Doyenne 002: Singing To Spirits is an anthology curated by artist and writer Flora Yin Wong looking to historical, indigenous rituals worldwide. Bringing together female-identifying musicians, artists and writers on the platform to explore lesser known forms of their artistic practice – the contributions for the first book are from friends & collaborators across the world including: 

Christina Vantzou (Kranky), Lisa Lerkenfeldt (Shelter Press), Lucy Liyou, YL Hooi, Lucinda Chua, Dali De Saint Paul (EP/64), Sarah Shin (Ignota Books), Cucina Povera (Editions Mego), Martyna Basta, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki, Ruth Saxelby (ex-Fader), Susu Laroche, Mira Mattar (Granta / Ma Bibliotheque), Heather McCalden (Fitzcarraldo Editions), Hibiki Mizuno, Hana Noorali, Rose Higham-Stainton, Sonia de Jager, Tara Fatehi, and Marianthi Hatzikidi. 

Thematically rooted around the tradition of ‘Singing to Spirits’, the notions of music being used as an ancient medium to commune with the afterlife are linked with songlines in Aboriginal animist belief as a connection to the land – featuring texts including intimate personal essays, identity exploration, photographic work and lyrics. The project will be further explored through various events of performances and excursions. 

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Dear friends,

We’re pleased to welcome you to an enchanting evening filled with poetry and music at our courtyard, this coming Friday, June 16th, from 18:30 onwards.

We’ll begin the evening with the remarkable Robert Stastny, a Berlin-inspired artist, who’ll read out pieces from his acclaimed Portraits. He’ll also give us an exclusive glimpse into his latest works. Following Robert’s spellbinding readings, we’ll transition into a vibrant musical performance by Yellow Hotel.

Poetry is an adventure, in itself. A voyage to somewhere, where the world of men and women – and anything you want to be – has less of an influence.

Music connects onto poetry naturally, Yellow Hotel is Roy Estel Hughes, recently transplanted from Austin to Berlin, and Robert.

Together we will travel – from poetry, to music, to somewhere else.

So, come join us at Motto for a relaxed evening filled with amusing poetry, music, books, and refreshing drinks. We can’t wait to see you there!

Mizna: The Black SWANA Issue, guest-edited by Safia Elhillo and produced by an all-Black takeover team, explores the infinitely varied and kaleidoscopic nature of the Black SWANA experience.

Mizna: The Black SWANA Issue features contributions by Fahad Al-Amoudi, Salma Ali, Shams Alkamil, Ladin Awad, Lameese Badr, Romaissaa Benzizoune, Dina El Dessouky, Atheel Elmalik, k. eltinaé, Samah Fadil, Shawn Frazier, Myronn Hardy, Fatma Hassan, Asmaa Jama, Marlin M. Jenkins, Abigail Mengesha, Suzannah Mirghani, Nihal Mubarak, Umniya Najaer, Sihle Ntuli, Abu Bakr Sadiq, Sagirah Shaheed, Charif Shanahan, Najma Sharif, Faatimah Solomon, Vanessa Taylor, Qutouf Yahia, Thawrah Yousif. Interview with Charif Shanahan. Visual art by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag.

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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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This edition of ZIGG is interested in exploring sex as an evolutionary psychology. It brings together contributions from a network of friends, peers, colleagues who have engaged or encountered the makers of ZIGG through intellectual, psychosexual vibrations. It includes text messages, illustrations, drawings, poetry, code, conversation, rants, and essays. 

Contributors: Hala Bint, Alex Cecchetti, Common Accounts, Kelly Fliedner, Chitra Ganesh, Drew Gordon, Margaret Haines, Raja’a Khalid and Ahmad Makia, Amanda Lee Koe, and Deepak Unnikrishnan.

ZIGG is a publishing association engaged in critical thinking from Dubai. It circulates amorphous aesthetics, printed matters, and promotes the disciplinary blurring between sex, media, earth matter, magic, and politics.

Edition of 300

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Almanac is a fully trans-led press based in Helsinki, Finland. The first issue of this journal of trans poetics responds to the theme of light/heat, in time for the Summer Solstice. The work includes long form essays, prose and poetry dealing with love, sex, illness, hormones, and other sticky things.

Featuring the work of 15 trans writers: Adam Azzaro, Daphne DiFazio, Mino Buonincontri, Clay A.D, Jenevieve Ting, Saoirse Wall, El Reid-Buckley, Nadine Rodriquez, Iona Roisin, Teddy Binot, Maya Simkin, Fiadh Hoskin, Simon Hauwaerts, D Mortimer and River Ellen MacAskill.

Designed by Roby Redgrave McPherson

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Spells are poems; poetry is spelling.

Spell-poems take us into a realm where words can influence the universe.

Spells brings together thirty-six contemporary voices exploring the territory where justice, selfhood and the imagination meet the transformative power of the occult. These poems unmake the world around them, so that it might be remade anew.

Contributors: Kaveh Akbar, Rachael Allen, Nuar Alsadir, Khairani Barokka, Emily Berry, A.K. Blakemore, Jen Calleja, Vahni Capildeo, Kayo Chingonyi, Elinor Cleghorn, CAConrad, Nia Davies, Kate Duckney, Livia Franchini, Will Harris, Caspar Heinemann, Lucy Ives, Rebecca May Johnson, Bhanu Kapil, Amy Key, Daisy Lafarge, Dorothea Lasky, Ursula K. Le Guin, Francesca Lisette, Canisia Lubrin, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Lucy Mercer, Hoa Nguyen, Rebecca Perry, Nat Raha, Nisha Ramayya, Ariana Reines, Sophie Robinson, Erica Scourti, Dolly Turing, Jane Yeh.

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MISTAKE or Miracle? is a collaborative project between artist Jana Nowack and writer Dayna Grosz. The images and lyrics explore something of the beyond – beyond the concrete, beyond the material, beyond thought and beyond this planet. While the spark of this work was ignited off the blank canvas of a snow-filled Scandinavian landscape, it very slowly and very quietly matured into, well, what can we say? something very mysterious within the void of an infinite nothingness. To be honest, we stopped trying to make sense of it all as soon as we realized we were migrating through the fragility of this very uncertain century. The rest, as always, is up for interpretation.

Dayna Grosz is a writer whose work has been published and shortlisted in the Büro BDP Writing Prize 2020. Her writing also appears in The Angel City Review and Another Chicago Magazine, with additional work forthcoming in A) GLIMPSE) OF). She lives in Berlin, Germany, where she hosts the experimental poetry show CRYPTOMNESIA on Cashmere Radio.

Jana Nowack is a Berlin based artist who studied photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig and communication design and photography at the University of Arts in Bremen, Germany. Her work encompasses photography and video installations and was part of exhibitions at KN-Space for Art in Context in Berlin, the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, at Halle 14, Spinnerei in Leipzig, Spring Break Art Show in Los Angeles/US and C.G.Boerner in New York/US.

Photographs: Jana Nowack
Poems: Dayna Grosz

Edition: 150

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In his third book this year, Matt Brand explores themes of ephemerality and reflection, turning a book of poems into an exhibition space of impressionistic tableaus. As in the author’s prior collections, time and our relationship to it still take center stage here. However, in these poems, Brand paints with a palette of emotions untypical for his prior work—joy, epiphany, celebration, contentment. This book-sized art exhibition makes pitstops in a James Benning film, Walter Benjamin’s critical theory, a wine fair in France, a first date in Berlin, a Jane’s Addiction music video, a long-distance COVID film club, and a Bernie Sanders meme. The outcome is a text that highlights the richness of our finite passing moments and the gratitude that can be found therein.

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Entitled “Mixtape”, this catalogue brings together works by Dominique Hurth from 2008 to 2020. It comprises one text booklet with contributions by Daniela Cascella, Sonja Lau and the artist herself; one image booklet with 136 images from installation shots of Hurth’s work and one audio-tape (45-min each side) with recordings, music and sound material inherent to the research behind the works. The chosen format reflects on her interest in object-biography, technology and its history.

“We listened to historical recordings and futurist sounds, to tracks taking in everything from minimal wave and Detroit techno to hip-hop and chansons. We listened to the voices of the first speaking dolls that sounded like little monsters, to the voices of Sarah Bernhardt and Serge Gainsbourg as he burned a 500 Franc note on French TV. To Clarice Lispector as she lit a cigarette while being asked why she continued to write. We listened to music created in laboratories, music that was sent into outer space. We listened to lyrics and then languages and voices w couldn’t understand. Machine-generated sounds. Sounds created on celluloid. James Joyce reciting four pages of Finnegans Wake to Charles Ogden in the late 1920s. We listened to advertisements for vocoders and to music with vocoders as the primary transmitter of voice and the main musical instrument. We listened to France Gall singing — or rather, screaming — into the microphone at the Eurovisio Song Contest at the age of nineteen about being a doll made of wax and a doll made of sound. To a litany of okays sung by The Destroyer in a song by the Residents. To the breathing of Pauline Oliveros’s accordion. To the Holy Ghost in the Machine. To Minnie Riperton’s voice in the background, to atonal music, and to computer-generated hand claps. Electronic communication with the dead.
Jazz.
A countdown to zero. We listened to beats.

The several hours of sound that we listened to eventually became two side of forty-five minutes each — Side A and Side B. Condensed and edited in this way, this mixtape actually conceals and contains several other mixtapes, recalling all the other tracks that burst out of the edges of the magnetic band.” (”Mixtape(s)”, D. Hurth, 2020)

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