We Love Our Employees. Fernando Gallegos, Alejandro Cartagena (Eds.). Gato Negro Ediciones

Posted in photography, writing, Zines on March 9th, 2023
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The photographs that are included in this book form part of the archive of the photographer Alberto Flores Varela. The majority were taken on commission by the Sociedad de Cuauhtémoc y Famosa (SCyF), an institution established in 1918 for Cervecería Cuauhtémoc (Cuauhtémoc Brewing Company), a company that marked the foundation of modern Monterrey. It´s worth noting that the context of those years was of revolution. The business´ elite was threatened by the labor rights included in the new constitution of 1917, which featured the right to strike. This is how the “most fortunate” workers of modern Monterrey were domesticated. It was thus decided to sacrifice freedom of expression, free association, and democratic representation of the workers, among other rights, in exchange for maintaining employment in “the company.” This book depicts the first flash of restrained disillusionment: ¨forever loyal.¨These images represent the seed of the social order that was established in many industrial cities around the world. 
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Las fotografías que integran este libro forman parte del archivo del fotógrafo Alberto Flores Varela y la mayoría fueron tomadas por encargo de la Sociedad Cuauhtémoc y Famosa (SCyF), institución creada en 1918 por Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, empresa fundadora del Monterrey moderno. Cabe recordar que el contexto de aquellos años era de revolución. La élite empresarial se encontraba totalmente amenazada por la cartera de derechos laborales contenidos en la nueva constitución de 1917, que incluía el derecho a huelga. Callados, en la mesa familiar, sonriendo, levantando un poco más la botella, no tanto, ¡no se muevan! Así fueron domesticados los trabajadores “más afortunados” del Monterrey moderno. Estas imágenes representan la simiente del orden social que acabó por instalarse en muchas ciudades industriales del orbe. Así se decidió sacrificar la libertad de expresión, la libre asociación y la representación democrática de los trabajadores, entre otros derechos, a cambio de conservar el empleo en “la compañía”.

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TEXTURE MAGAZINE ISSUE #2. Christian Jones, Alex Greenwood, Sophie Parke (Eds.). Texture Magazine

Posted in magazines, music, writing on March 8th, 2023
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Texture Magazine Issue #2 is about proximity, growth, and the art of feeling as much as understanding – a fractallised approach to what sound can mean now.

From a radical relistening of silence to the intellectual demise of music altogether, the words contained within are to be held, shared, caressed and torn asunder. Also featured is writing on the sociopolitics of the nightlife industry, the place-making of UK Drill, and the meaning of gatherings in northern Sweden through the eyes of Pliny the Elder. Among many others, of course.

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I don’t care (about football). Giulia Iacolutti + Marangoni 105. bruno

Posted in photography, sports, writing on March 7th, 2023
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“I don’t care (about football)” is a participatory artistic project involving the players of the Marangoni 105 football team, created in 2011 as part of one of the rehabilitation residences of the Udine Mental Health Department managed by the Duemilauno Agenzia Sociale Cooperative. The title, inspired by the words of a girl from the community, suggests how the game is not an end in itself but rather a practice of social inclusion and integration. Marangoni 105 is made up of service users together with its operators and supporters. They all wear the number 14, that of the legendary Ajax player Johan Cruijff – one of the most emblematic proponents of total football.
Over three years of mutual understanding and hard work, workshops were held in which, through artistic-expressive practices, there was a choral reflection on mental discomfort and on the path undertaken over the course of the residence. Football thus became a metaphor for such a path and an experience of treatment. Photographs, meetings, travel, training, stretching sessions, performance actions, interviews, writing exercises and collages are the actions that transform the art object into a place of dialogue, where it is the discovery of the other and the self that takes centre stage. The process of analysis/self-analysis turns into a creative impetus via the appropriation and re-signification of images. Through the cut lines around the bodies, it thus becomes easier to investigate that ‘not’, that ‘not’ that gave the project its name, that difficulty which is such a common trait of existence yet to which it is very difficult to give voice, form and meaning. 

Texts by Maddalena Fragnito, Giulia Iacolutti, Igor Peres, and Tiziano Possamai

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Quilo – Journal of Photographic Tales from Brasil. Mico Toledo, Joanna Creswell (Eds.). Journal Quilo

Posted in Journals, photography on March 1st, 2023
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Quilo – Journal of Photographic Tales from Brazil is the first ever publication of its kind, focusing solely on photographic projects created in Brazil. The 300-page magazine features over 40 photographers, visual artists, and short story writers from Brazil. Edited and self-published by University of Hartford Alumni, photographer and creative director, Mico Toledo and designed by design agency Porto Rocha in NY, the publication shines a light on the rich and diverse photographic talent and stories coming from within the borders of such a monumental country. Quilo’s ambitious attempt is to widen the photographic canon, to include a wide range of artistic voices and stories from Brazil, championing unseen stories from within the country, under threat from the previous 4 years of a right-wing conservative government, while also making these stories accessible to a wider audience in the United States, Europe and beyond.

Divided into regions of Brazil, the publication flows like a road trip through the many arteries that criss-cross the lengths of this monumental country; its three hundred pages take us on an odyssey from the far reaches of the North to the deepest South of Brazil. Unfolding through the eyes and minds of forty-four contemporary photographers and writers, the publication travels through towns and cities, mangroves and beaches, meets locals and encounters the often invisible tales this land holds, shining a light on counter-narratives, and turning them into powerful weapons against intolerance and bigotry.

Featuring photography from: Affonso Uchôa, André Cepeda, André Penteado, Camila Falcão, Camila Svenson, Celso Brandão, Cícero Costa, Coletivo Trëma, Desali, Diego Bresani, Edu Simões, Fabricio Brambatti, Felipe Russo, Fernanda Frazão, Gabo Morales, Gabriel Carpes, Gabriela Portilho, Giovana Schluter Nunes, Gui Galembeck, Igor Furtado, Jonathas de Andrade, Julio Bittencourt, Karoline Karlic, Marco Antonio Filho, Mico Toledo, Miguel Salvador, Ramírez-Suassi, Roberta Sant’Anna, Romy Pocz, Rodrigo Oliveira, Silvino Mendonça, Stefanie Moshammer, Tommaso Protti, Tuca Vieira, Titus Riedl, Valda Nogueira, Vincent Catala, Virginia de Medeiros, Vitor Casemiro, Yago Gonçalves

With written contributions from: Beatriz Bracher, Jarid Arraes, Jeferson Tenório, João Almino, Geovani Martins, Milton Hatoum

Design: PORTO ROCHA, Felipe Rocha, Leo Porto, Vitor Carvalho, Natalia Oledzka, Elisa Bortolini

Creative Director: Mico Toledo

Editor: Joanna Cresswell

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Barry Le Va, Kirsten Orted, Lawrence Weiner. Malmö Konsthall

Posted in Exhibition catalogue on February 28th, 2023
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Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition held at Malmö Konsthall in 1999. The exhibition was organized and conceived by Bera Nordal.

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Fatima. Ruhail Qaisar. Danse Noire

Posted in music on February 27th, 2023
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48-page book with photographic documentation, lyrics & additional context
Includes a download code for the album

Design by Niels Wehrspann
Translation work by Aastha Gupta, Sheraz Ahmed, Abdur Rahman Jerral, Tazyne Fatima, and Asad Sheikh

Ruhail Qaisar’s Fatima is a requiem for a dead future. The debut album release by the self-taught artist and producer screams with the trauma and decay of life in his hometown of Leh—a high-altitude plateau region in the contested Ladakh area, extending from the Himalayan to the Kunlun Ranges. Qaisar absorbs this external condition of perpetual conflict between nation states into his internal life and resulting compositions, crossing sound art, noise music and experimental filmmaking. Hauntological drones, power electronics and convulsive post-industrial dissonance create an unnerving sense of fear, anger, and alienation. A broken transistor with a knob tuned to the abyss is bombarded with the cries and bitter laughter of a city’s inhabitants tyrannized, not only by military occupation but the soft-power subjugation of the tourism industry.

Following 2016’s Ltalam EP—released under Qaisar’s now-defunct Sister moniker—Fatima serves to transmit memories carried through the events, local mythos and personal recollections of growing up between the remote agrarian villages of Ladakh and the urban center of its joint capital—Leh. The album was mixed between that area, and a DIY home studio in New Delhi, where the artist amalgamates his collected found sounds and field recordings into unrecognizable hybrids. Discordant pads and atmospherics on the dark ambient of Daily Hunger is disrupted by a crashing, pounding reverb, while contributor Elvin Brandhi shrieks towards its horrifying conclusion in the squelching, scratching sound of something soft being chewed.

An anti-lingual conjuring of metaphysical totems in music, Fatima is a seething chronicle of experience through the dynamics of riots, violence, colonization, unemployment, PTSD, and self-abuse. The cycling tumult of Namgang hosts a menacing whisper that echoes the hissing fury of something like Einstürzende Neubauten and Lydia Lunch’s Thirsty Animal, while a trouncing distorted bass line on Fatima’s Poplar circles a voice that barks, The Western Civilization Show has been discontinued.

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February 2023 Music Mix

Posted in Motto Disco, music on February 25th, 2023
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Image courtesy of Kink Gong


Dear friends, 

We are pleased to share with you Motto’s February 2023 Music Mix, Triste Tropik Mix created by Kink Gong.

Listen to the mix here

Listen to Kink Gong here

Roses of Resistance: A Dozen Tales of Active Flowers. Federico Hewson

Posted in politics, writing, Zines on February 25th, 2023
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Artist Federico Hewson describes, accompanied by botanical drawings, how roses have been tools and symbols for activists and movements around the world throughout and today.

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TECKEN – Lettres, Signes, Ecritures. Roberto Altmann, Ann-Marie Björklund, Eje Högestätt, Elisabeth Liljedahl (Eds.). Malmö Konsthall

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, poetry, typography, writing on February 24th, 2023
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Catalogue published in conjunction with the eponymous exhibition held at Malmö Konsthall from 22 March to 7 May, 1978.

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HaFI 017 – Karolin Meunier: Aller-retour et aller. On “Wanda” and “Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden”. Karolin Meunier. Harun Farocki Institut & Motto Books

Posted in Film, Motto Books on February 23rd, 2023
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In 2019, Karolin Meunier presented the performance Aller-retour et aller for the first time at Arsenal Cinema in Berlin. This was followed by a screening of the film Wanda (1970) by Barbara Loden, one of the most important works of independent filmmaking by female directors. For HaFI 017, Meunier documents her performance script. Among other references, she engages with Nathalie Léger’s book Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden (2012) by translating text excerpts in dialogue with a friend. In this essayistic novel, Léger follows the traces of the film in her search for the actress and director Barbara Loden.

In HaFI 017: Aller-retour et aller, Meunier’s artistic gestures of experimental translation echoes the intertwining of these three women’s quest by dissolving the biographies of the film character, the actress, and the novelist: “A woman telling her own story through that of another woman.” (Nathalie Léger). The pamphlet includes an afterword by Clio Nicastro.

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