My Kingdom for a Title is a collection of writing by Chicago–based artist Pope.L documenting his use of language as a mode of visual, narrative, and performative story telling.

The act of writing has been integral to how Pope.L works and is arguably the most consistent element in his practice. These works take various forms: scripts, short stories, scribbled notes, large scale installation, and painting—many never before released. Assembled here for the first time, My Kingdom for a Title allows the breadth of the artist’s engagement with language to be fully assessed. Within the book, Pope.L’s work is supplemented with extensive endnotes sourced by artist Kandis Williams.

Pope.L is a visual artist and edu­cator whose multidisciplinary practice uses binaries, contraries, and preconceived notions embedded within contemporary culture to create artworks in various formats including writing, painting, performance, installation, video, and sculpture. Building upon his long history of enacting arduous, provocative, absurdist performances and interventions in public spaces, Pope.L applies some of the same social, formal, and performative strategies to his interests in language, system, gender, race, and community. The goals for his work are several: joy, money, and uncertainty—not necessarily in that order.

Edited by Courtney Willis Blair
Endnotes by Kandis Williams
Co-published by Mitchell-Innes & Nash

First Edition (2021)

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Curator Christine Eyene challenges the Eurocentric and patriarchal frameworks that have informed the history of sound art and, to some extent, continue to define current practice.

Sounds Like Her is a challenge to the restrictive social construct of female voices. The book re-frames how we experience the dynamic of sound as practiced by women from diverse cultures and gender identities.

The themes, debate, and curatorial perspective are explored through three new essays by Christine Eyene (curator and author), Cathy Lane (sound artist, composer and professor of Sound Art at the University of the Arts London) and artist and author Salomé Voegelin (author of The Political Possibility of Sound, Bloomsbury).

The definition of Sound Art has always been narrow, from the perspective of gender, and international cultures. The book widens and rebalances the understanding of the art form and embraces the rich vein of work that needs to be a part of a new history of this creative practice.

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170 drawings of the same beautiful cock

What’s wrong with a cock? Nothing at all.
Even less if it is the most beautiful cock in the world,
because a cock doesn’t mean anything but itself:
source of life, source of pleasure.

The life drawings in this book,
made with delight and admiration,
claim to pay tribute to
the most beautiful cock in the world.

December 2020
Edition of 300

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After studying photography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, Peter Woelck worked as a professional photographer in the GDR for various companies and magazines. Moreover, he independently created a vast amount of artistic works, especially in the field of portrait and architectural photography. Photographs of the construction of the Berlin Television Tower, cityscapes of Leipzig, and intense portraits from the 60s through the 80s document how life used to be in a country that no longer exists. On the other hand, there are photographs from the post-reunification period, during which Woelck repeatedly tried to establish himself as a freelance advertising photographer. Thus, the pictures also tell of a break in the photographer’s biography, the kind of experience that affected many people of his generation.
The book documents the attempt to bring the eclectic diversity of the archive into a sequence of images that does not strive for a photo-historical classification but rather allows a specific and subjective narration to emerge from today’s perspective.

The book includes texts by Wilhelm Klotzek, Woelck’s son, who not only co-manages the estate in collaboration with the Laura Mars Gallery but also artistically deals with the legacy, by writer and publicist Peter Richter, and by curator Bettina Klein.

“Dancing in Connewitz” was published in 2014 on the occasion of a second exhibition of Peter Woelck’s photographs, “PeWo’s Bericht zur Lage der Jugend” (Laura Mars Gallery, Berlin), and was supported by the Stiftung Kunstfonds with funds from VG Bild-Kunst.

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Motto Books will participate at the 3rd edition of BOOKED: 2021 Art Book Fair @ Tai Kwun Contemporary. Hong Kong. From 25 to 28 February 2021.

Alga Marghen in collaboration with Expanded Media Editions is proud to present the final issue of “Soft Need”, a publication centered on the work of William Burroughs and expanding its deep influences into contemporary consciousness.

Founded in 1973 as a reaction to the aftermath of a three weeks’ stay across Xmas and New Year’s with Gysin and Burroughs by their confidant Udo Breger, “Soft Need“ had its roots in the underground press of the previous two decades and at the same time became a prototype for the forthcoming fanzine scene. Even if only 3 numbers were issued in the 70s (SN#8 in 1973 followed by SN#9 in 1976 and SN#17 “The Brion Gysin Special“ in 1977, all in print-runs of 300 to 500 copies) it quickly became a legendary publication for both Burroughs fans and those interested in counterculture experimental poetry artists’ editions. Almost half a century later, the last edition “Soft Need 23“ is now issued including exclusive material by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin as well as multi-media contributions by eighty international authors and artists.

Issued in an edition limited to 431 copies “Soft Need 23” is a 260-page art book reflecting on the contemporary relevance of historical works by Burroughs and Gysin within the frame of the Beat Generation. Dedicated to Ian Sommerville, the English electronic technician and computer programmer who was collaborating with Brion Gysin to the development of the early Dreammachine and programmed the computer-generated random sequences that Gysin used in his early cut-ups, the book present 190 illustrations, literary essays, photographs, poetry, visual art, caricature, memories and a vast array of ephemera by William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg, Louise Landes Levi, Gregory Corso, Jean-Jacques Lebel, John Armleder, Paul-Armand Gette, Peter Weibel (director of ZKM Karlsruhe and curator with Udo Breger of “The Name Is Burroughs” show in 2012), Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Sonic Boom, Papiro, James Grauerholz, Robert Wilson and many, many others.

A large format (32x24cm) book printed in 4/4-color and featuring a thread-sewn visible binding, “Soft Need 23” is a multi-media journey into William Burroughs and Brion Gysin underground world connecting them to the Beat Generation counterculture and revealing their influences on following generations. So step right in, and beyond!

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Which images are made manifest across an artist’s practice and which are the ones that disappear? How do objects—whether seen or unseen—and the knowledge they possess traverse across place and time to avow their resistance? These are amongst the questions asked by artist Nour Bishouty in her artist’s book 1—130, a project that draws upon her ongoing research into the works of her father, Ghassan Bishouty (b. 1941 Palestine – d. 2004, Jordan). In 1—130, she borrows from methods of indexing and object classification to act as figurative codes for identification and cross-reference within the contexts of value and legacy. All the while employing paratactic strategies of text and image to understand the life and work of an artist faced with the discontinuity of deracination.

1—130 constitutes reflexive encounters with a series of 130 selected paintings and sculptures made circa 1965-2004 in Lebanon and Jordan, and concludes with an afterword by editor and curator Jacob Korczynski.

1—130 is designed by Laura Pappa & Lotte Lara Schröder and co-published by Art Metropole & Motto Books.

Nour Bishouty is a visual artist working in a range of media including digital images, works on paper, sculpture, video, and writing. Her multidisciplinary practice draws upon autobiographical and material narratives to explore how dominant notions of value are articulated and exchanged, often focusing on the construction of popular identity in relation to histories of place. Nour was a fellow at the 2014/15 Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut. Her work has been exhibited in venues such as Darat Al Funun, Amman; Access Gallery, Vancouver; the Beirut Art Centre, the Helen Day Art Centre, Vermont; Casa Arabe, Madrid and Cordoba; and the Mosaic Rooms, London.

Jacob Korczynski is an independent curator and the recent recipient of a curatorial research fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He has curated projects for the Stedelijk Museum, Cooper Cole, Western Front, and the Badischer Kunstverein and his writing has been published by art-agenda, Camera Austria, Flash Art, and BOMB. With curatorial projects taking the form of exhibitions, screenings, and publications he is also the editor of I See/La Camera: I (If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution), Andrew James Paterson’s Collection/Correction (Kunstverein Toronto & Mousse Publishing), Jimmy Robert’s Revue (Leopold Hoesch Museum), and Nour Bishouty’s 1-130 (Art Metropole & Motto Books).

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