition, but also describes its working method, in which one’s own involvement determines the viewing direction to enable a research in proximity of its subject. The exhibition, which has been developed together with the curator Egija Inzule and the artist Tobias Kaspar, combines different approaches and documents into a fragmentary “narrative” with changing perspective.

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Events during the exhibition:

Thursday, September 30:
8.30pm: Presentness is Grace, Performance by Udio

Friday, October 1:
5pm: (Goodbye to) Manhattan (2010, 110 min.), film presentation by Ken Okiishi
7pm: Displaying footnotes, presentation by Maja Wismer
8pm: Cocktails
9pm: Bruno & Michael are smiling and Skipperrr, concert

Sunday, Oktober 31:
7pm: Lilia Prado Superstar Film Festival, Ulises Carrión 1984

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Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
Reuchlinstrasse 4b, D – 70178 Stuttgart
Phone: +49 (0)711 617652, fax: +49 (0)711 613165
http://www.kuenstlerhaus.de
Hours: Wed. – Sun. 3 – 7pm

Queen Ann. P.S. Belly cut off. Mariken Wessels.
Published by alauda publications.
80 pages full color (Dutch/Eng). 24 x 33 cm.
Including glassine envelope containing photos.

The photographs in this book are sourced from an existing person, a middle-aged woman wringing with her self-image in an endless stream of manipulated photographs of herself, making them into a true cabinet of curiosities. The authentic arrangement of the discovered material, with its strange mixture of old and new photographs, film material and collages is strikingly deceptive. In fact, both in Elisabeth – I want to eat – as well as in Queen Ann. P.S. Belly cut off, it is the hand of the fine craftswoman Mariken Wessels at work. The suggestive, intimate force of the ‘found’ photographic material and other personal documents, as well as the sequencing of the images as a whole, are both deliberately arranged with great precision. Wessels sensitively appropriates the photo and film material by newly photographing, editing, and re-organizing them, often incorporating other material in a complementary gesture. In doing so, she constructs a narrative, weaving together images in the medium of the book.

In Queen Ann. P.S. Belly cut off it is the unfolding of a melancholic narrative of a woman, whose life seems to be dominated by her obesity. Yet the reader is never turned into a voyeur. ‘Queen Ann’s’ peculiar and touching photo collages of herself, expressing a longing for another ‘being’, are fused with the image that the book evokes around her persona. In the contrast which the arrangement of the photos make all too evident, an uncomfortable incompatibility emerges between the present and the past life of Ann and the status of being beautiful. Wessels breathes new life into her protagonist, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, giving way in the process to a seemingly ‘higher’ reality.

D 35€

LIMITED EDITION

75 copies numbered and signed. With two unpublished photos on Hahnemühle Photo Rag.
In handmade box.

€ 149

Buy:orders@mottodistribution.com
Available for distribution.

Elisabeth – I want to eat. Mariken Wessels.
Published by alauda publications.
80 pages full color (Dutch/Eng). 24 x 33 cm.
Including six thin colour-paper inserts.

The book was initially self-published by the artist in 2008 in a small edition and was widely acclaimed. It won the Silver Medal Book Award at the Fotofestival di Roma and was recently acquired by the MoMA collection in New York.

Elisabeth – I want to eat – consists of a collection of anonymous photographs, letters and postcards belonging to a young woman, which the artist stumbled upon in a shop in the Hendrik Jacobszstraat in Amsterdam. Wessels appropriates the found material in her own way, by photographing the images, creatively processing and arranging them, as well as occasionally adding her own material. The intensity and sensuality of the photographs are reminiscent of the work of master photographers like Gerard Fieret and Miroslaw Tichý. They depict a young woman defiantly posing in front of the camera, both figuratively and literally exposing herself. The black and white photographs are worn out, frayed by numerous scratches and dust particles, blending together both the exaltation and melancholy recorded in them. Apart from the photographs, the book carries a series of printed postcards and letters addressed to Elisabeth, from which the reader gradually infers that her life was thrown off track in some way. ‘Religion, order, discipline, detachment from the quest for ambition’ – these are, in brief, the ingredients of advice, with which a family member proposes to ‘heal’ her. Yet the person giving her advice himself tells no straightforward story. One is in fact left wondering which of the two people is more bizarre. There is a stark contrast in the book between the idyllic landscapes in the postcards painted in sweet watercolour and the disarming directness of Elisabeth’s gaze in to the camera. The book contains thin colour-paper inserts, on which the letters and postcards to Elisabeth almost transform into a direct appeal to the reader. The title of the publication is taken from the only letter in the book penned by Elisabeth herself, addressed to an unknown friend:
‘(…) The last time I saw you it was nice and I felt much better. Are you still in Brussels? I don’t know but I liked the house you lived and the streets there. I want to eat.’

D 35€

LIMITED EDITION
75 copies numbered and signed. With two unpublished photos on Hahnemühle Photo Rag.
In handmade box

€ 149

Buy: orders@mottodistribution.com
Available for distribution.

Bad Day #8 – Ariel Pink

Featuring:
Ariel Pink, CEO, Hanna Liden, Scott Sternberg, Niall McClelland, Alex Wolfson, Michael Snow, Julie Doiron and a joke by SANY

D 11€
Buy: orders@mottodistribution.com

Available for distribution.

Wild Flowers – Joel Meyerowitz (New York, USA)

18.6 x 23.5 cm
32 Pages
27 Images
Softcover
Full color Offset
Limited edition of 500

Buy: orders (at) mottodistribution.com

Redheads – Joel Meyerowitz (New York, USA)

18.2 x 25.6 cm
32 Pages
17 Images
Softcover
Full color Offset
Limited edition of 500, 2009

Buy: orders (at) mottodistribution.com

Stravinsky Overdrive – Osamu Kaneruma (Tokyo, Japan)

16 x 22.5 cm
24 Pages
11 Images
Softcover
Full color Offset
Limited edition of 500

Buy: orders (at) mottodistribution.com

Night Rider – Tomonori “rip” Tanaka (Tokyo, Japan)

18.2 x 25.6 cm
18 Pages
9 Images
Softcover
Black and White Offset
Limited edition of 500

Buy: orders (at) mottodistribution.com

Ash Wednesday, New Orleans – Alec Sloth (Minnesota, USA)

18.2 x 25.6 cm
32 Pages
39 Images
Softcover
Full color Offset
Limited edition of 500

Buy: orders (at) mottodistribution.com

Nympho Daughters – Todd Hido ( San Francisco, USA )

18.1 x 25 cm
32 Pages
22 Images
Soft Cover
Full color offset
Limited edition of 500

Buy: orders (at) mottodistribution.com

Communist Guide to New York City – Yevgeniy Fiks

Communist Guide to New York City is a collection of 76 photographs of buildings, public places, and sites in New York City, that are connected to the history of the Communist Party USA, including photos of buildings which housed at different times the headquarters of the CPUSA, residences of important American Communists, sites where Communist-organized strikes and demonstrations took places, and court houses where American Communist leaders were tried. The photographs are accompanied by captions explaining the significance of each site. Additionally, different neighborhood maps locate the buildings and sites within New York City.

With essays by Olga Kopenkina, Kim Förster, and Yevgeniy Fiks.

Edited by common room.
Designed by Geoffrey Han.

D 12 €

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Spesial Nord #02

Spesial Nord is an artist run, Nordic publication designed to function as a showroom for young newly established artists from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Island. Selected artist is invited to present themselves through work exclusively commissioned for the respective issue with focus on visual material and texts which refers to and reflects the artistic process.

This issue features Karlotta Blöndal, Victor boullet, Serina Erfjord, Andreas Gavell-Mohlin, Anna Rokka, Viktor Rosdahl, Ultra Grøn and Laura Wesamaa

Edited by Christina Leithe Hansen and Iselin Linstad Hauge

Designed by Victor Boullet / The Institute of Social Hypocrisy

D 12€
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Front Lines by Brendan Meadows and Matthew Robinson

Inspired by Robert Capa’s indelible scenes of the first ‘media war’, Front Lines is the result of a collaboration between photographer Brendan Meadows and Militaria collector Matthew Robinson that pays tribute to the soldiers who fought so bravely and encountered such tragedy in the Spanish Civil War. The project focuses on the camaraderie that emerged between these soldiers, giving a human face to their tragic misfortunes.

Published by Ikigai
D 10.5 €

Available for distribution

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The Curse of Bigness (1) Coordinated by Dexter Sinister for an exhibition curated by Larissa Harris at the Queens Museum of Art

The Curse of Bigness exhibition book collects the reading material of curator Larissa Harris leading up to her exhibition of the same name at the Queens Museum of Art. Five texts, loosely gathered around the Progressive era in the United States and interrupted by summaries written by Dexter Sinister comprise this medium-sized publication.

Cover by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin.

D 4.5 €

Available for distribution

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