An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (2nd Edition). Thomas Raat. Onomatopee.

Second edition (November 2013 )

Thomas Raat’s An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth takes off from the cover designs of popular “egghead” paperbacks published from the late 1940s until the early 70s. The artist’s repurposing of the predominantly abstract imagery of the jackets mediates an abstruse range of synthetic epistemologies (from “freedom and responsibility” to “the law of civilization and decay”) as well as the needs or demands of various book series and the branding orientations of the publishing houses that commissioned them.

The accompanying essay by John C. Welchman discusses how Raat’s work operates at the technical interface between abstract painting and visual construction and on the generic borderlines between art, design and the history of ideas; and how his intervention precipitates a salient crisis in the signifying assumptions delivered to non-figurative compositionality in the mid-twentieth century—and its later reassessments. Prompted by an ethos of design that fronts the inevitability of reading, Raat’s project asks how abstract signs have been organized as the future of a long and stealthy illusion.

Editors: Thomas Raat, Edwin van Gelder, John C. Welchman and Freek Lomme
text by John C. Welchman
Graphic design: mainstudio
Printing: Lecturis
Photograpy: Willem Vermaase
Pages: 80 (Japanese folding)
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 978-94-91677-09-0

25€
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Partially Removing the Remove of Literature. Kristen Mueller. & So.

“A book, even a fragmentary one, has a center which attracts it. This center is not fixed, but is displaced by the pressure of the book and circumstances of its composition. Yet it is also a fixed center which, if it is genuine, displaces itself, while remaining the same and becoming always more central, more hidden, more uncertain and more imperious. He who writes the book writes it out of desire for this center and out of ignorance. The feeling of having touched it can very well be only the illusion of having reached it.” -Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature

In Reading the Remove of Literature (Information as Material, 2006), Nick Thurston has erased the text of the English translation of Maurice Blanchot’s L’espace littéraire (The Space of Literature), while at the same time preserving his own marginalia, resetting them in almost the exact typeface of Blanchot’s text.

In Partially Removing the Remove of Literature, Thurston’s marginalia have been partially erased. Only the non-verbal, diagrammatic traces – the underlinings and arrows, circles and asterisks – remain, printed one atop another, collapsing each chapter into the space of a single page. The chapters’ running titles, reprinted at the top of each page, offer the sole clue as to what Blanchot once wrote, and Thurston once read and annotated.

9€
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The Crossdresser’s Secret. Brian O’Doherty. Sternberg Press.

The eighteenth century was an era of violent contrasts and radical change, intellectual brilliance and war, spies and diplomatic intrigue, elegance and cruelty. One of the century’s most mysterious figures was the Chevalier d’Eon, who lived as both man and woman, French spy and European celebrity. Written from the perspective of this historical figure, the novel by Brian O’Doherty—artist and author of, among others, the critical milestone Inside the White Cube and the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Deposition of Father McGreevy—reveals d’Eon’s radical modernity, certified by his attitudes to gender and his examination of his own nature. He ponders the social determinants of sexual identity and studies the manners and conventions governing discourse between the sexes. At the same time, as diplomat and spy, he is involved in the power politics of nations. The novel holds close to historical facts and reproduces some of d’Eon’s comments as recorded in his voluminous journals. Apparently his life did not become real to him until he had rehearsed it in writing.

Design: OK-RM
Published: February 2014
Language: English

22€
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Ideas and Thoughts. Helmut Smits. Onomatopee.

The sketch drawings in the notebook Ideas and Thoughts by Helmut Smits capture bright solutions and inventions in the conditions of our daily order, perceived both within our social and our visual horizon. Rocking our foundations and playing on our sense of eureka!, these often realized propositions trigger a playful relation with our environment.

Onomatopee 93: Cabinet Project

softcover / pocket size scetchbook

published in framework of the exhibition at Onomatopee.

Wibalin Buckram cover, type in foiled print

144 pages Muncken Rough 120 grams
70 illustrations in black on white

Editors: Helmut Smits and Freek Lomme
Graphic design: Helmut Smits assisted by Gabriela Baka
printed at Lecturis Printers

20€
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folio issue two. Ward Heirwegh (Guest Ed.).

This issue is based around Samuel Beckett’s short play Come and Go.

Regular copies come with A2 insert posters by either Kit Craig or Melike Kara.

Edition: 350
Printed by A4 Ofset in Istanbul, 2013.

11€
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Neukalm. Christian Vialard. Grautag Records.

Mixed and produced by Frederic Bigot at the Padded Cell in Berlin.
February 2013
Mastered by Norsq
Front, back and inside sleeve: Nicolas Moulin

20€
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COOKIE!. Jan Verwoert. Sternberg Press, Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy.

Edited by Vivian Sky Rehberg and Marnie Slater

This new volume brings together a selection of Jan Verwoert’s most recent writings. COOKIE! is a sequel to Verwoert’s Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want (edited by Vanessa Ohlraun, 2010), and third in a series of books published with the Piet Zwart Institute.

If we don’t merely reduce art to clever code play in the arenas of representation, how do we speak about what is at stake? In response to this question, Verwoert addresses the forces at the heart of the tragicomedy that making, showing, and critiquing art implicates us in. He honors the basic joys of turning one thing into another, and the miracles of rhythm and rhyme that characterize the residual level of mimetic magic in art. In this key, the unverifiable is practiced daily: bodies are remade, feelings transfigured. As Alina Szapocznikow wrote, the mouth chews and out comes sculpture. Verwoert’s COOKIE! renders visible the endless emotional labor of setting the stage (for others), poses the thorny question of whether there could ever be a labor union for con-artists (like us), and gestures toward an ethics of disappointment to battle false expectations and as a way to come to terms with the fact that, no matter how you look at it, criticism hurts.

Co-published with Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy
Design by Nienke Terpsma

Language: English
Pages: 252
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-95679-029-4

18€
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Last copies of Jan Verwoert’s Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want were just restocked too!

18€
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Bulletins Of The Serving Library #6. Stuart Bailey, Angie Keefer, David Reinfurt (Eds.). Sternberg Press.

This issue doubles as a retroactive non-catalog for the group exhibition “White Petals Surround Your Yellow Heart” at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (February 6, 2013-July 28, 2013), curated by Anthony Elms.

Contributions by:
Angie Keefer, Robin Kinross, Joke Robaard, Brian Eno, Nick Relph, Eli Diner, Chris Fite-Wassilak, Stuart Bailey, Sarah Demeuse, Adolf Loos, Kuki Shuzo, Eli Diner & Sanya Kantarovsky, Perri MacKenzie

Pages: 160 + insert
Language: English

15€
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LE PASSÉ SOUS NOS PIEDS. Jérémie Gindre. Editions Bibracte & Parc Saint Léger.

Dessins, photos & texte (français)
32 pages couleurs
18×26cm – 2014

4€
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San Rocco #8: What’s wrong with the primitive hut?

SAN ROCCO • WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE PRIMITIVE HUT? 2A+P/A talks about Zeno * Pedro Ignacio Alonso on Charles Eisen * Tanguy Auffret-Postel and Tiago Borges on Jacques Hondelatte’s Artiguebieille House * Pep Avilés on the Caribbean hut * Ido Avissar’s degré zéro * Marc Brabant on individualism and architecture * Marc Britz on the Panthéon français * Ivica Brnic on huts and temples * Ludovico Centis on space oddities * Steven Chodoriwsky on the duck * Carly Dean explores the desert on Google Earth * gall on a November weekend in 2011 at Slievemore, Dooagh, Keel East, Achill Co., Mayo * Giovanni Galli on primaeval architecture in an edenic context * Giorgio Grassi refuses to answer baukuh’s questions * Stefano Graziani goes to Devils Tower * Nils Havelka and Sarah Nichols on the Malm whale * Wonne Ickx on the well-tempered hut * David Kohn on the return of the Roi des Belges * Anders Krüger and Regin Schwaen on leftovers * Eric Lapierre on primaeval building substance * Annamaaria Prandi and Andrea Vescovini tells a straight story * Isobel Lutz Smith on the demolition of Glasgow * Nikos Magouliotis on the Three Little Pigs * Daniel Martinez on wilderness * Gabriele Mastrigli on Delirious New York * Ariadna Perich Capdeferro on Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque * Philippe Rahm on the Olduvai Gorge * Pier Paolo Tamburelli reads the Entwurff einer historischen Architektur * Neyran Turan on primitive flatness * With photos by Stefano Graziani

15€
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