CAMBODIA REMIX (CD). Kink Gong. PPT/Stembogen

Posted in music on January 4th, 2023
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Since the end of the 90s, Laurent Jeanneau, aka Kink Gong, has been recording the musics of mostly endangered minorities mainly in Southeast Asia. Alongside his relentless pursue of collecting predominantly unknown and unpublished musics, he produced a series of remixes combining these recordings with natural sounds, archive material and electronically treated sounds.

Released April 1, 2012

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Supplement 06: Two Hot Horses. Moyra Davey. Fillip

Posted in photography on January 3rd, 2023
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Edited by Jeff Khonsary and Kate Woolf
Copyeditor: Jaclyn Arndt

Edition of 500

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Intuitions. Naço, Marcelo Joulia. Rupture & Imbernon; Éditions Empire

Posted in Uncategorized on January 2nd, 2023
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Creating, traveling, drawing, and building: such is the DNA of the exuberant architect and designer Marcelo Joulia. Driven from his home country of Argentina by the 1976 military coup, this personal trauma gave him the strength to be a great builder. For thirty years, his agency Naço —‘intuition’ in the Guarani language—has been the laboratory of a global and inventive architecture, aiming to decompartmentalise genres and trades, and mixing knowledge, arts, and professional backgrounds together. Belonging to no specific school, and fiercely attached to his independence and freedom, he has imagined a unique creative space in which expertise and rigor both flourish within the domains of luxury, urban mobility, and major architecture. As an insatiable adventurer, he is able to take an interest in anything —large-scale buildings, design, furniture, bicycles, boats— while not denying himself anything. His passion revolves around teamwork and bringing talents together to conceive of new worlds. As an epicurean, a generous person passionate about art and gastronomy, Marcelo Joulia creates places in his image: unique, welcoming, and always dynamic.

This book showcases the vision of a man and an agency that has surrounded itself with the best and strived to bring to life a demanding and iconoclastic architecture, and carry it forth into the future.

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Anciente (LP). XYR

Posted in music, vinyl on January 1st, 2023
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The Russian producer Vladimir Karpov is well on his way towards a lasting legacy as a modern synthesizer wizard in the grandiose vein of Vangelis and Jarre. With a propensity for concept albums he has built a sturdy discography during this past decade that echoes the progressive ideas of the psychedelic generation as it moved into adulthood with Moog in hand.

While equally a part of the postmodern generation; Karpov’s ouvre also embraces the utopian daydreaming of the new age, the environmental concerns embodied in field recording, and the holistic approach of Jon Hassels 4th world concept.

While the esoteric fantasies of previous works linger on, the conceptual aspect of “Anciente” is rendered more abstract. And instead of dividing ideas into tracks that form an album, here Karpov is pushing the boundaries of his compositions further into longer forms. Like trails into humid forest landscapes, they run deep enough for one to get lost along the way.

Clocking in at a neat 20 minutes per side, the two tracks that make up “Anciente” weaves soft brushes of undefinable sounds and tropical field recordings that almost create ASMR-inducing vibrations in the minds of the listener. Eventually they might open a doorway to a twilight-lit wilderness and the possible secrets of the first civilised men. As Carlos Castaneda once wrote, relaying the wisdom of the Yaqui; “twilight is the crack between worlds. It is the door to the unknown.” Or, as in this case, the door to the ancient.

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Maps/Species. Anri Sala. Éditions Dilecta; Pinault Collection

Posted in Uncategorized on December 31st, 2022
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Anri Sala’s series Untitled (Maps/Species, 2018-2022) consists of diptychs which create a dialogue, within the twenty-four windows of the Passage de la Bourse de Commerce, between an an eighteenth-century zoological engraving with an ink and pastel drawing by the pastel by the artist. This cycle echoes the immense canvas marouflaged on the shoulder of the Rotunda. In the form of a leporello to be unfolded recto-verso, this book gives an account of this project in the context of its project in the context of its presentation.

Text by Anri Sala

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A century of injured men. Bernhard Cella. Album Verlag

Posted in photography on December 30th, 2022
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Bernhard Cella’s sweeping pictorial documentary of convalescent men present us with an iconography of a century of medical progress and, by the same token, with a typology of the mise en scenes of soon-to-be homecoming patients. These staged pictures open up a counter narrative to that of vigorous, unscathed, and invulnerable masculinity. They invariably invoke calamitous moments, sustained injuries, the scars of war as well as the causes and circumstances preceding a fateful event that no camera was there to capture. Their insistence on calm, deceleration, casual gestures, and lightheartedness in the photographer’s presence cannot hide this fact. Or, as Paul Virilio put it, “images are ammunition, cameras are weapons.”

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Temporary City Berlin. Revolver Publishing

Posted in Exhibition catalogue on December 29th, 2022
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One space, One structure, A set of regulations.

Temporary City is an exhibition that starts from the basis: the artist. No theme or curator is involved. During the course of one week fifteen artists worked in the Atelierhof Kreuzberg and challenged, negotiated and discussed their practices in order to use these as a base to develop an exhibition. Their works were presented on an architectural structure, an ‘obstacle’ designed for the show. The result of this process could be seen during the exhibition Temporary City Berlin 2009.

Artists: Anton Cotteleer, Ilke De Vries, Yoko Enoki, Paul Hendrikse, Anouk Kruithof, Nicolas Leus, Katrin Plavcak, Olivier Schrauwen, Nele Tas, Iris Van Dongen, Stijn Van Dorpe, Ada Van Hoorebeke, Tamara Van San, Sarah Westphal, Nada Sebestyén.

Texts, Introduction: Nele Tas; Exhibition Diary: Christophe Van Gerrewey; No Such Things as a Plan: Andreas Müller; St Curatus at the Crossroads: Christoph Tannert.

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Vilaine Fermière 2023. Tess Robin

Posted in graphic design, illustration, printmaking on December 22nd, 2022
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The 2023 edition of the Vilaine Fermière calendars have the theme of ‘death gods’, with references to antique, medieval and modern representations of different demons throughout the world.

Each copy is riso printed and bound by hand. Each page has 2 colors and the cover has 3.

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The Playground Talk. Romana Ruban

Posted in illustration on December 21st, 2022
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In her exhibition ‘The Playground Talk’, closing her residency at Officina Neukölln, Romana Ruban creates the echo of a dialogue between kids that she overheard during a trip to Odesa. The playground chitchat consists of dreams about the neighbor’s car and is carved into a zine with simple but lighthearted illustrations. The linocut prints appeal to both the inner child and the responsible adult. With these kids’ quotes, the artist wishes to show not only a playful childhood and the joy of simple things, but she also wants to bring up a few questions. Are we dreaming in the right direction? What do we stand for in the end?

The idea for a zine came up in 2021, right after the trip, but was on hold. Officina’s residency for artists in exile gave new layers and meanings to the imprint of the peaceful past, as Romana fled Ukraine to Germany after the full-scale invasion of Russia.

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Who Can Afford To Be Critical? Alfonso Matos (Ed.). Set Margins’

Posted in graphic design, Theory, writing on December 20th, 2022
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‘Critical Designers’ produced by an increasing number of design schools are prompted to address social, political and environmental issues through their practices. Yet, who can afford to continue such effort after graduation?

In a dynamic style holding multiple voices, “Who Can Afford To Be Critical?” discusses the limits that affordability, class and labour impose upon the educational promise of holding a ‘critical’ practice. Why do we tend to ignore the material and socioeconomic constraints that bind us as designers, claiming instead that we can be powerful agents of change? In fact, where does our agency lie?

Instead of focusing on the dream of ethical work under capitalism, could we, instead, focus first on designers’ own working conditions, targeting them as one immediate site for collective action? And can we engage politically with the world not necessarily as designers, but as workers, as activists, as citizens?

With contributions by Silvio Lorusso, J. Dakota Brown, Marianela D’Aprile, Evening Class, Somnath Batt, Danielle Aubert, Jack Henrie Fisher, Alan Smart, Greg Mihalko and DAE students 2021/2022.

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