Kathy Acker (1971-1975)

Presentation:

This book is the first attempt to produce a critical edition of a large number of Kathy Acker’s unpublished early works. Apart from the posthumous publication, in 2002, of the early manuscript Rip-off Red, Girl Detective and The Burning Bombing of America: The Destruction of the U.S. by Amy Scholder and Grove Press in one volume, in 2002, as well as Gabrielle Kappes’ chapbook, no other important publication had been attempted in this field.

These – mostly unpublished – texts were all composed between 1969 and 1976. Yet they are representative of Acker’s published output only for the period running from 1971 to early 1974. These texts all exist as “clean” typewritten copies, probably intended to be kept, shown, maybe even published. The editor chose not to include Acker’s manuscripts. The transcriptions in this volume were made directly from the original typescripts. Original pagination, manuscript addenda, missing pages and other idiosyncrasies of each file have been preserved; our editorial notes at the end of the texts all feature a material description of the source version used.

The organization of this volume is chronological. The texts’ respective date of composition is often the result of an estimate based on their content and form (an estimate that is then justified and defended).

Such a collection shows how prolific, diverse and always in-progress Acker’s production was in those years. It isn’t, however, Acker’s complete early works. More typescripts exist at the Fales Library which aren’t featured or alluded to in this book. Their publication and analysis may in the future suggest a whole new set of interpretations that will, or might not, contradict the present editor’s exegesis. Moreover, the comparison of the typescripts with manuscript versions will undoubtedly inspire new perspectives on Acker’s creative process and intentions during those years.

Table of contents:
Acknowledgements and Foreword – Editor
Are You Surprised that Kathy Acker Was an Aries Because I’m Not — Claire Finch
The Golden Woman (ca. 1969-1970) — Kathy Acker
Section from: Diary (1-2/1971) — Kathy Acker
Portraits (7/1971) — Kathy Acker
Portraits and Visions (ca. summer 1971) — Kathy Acker
Diary Warmcatfur (1/1972) — Kathy Acker
Politics (pub. 5/1972) — Kathy Acker
For H. (ca. 5/1972) — Kathy Acker
Revolutionary Diary of an Anarchist (ca. 5/1972) — Kathy Acker
Journal Black Cats Black Jewels (summer 1972) — Kathy Acker
Gold Songs for Jimi Hendrix (ca. summer 1972) — Kathy Acker
Breaking Up (ca. summer 1972) — Kathy Acker
[Letters to Bernadette Mayer] (summer-fall 1972) – Kathy Acker
Homage to LeRoi Jones (fall 1972) — Kathy Acker
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (ca. fall 1972) — Kathy Acker
Entrance into dwelling in paradise (fall 1972) — Kathy Acker
[Exercises] (fall 1972) — Kathy Acker
Stripper Disintegration (2-3/1973) — Kathy Acker
Section from Diary (3/1973) — Kathy Acker
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (6 / 2? / 1973) — Kathy Acker
The beginning of the Thesmophoriazusae (7-9/1973) — Kathy Acker
Part I of Breaking Through Memories into Desire (11 / 1973) — Kathy Acker
Part II [of Breaking Through Memories…] (ca. 1 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
Conversations (1/1974) — Kathy Acker
Talking as Music (2/1974) — Peter Gordon
From Part III of Breaking Through Memories… (2-3 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
[Letters to Alan Sondheim] (2-3 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (3 / 3 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
[Untitled Tape] (3/1974) — Kathy Acker & Alan Sondheim
[About the Untitled Tape] (ca. 3/1974) — Emily Cheng
[Untitled Tape 2] (ca. 3/1974) — Kathy Acker & Alan Sondheim
Various Memory Experiments, I (4/1974) — Kathy Acker
[Letter to Bernadette Mayer] (4-7 / 1974) — Kathy Acker
[Postcard to Kathy Acker] (7/24/1974) — Alan Sondheim
[Letters to Bernadette Mayer] (10 / 1974-10 / 1975) — Kathy Acker
[Songs] (1974-1975) — Jill Kroesen
[Flyer for the Whitney Museum] (11/1976) — Kathy Acker & Alan Sondheim

About the “Blue Tape” (2012) — Alan Sondheim
[About the Untitled Tape 1] (2018) — Emily Cheng
14th Street studio and Fun City (2019) — Justin Gajoux
Kathy Acker and Sex Work in the Section from Diary (2019) — Justin Gajoux
Porno-graphing Actions of the “Blue Tape” (2019) — Anna Maria Pinaka
Afterword — Matias Viegener
Pages: 656
Language: English.

First critical edition of Kathy Acker’s unpublished early writings from (1969-1976). Comprises almost all the typescripts from that period present in the Kathy Acker’s archives.
Features also the transcription and presentation of Acker’s two 1974 experimental videos.
Editor: Justin Gajoux.
Critical notes: Justin Gajoux & Claire Finch.
Also with texts of: Alan Sondheim, Emily Cheng, Jill Kroesen, Peter Gordon, Claire Finch, Anna Maria Pinaka, Matias Viegener, Justin Gajoux.
Artwork: Satarina Cantos.
Isbn: 979-10-97450-03-8.

Print run: 500 numbered copies. Offset printed, on paper Munken Print White 80g and Arjowiggins Popset 240g; signatures sewn, cold glue.

BUY

Saturday, September 28^th

5-7 PM. Talk at 5.30.

Motto Berlin Skalitzer Str. 68, 10997 Berlin, Germany

Kristian Handberg’s Conquering the present in the Long Sixties is an art historical essay. The book presents a new understanding of the art work in the 1960s and how a predominant interest in the present even brought a Soviet Cosmonaut to the Venice Biennale in 1968.

Talk with Terry Smith, author of Art to Come. Histories of Contemporary Art (2019).

Kristian Handberg., (b. 1980) Art historian, Ph.D., postdoc at the University of Copenhagen. Handberg has researched in the importance of exhibitions and their international circulation in the postwar era at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Terry Smith, Professor in Art History, University of Pittsburgh. A leading historian and theoretician on the history of contemporary art, Smith has just published the book Art to Come. Histories of Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2019), which will be available at the launch. Smith will be in conversation with the author on the notion of contemporary art and the exhibition as a way of staging the present.

This is the first publication on the plays of New York–based experimental theater director and playwright Richard Maxwell (born 1967) and his company New York City Players. His plays have been commissioned by The Wexner Center, Columbus; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Performance Space 122, The Kitchen and Soho Rep in New York; and The Barbican Centre, London. The book captures the experience of actually watching the plays by way of screen-grabs and captions, and in doing so documents nearly 20 years of work.

Text by Jim Fletcher, Emily Hoffman, Richard Maxwell, Robert Snowden.
Published by Westreich Wagner and Greene Naftali.

€45.00

Buy it here

10 Years of Provence
at Motto / The Downer

Opening Friday 23 August, 6-9pm

with:
Gerry Bibby, Megan Francis Sullivan, Martin Ebner, Edgars Gluhovs, Daniel Herleth and Bärbel Trautwein of Oracle, Karl Holmqvist, Lisa Holzer, Ilya Lipkin, Inka Meißner, Ariane Müller, Kaspar Müller, Henrik Olesen, Philip Pilekjær, Marina Pinsky, Josephine Pryde, Starship Magazine and Seyoung Yoon

Laida Lertxudi book launch and 16mm film screening at Motto Berlin. july 20th, 2019.
from 7pm

fluent & Mousse Publishing are excited to invite you to the launch of Landscape Plus, the first monographic book on the work of Laida Lertxundi at Motto, Berlin.

This editorial project began two years ago, first emerging as a research project around Laida Lertxundi’s 2017 solo exhibition at fluent. Framed within fluent’s former programme Aesthetics of Contamination, this book explores the wider practice of the artist, grounded in but not limited to the work presented in the show. A series of essays by Erika Balsom, Anna Mannubens, Laida Lertxundi & Alejandro Alonso Díaz expand beyond the time-space of the filmic work.

Alongside this, the book features a number of premiered visuals, plus sets of images illustrating her exhibitions, projects, and works. For the first time since Lertxundi began making films, a publication maps her overall practice and allows for enhanced readings that navigate around film-theory, feminism and subjectivity. As a whole, the book intends to present an essential constellation of Lertxundi’s universe.

English / Spanish / Basque
128 pages.
Softcover.
Design: Mousse Studio.
Edited by: Alejandro Alonso Díaz.
Publisher: fluent & Mousse Publishing.

On the occasion of its launch, we invite you to join us at Motto, where we’ll present and discuss the publication and you could enjoy a special launching price!

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Laida Lertxudi

Blending conceptual rigor with sensuous pleasure, the films of Los Angeles-based artist Laida Lertxundi are seductive and self-reflexive explorations of place. Her works are produced through a process she refers to as “landscape plus,” which marries observational photography with music, actions, and chance events. Lertxundi draws parallels between land and the body as sites of pleasure and experience.

http://laidalertxundi.com/

+ Book Presentation. ‘Tales 37‘ Daniel Gustav Cramer. Motto Books, ENSP Arles (all day).

Cosmos art books
1, rue de la Paix
13200 Arles

Bardhi Haliti; May 25 is now October 1 — Book launch

Thursday May 30th
From 7 PM
Motto Berlin

May 25 is now October 1 is an extensive research across Kosovar newspapers published between 1974 and 2018. The book documents sports activities that took place in seven identical sports halls in seven cities of Kosovo. The images have been cropped, zoomed in on, and paired together by similarity. The choreography is not meant to render them jewels or treasures, but rather to help find their meaning beyond their meaning within the now unfashionable sports halls. Through repetition, the images and texts reveal the multifunctional nature of community space in which larger sociopolitical and cultural cycles are reflected.

May 25 is now October 1
Graphic Design by Bardhi Haliti
662 pp; 38 color / 406 bw photographs;
Softcover; 165×233 mm; 500 copies;
Texts by Bardhi Haliti, Owen Hatherley, Hans-Christian Dany;
Published by cpress, Zurich;
Distribution by Idea Books, Amsterdam; 978-3-9524710-5-0

Botanical drift – Book launch/Exhibition – Motto Berlin

Saturday 18th of May from 6pm – 10pm
Exhibition runs until June 1st

Vegetal intelligence and artists working with plants has become a subject of many volumes recently. Botanical Drift has grown over the past 5 years from Kew Gardens Economic Botany collection in London, spreading out beyond. It now materialises as an exhibition at Motto and launch of the recent anthology. The exhibition features work from artists and contributors David Edward Allen, Connie Butler, Melanie Jackson, Hu Yun, and Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll. The artist Emma Waltraud Howes’ choreography is presented in a papercut work and performance. A history of the tree is philosophised by theorist Matteo Pasquinelli and the translation of The Murder of a Buttercup is introduced by author Wietske Maas.

Melanie Jackson’s edition of T-Shirts based on her chapter on the Coco de Mer are available for sale.
The books are half price on this evening only – 16 Euros
The launch is accompanied by food and a bar.
18 Uhr – 22 Uhr

MOTTO BERLIN
Skalitzer Str. 68, im Hinterhof
10997 Berlin
U1 Schlesiches Tor

Botanical Drift: Protagonists of the Invasive Herbarium
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll (Ed.)

Contributions by David Edward Allen & Maria Buzhor, Rebecca Anderson, Bergit Arends & Sunoj D, Connie Butler & Hazel Dowling, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Caroline Cornish & Mark Nesbitt, Alfred Döblin, Natasha Eaton, Germaine Greer, Kim Berit Heppelmann, Emma Waltraud Howes, Melanie Jackson, Alana Jelinek, Philip Kerrigan, Kay Evelina Lewis-Jones, Claire Loussouarn, Wietske Maas, Natasha Myers, Matteo Pasquinelli, Raqs Media Collective, herman de vries.

Botanical Drift explores the hermeneutics, historicization, semiotics, and symbiosis of plant diversification, species cultivation, and destruction—past and present, extant and extinct—around the globe. Plant histories are explored as commodities and colonial as well as decolonial devices by significant and diverse feminist, art-historical, and anthropological voices—from Germaine Greer to herman de vries—bringing new perspectives through photo-essays, fiction, performance, and interventions in ecological, film, and translation archives. Reflecting on experimental ecology—the undiscovered, underestimated, and undesired non-European flora and fauna—it challenges perception and inspires potentialities to bring new understandings of the undergrowth of the Kew Gardens botany collection.

Design by A Practice for Everyday Life
16.7 x 23 cm, 240 pages, color and b/w ill., softcover
ISBN 978-3-95679-353-0

(Image Caption: David Edward Allen, p. betulifolia – winter 2015/16)

BILL 2 — Magazine launch
Friday 19 April from 6pm

Berlin friends, please join us at Motto bookstore for a presentation of BILL 2. BILL is a magazine of photo stories. Prioritizing visual reading without distraction, all the images that appear in the magazine are printed without accompanying text. Published by Roma Publications, the magazine is offset printed by monks in Bavaria and every contributor can occupy 16 pages on a different paper stock.

The second issue of BILL includes contributions by Linda van Deursen, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Jason Dodge, Archiv Hans Hollein, Inge Ketelers, Jochen Lempert, Raimundas Malašauskas, Bart Julius Peters / T L P S, Reto Schmid, Megan Francis Sullivan, Tadanori Yokoo by Tadashi Kurahashi, Ann Woo, Jiajia Zhang and RareBooksParis (advertiser)

Editor and designer Julie Peeters will be there, as well as contributors Jason Dodge (reading), Megan Francis Sullivan and co-editor Elena Narbutaite.

Drinks will be served and magazines available.

http://billinprint.com/
https://www.romapublications.org/

Please join us at Motto bookstore for a Poetry Reading and presentation of collaborative work between Robert Fitterman and Natalie Czech, followed by a conversation with Natalie Czech and an audience Q and A.

Performance 7pm sharp
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Robert Fitterman is the author of 14 books of poetry including Rob’s Word Shop (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019), Dave (Counterpath, forthcoming Fall 2019), This Window Makes Me Feel (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018), Nevermind (Wonder Books, 2016), No Wait, Yep. Definitely Still Hate Myself (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014), now we are friends (Truck Books, 2010), Rob the Plagiarist (Roof Books, 2009), and Metropolis—a long poem in four separate volumes. He has collaborated with several visual artists, including: Theodore Darst, Serkan Ozkaya, Nayland Blake, Natalie Czech, Tim Davis and Klaus Killisch. He is the founding member of the artists and writers collective, Collective Task. He teaches writing and poetry at New York University and at the Bard College, Milton Avery School of Graduate Studies.

Natalie Czech’s work makes links between photography, text, and systems of signification. She has presented solo exhibits at Centre d’Art Contemporain Crac Alsace, Palais de Tokyo, Kunstverein Hamburg, Kunstverein Braunschweig among others. Her works are included in museum collections such as those of the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Museum of Modern Art New York or MAMCO Geneva.