Follow Me is a book created for the exhibition by Susan Philipsz in the city of Genoa. Designed on the basis of a contemporary Baedeker, this book offers an original itinerary in the city, read through the work of the Scottish artist, invited by the Museum of Villa Croce in conceiving an exhibition inside the historic center of the city. The book is thus a city-guide that links different places and times, and that also moves from the habit of moving, investigated as a typical phenomenon of the Grand Tour – and that is the origin of the term “tourism”.

Susan Philipsz (Glasgow, 1965) won the prestigious Turner Prize in 2010 and has presented her installations in 2007 at Skulptur Projekte, Muenster, in 2012 at documenta13, Kassel and in 2015 at the Istanbul Biennial. Susan Philipsz has gained widespread recognition in the international artworld for the sharp execution of her works, unique in their genre, based on the rigorous analysis of the history, memory, and traditions of a specific place that she transposes into immaterial architectures creating an introspective environment for the “viewer”. The universal narrative of loss, hope, and homecoming is conveyed through the reproduction of tunes and melodies that, blending with the genius loci, generate a subjective storytelling.

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Questioning the physicality of space and the meaning of an object within its relation to a viewer, I tend to intertwine the viewer’s visual memory and imagination by repeating previous moments of an experience. The architectonic theatre features various objects and [theatro] expands on the notion of ‘view’ (‘thea’ in Greek, where the word ‘theatre’ comes from). The word ‘view’ is also the root of the word ‘theory’ [coming from the junction of the words ’thea’(=view) and ‘oro’( =to perceive)]. Intending the theory as practice, Ι composed [theatro] as an act of theory, asking ‘Does a de-construction of a composition inquire or does it request a knowledge of the past?’

[theatro] is a rhythmical reading experience, a 5.5 meters long transcript of a seminar performance reflecting it’s original pulse and duration. It is based on the seminar performance “PUZZLE”, that took place at FROWN, Athens initiated by Maria Lalou, consisted of Katerina Drakopoulou [A], Maro Zacharogianni [B], Maria Lalou [O], Mirrored Glass Object [X] and a live-feed camera. In this work Maria Lalou uses two software platforms for writing. Powerpoint for the pre-fabricated text and a live performed text on ‘Word’, both projected on the screen from her computer. [theatro] is verbatim transcription of the piece with several functions. Next to the documentation of the PUZZLE performance and a manual reading, it also serves as a script for the play, ‘I AM A ‘Φ’.

During the book launch in Motto Lalou will introduce the work with the lecture performance ‘theatre of consciousness’ a work based on a critical text that Lalou has written in 2013 for the academic press ‘activate’ published in London prior to the idea of [theatro]. The performance’ theatre of consciousness refers to the seen and the seer through an analysis that places the audience in a central position and as a core thematic of ‘the seen’.

[theatro] is published by Onomatopee launched primary in Eindhoven at Lalou’s solo exhibition ‘a spect’ during June 2015. The publication is designed in collaboration with Yin Yin Wong/Werkplats and includes an introduction to the work by Alena Alexandrova.

[theatro] leporello will be installed in its full length from the 19th November in the vitrines of Motto accessed through the public space. Lalou is producing a limited edition of prints of the floor plan ‘archetype’ which is one of her basic tools for this series of work, to will be installed in the exhibition space.

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Maria Lalou is an artist born in Athens in 1977. She works with the science of objects – containers, spatial installations, film and accumulated performances, developing context as of extensions of architecture. Lalou’s specialization at glass science has been evolving in contextualizing aspects of mass / surface / space/ time /duration in the sphere of cognition by challenging the bodily experience and questioning alignment of the vertical and horizontal, disposition and disorientation. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Fine Arts and from Technical University of Athens in Architecture, Design of Space – Object and Constructive Arts. She has been researcher at DasArts Amsterdam and an invited resident in e- mobilArt program for Interactive Artists. Lalou’s works have been shown amongst others in the Contemporary Art Museum of Thessaloniki during the 2nd Biennale of Thessaloniki, in ‘Technopolis’ Industrial Museum of Athens and at ‘Living Spaces’-2nd Contemporary Art Festival in Damascus, ‘Manobra’ Festival in Sao Paolo Brazil. She has been in collaboration with institutions as the E-Engineering of the Hogeschool of Amsterdam as an external adviser, with Roehampton Univesity in London as a writer on a post academic journal and an invited lecturer by Rijksacademie Studios in Amsterdam in 2012. For more info visit: http://reaction-lalou.com

Moon Space One is a reflection of eight artists personal relationship to space. Through photography and painting they express their visions of the unknown infinity that surrounds us. Featuring Jim Mangan, Jessica Rayner, Joakim Heidvall, Nadine Byrne, Clara Gesang-Gottowt, Dit-Cilinn, David Ohlsson & Björn Engberg.

Print: Offset, Risograph
The publication is handbound and made in 300 numbered copies.
1st edition of 300 copies, numbered

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This book sets out to present photo portraits and life stories that conclude with recipe suggestions intended to inspire the reader. The book’s aim is achieved when – by cooking and eating the suggested dish – the reader ingests the Other in a unusual and unexpected ‘transubstantiation’. Strangers, usually just glimpsed, here become trusted ma.tres d’h.tel who – if they don’t poison you – give you the opportunity to look deeper into their worlds by telling you about their lives. Urban anthropophagy: allowing people to enter you through their food; letting them inside you by looking at them and listening to what they have to say. This book also offers itself up as an informal guide to London, where the city and its hustle and bustle stand in sharp relief to people’s memories. A guide where a suburban backstreet may be as meaningful as Big Ben in the quest to understand the city, and where the real difference lies in the people we meet and the tales they tell of this vast metropolis teeming with human life. It is a guide book that invites you to take wrong turnings and a cookbook that says it is okay to accept recipes from strangers.

Elia Romanelli
Anthropologist and project director

€20.00

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Publication Studio. Carl Skoggard @ Motto Berlin 14.11.2015
from 7pm

Presentation of Walter Benjamin’s Sonnets by translator Carl Skoggard

The presentation will include an introduction to Benjamin’s sonnet writing, a reading of a selection of sonnets in English (Carl Skoggard) and German (Ursula Tax), and a discussion at the end.

Walter Benjamin’s sonnets, written to mourn his friend Fritz Heinle, constitute an important though little-known part of the philosopher’s literary achievement and a unique contribution to the history of the German sonnet. Benjamin would add to their number over a decade, having begun his project soon after the outbreak of World War I and the suicide of his friend. They were among the writings that Benjamin, forced to flee France, entrusted to Georges Bataille in 1940 for safekeeping. Here, for the first time, readers of English are offered translations of all 73 “Heinle sonnets” along with the original German text and an extensive commentary.

Carl Skoggard is the translator of Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood circa 1900 and The “Berlin Chronicle” Notices, both Publication Studio. Previously Skoggard served as the staff writer of Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors. His translation of Ein Jahr in Arkadien, a 1805 gay fiction by Duke August of Saxe-Gotha an Altenburg, appeared in 1999 as Year in Arcadia.

Stan Douglas’s The Secret Agent explores the turbulent Seventies and the history of Portugal, which was shaking off a dictatorship and losing its colonies in those years.

The book contains three works by the Canadian artist. The video installation The Secret Agent (première in WIELS in October 2015) tells a story originally written by Joseph Conrad in 1907. Douglas has retained the characters and the plot, but transferred them to the turmoil of Lisbon soon after the Carnation Revolution in 1974. The book contains the original script and an extensive collection of stills and production images.

The second work in the book is Disco Angola, a series of eight staged historical photographs – four in New York, four in Angola – that show the parallels between two more or less simultaneous moments: the hedonistic glam culture of New York nightlife in the Seventies and the civil war in Angola.

The third work, Luanda–Kinshasa, is a 6-hour jazz film set in 1974. It contains eleven songs recorded in the legendary 30th Street Studio, where Miles Davis, Glenn Gould and others have worked.

Stan Douglas is an artist. His films, videos and photographs have been shown internationally since 1970 at events such as Documenta ix, x and xi (1992, 1997, 2002) and three Venice biennials (1990, 2001, 2005). He has had solo exhibitions in leading museums in Europe and North America. Douglas lives and works in Vancouver.

This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition INTERREGNUM at Wiels, 9 October 2015 – 10 January 2016.

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This book is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition produced by the Wiels and curated by Dirk Snauwaert and Charlotte Friling. It held at the Manège de Sury, Mons (European Capital of Culture), from June to October 2015.

This project takes as its starting point the history of Mons and the Borinage, comparing it with the history of the modern age on an international scale, and relating it to the present time through the voices of some twenty artists questioning our times and our environment.

What we generally call “modernity,” that history of multiple conquests targeting control over reality through technology and science, also refers to the exploration through art of the hidden dimensions of our behaviour, our ideas and our subjectivity.

Atopolis proposes to rediscover models of social and cultural utopia developed by personalities from our region, but the exhibition also unveils captivating works created by artists who are watchful and critical of the era of globalisation in which we are living, that of uniform channels of information and free trade, leading both to an unprecedented connectivity and to a loss of frames of reference.

Atopolis, a title which echoes the ideas of Edouard Glissant, a writer who has philosophised about identities and migratory movements, seems an excellent metaphor of our digital era, given the importance it grants to the development of models of cohabiting and coexistence which seem to hark back to the social utopias that have emerged from our region.

This publication is composed of two interdepedent parts: one with the texts of four different authors on all the works at show; the second one with visual and textual elements from the Mundaneum Archives, excerpts of texts of Edouard Glissant, Raoul Vaneigem, Paul Lafargue, a.o., and unpublished material of Allan Sekula on the Borinage.

With Saâdane Afif, Nevin Aladağ, Francis Alÿs, Danai Anesiadou, El Anatsui, Yto Barrada, Huma Bhabha, Vincen Beeckman, Vlassis Caniaris, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Meschac Gaba, Jef Geys, Thomas Hirschhorn, David Medalla, Adrian Melis, Benoit Platéus, Walter Swennen, Diego Tonus, Jack Whitten…

Edited Sébastien Biset and Raphaël Pirenne (sic)

Textes by Jan Baetens, Sébastien Biset, Yves Citton, Charlotte Friling, Raphaël Pirenne, Dirk Snauwaert, Yoann Van Parys, Elvan Zabunyan.

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A collection of Peter Downsbrough publications ranging from 1975 to 2015 is now available at Motto. The collection includes ‘Position’, an inclusive monograph on the work of Peter Downsbrough.

Available on our online shop

A set of four leporellos by Soichi Suzuki

10 x 8 x 3.8 cm

€18.00

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This book is an unconventional autobiography. It retraces one year in the life of Rob Pruitt through the quotidian objects that the artist once loved, consumed, then felt he didn’t need anymore. An extension of the real-world flea markets, that he has been organizing since the early 1990’s, this particular collection of belongings sold on eBay from September 23 2013- September 23 2014 unearths precious fragments of Pruitt’s life while revealing his most material desires.

€20.00

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