An’archives are pleased to announce the release of a self-titled album by Tori Kudo & 3C123. A reissue of a cassette that was originally released on Uramado in 2020, this is the first time this live session has appeared on vinyl. The performance, featuring Kudo on piano and 3C123 on clarinet, was recorded on October 18, 2009, at the Uramado venue in Shinjuku. A beautiful and quixotic forty-minute set, it reconnects both Kudo and 3C123 with various musical histories, including those of classical composition and free improvisation.

The performance documented on Tori Kudo & 3C123 is a curious one. While they both appear to slip into improvised ruminations at times, for the most part, Kudo performs pieces by Erik Satie on the piano, over which 3C123 teases an excoriating stream of improvisation from the clarinet. His playing here is wild in its poetry: sometimes lushly nestling alongside Satie’s melodies, elsewhere loosing Ayler-esque squalls from the instrument, it’s a bravura performance that is matched, in an indirect manner, by the poise and pacing of Kudo’s generous, fluent recital.

When asked about the thinking behind the performance documented here, Kudo explains by describing the historical juxtaposition of Satie with Takehisa Kosugi’s improvised violin as “an essence of the Japanese art of collective improvisation.” The playing here, as within Japanese collective improvisation, is about sitting ‘alongside’ each other, not necessarily in direct (or even indirect) reference, but rather sharing the space; “just being there together,” Kudo says, and letting go of the need for performers to engage in interplay.

Tori Kudo & 3C123 is certainly part of that tradition, and this is where its curious poetry resides; in that ‘third space’ that sits in between, but not directly connecting, the two performers. Kudo makes an analogy with Fluxus, which is appropriate. But you can also hear their shared history here, somehow, as Kudo and 3C123 have known each other since the eighties, when they shared a house in Kunitachi City, Tokyo. Their musical paths have been multiple – Kudo, of course, best known perhaps for his Maher Shalal Hash Baz ensemble; 3C123 as a member of Vedda Music Workshop, and with other Japanese musicians like Koichiro Watanabe.

It’s a lovely album that’s as mystifying as it is direct and beautiful.

Author: Tori Kudo & 3C123

Publisher: An’archives

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My Great Arab Melancholy is a beautiful, tragic and award-winning book from Lebanese writer and illustrator Lamia Ziadé. Blending the author’s years of research, personal memoir and more than 300 illustrations, this compelling history of the modern Arab world explores the major thinkers, struggles and turning points that have shaped the Middle East as we know it today.

Ziadé begins in South Lebanon, ‘land of martyrs, ruins and passion’, before taking the reader further afield, to Beirut, Jerusalem, Cairo and Baghdad. The book moves from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, tracing the Arab world’s tragedies and the derailing of dreams and possibilities caused in large part by Western imperialism and the conquest of Palestine.

Within these pages there are the blasts of explosions, blood, tears and tragedy, cemeteries, wreaths and ribbons, martyrs and paradise. Ziadé unearths the buried memory of resistance fighters and their lost ideals. In haunting prose and unforgettable images she celebrates the progressive, bold, revolutionary moments and figures of the Arab world’s recent past.

Lamia Ziadé is a Lebanese author, illustrator and visual artist. Born in Beirut in 1968 and raised during the Lebanese Civil War, she moved to Paris at 18 to study graphic arts. She then worked as a designer for Jean-Paul Gaultier, exhibited her art in numerous galleries internationally, and went on to publish several illustrated books, including My Port of Beirut, Ma très grande mélancolie arabe which won the Prix France-Liban, Ô nuit, ô mes yeux and Bye bye Babylone.

Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, two NEA Fellowships, and a Fulbright. Her translations include A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa, Zabor, or the Psalms by Kamel Daoud, Panics by Barbara Molinard, and The Easy Life by Marguerite Duras.

Award-winning illustrated chronicle of the modern Arab world, combining travelogue, memoir, history and gorgeous full-colour art

Author: Lamia Ziadé

Publisher: Pluto Press

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Russian poet, author, artist and art theorist Andrei Monastyrski (born 1949) is, along with Ilya Kabakov, one of the founders of conceptualism in Russia, and a protagonist of Collective Actions, a group of artists who have organized participatory actions on the outskirts of Moscow since 1976. Though his poetry is less well known, poetry is where he began. After writing in the manner of the Russian modernists (who were newly available to Soviet readers during Khrushchev’s thaw), Monastyrski’s interest in John Cage and ideas about consciousness from Western and Eastern philosophical traditions led him to conduct experiments with sound, form and the creation of artistic situations involving constructed objects that required viewer engagement to complete. Elementary Poetry collects poems, books and action objects from the ’70s and ’80s, tracing a genealogy of the art action in poetry.

Author: Brian Droitcour, Yelena Kalinsky (Eds.)

Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse; Soberscove Press

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The latest volume of writing by influential New York–based critic and curator Bob Nickas collects his 2012–14 column for Vice magazine’s Komp-laint Dept. This column unleashed the full omnivorous range of the author’s interests. There are essays on musicians such as Neil Young, Sun Ra, Royal Trux and Lydia Lunch, which look at their biographies and the history of Nickas’ personal relationship with their music; there are lengthy and often very funny “complaints” about, among other things, two different presidents, Jeff Koons, New York architecture, the meeting of fashion and punk, religion in general, nostalgia and the problem with contemporary graffiti. Additionally, there are meditations on filmmakers such as David Cronenberg and Nicolas Refin. The book is rounded out by perhaps the definitive (two-part) examination of how and why Richard Prince uses appropriation.

Author: Bob Nickas

Publisher: Karma

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This is the 20th issue of Starship and we are proud and very happy to present it, and mainly want to thank all the artists, the contributors, the columnists, and the people who helped us gather images of exhibitions past, and gave us texts from books not yet published. Starship never starts with a clear concept about its future content, or what could be called a theme, but always with a sort of attentive interest. The theme may develop through its columnists—we now think it is easy to distinguish lines of thoughts, images, and texts answering each other. But it surely does so out of this editorial interest that wanders, and finds, and collects, is enthusiastic about artworks, and texts, and people, and then, well, brings this all together in a magazine. This was our working mode during the past year, and the responsiveness of those who regularly write for Starship (the columnists) has shown us that out there others are involved in thoughts that run very much in parallel. It is a strange form, a magazine like this, not getting funded, appearing irregularly, but still following a sort of conventional form that shows its consistency. It is at its core an excess of producing something that might prove itself valuable and liberating in the future.

—Ariane Müller, Henrik Olesen

Contributors to Starship № 20:

Rosa Aiello, Terry Atkinson, Tenzing Barshee, Gerry Bibby, Mercedes Bunz, David Bussel, Jay Chung, Eric D. Clark, Caleb Considine, Hans-Christian Dany, Albert Dichy, Nikola Dietrich, Martin Ebner, Ruth Angel Edwards, Stephanie Fezer, Jean Genet, Simone Gilges, Julian Göthe, Michèle Graf, Selina Grüter, Ulrich Heinke, Toni Hildebrandt, Beatrice Hilke, Karl Holmqvist, Stephan Janitzky, G. Peter Jemison, Charlotte Johannesson, Julia Jost, Julia Jung, Jakob Kolding, Nina Könnemann, Lars Bang Larsen, Anita Leisz, Norman Lewis, Elisa R. Linn, Sebastian Lütgert, Vera Lutz, Chloée Maugile, Robert McKenzie, Ariane Müller, Christopher Müller, Robert M. Ochshorn, Henrik Olesen, Kari Rittenbach, Nina Rhode, Ulla Rossek, Cameron Rowland, Mark von Schlegell, Ryan Siegan Smith, Philipp Simon, Valerie Stahl Stromberg, Josef Strau, Vera Tollmann, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Camilla Wills, Amelie von Wulffen, Florian Zeyfang

Thanks to: Hollybush Gardens, L’Institut du monde arabe, L’Institut mémoires de l’édition contemporaine, Paris, and Albert Dichy, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, Friederike Gratz, and Galerie Buchholz, Kunsthalle Friart and Nicolas Brulhart, Richard Sides and The Wig, Galerie Emanuel Layr, Canal 47, Kevin Space, Hannes Schmidt and Galerie Schiefe Zähne, Timo Schröder and Edition Nautilus, Cameron Rowland. Thank you to everyone from freier magazine, especially Nina Rhode for organizing and clarifying with all the artists and contributors, as well as KM Galerie, and Martin Eberle for their kind support.

Spring 2024

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In 2004, 2/5BZ’s second vinyl EP which featured 3 tracks from his second appearance at Peel Session in 2004 (proposed early 2004, broadcasted in late 2004) together with 3 unreleased tracks has been released under his own label Gözel Records in 2006 and has beed re-pressed many times .
2/5BZ, aka Serhat Köksal, has worked as a multimedia artist with various releases in video, music, and literary formats since 1991 in Istanbul and performed live audiovisual performances under motto “NO Touristik NO Exotik” in 20 countries and 96 cities in clubs, festivals, squats, exhibitions and multimedia perforformances at well-known festivals such as Club Transmediale in Berlin, Sonic Acts in Amsterdam, Donau Festival .
2/5BZ had an interview with John Peel in 1994 for BBC world Service . ” Of all the music I heard in Turkey, I liked 2/5BZ best “, commented John Peel and aired his works two times at Peel Session in BBC Radio 1 with following announcement “ that track is from one of my favourites sessions of the recent past from 2/5BZ from Istanbul.No Touristik No Exotic it is called..” John Peel (2004)

A1 Militant Oriental (Peel Session II)
A2 Karabesk (Peel Session II)
A3 Öküz İstanbul (Peel Session II)
B1 Petrol Stress (Remake)
B2 Bbam (Electro Saz Baǧlama)
B3 Şaka Etmiyorum (Nurkish Dub)

Bass Guitar – Yahya Enis Akin (tracks: A1, B1)
Clarinet – Tim Hodgkinson (tracks: B1)
Other [Dub] – Abdurrahman Palay (tracks: A3, B3)
Producer, Tape, Electronics, Voice, Other [Electro Saz], Sampler – Serhat Köksal
Voice – Armarǧan Temizel (tracks: B1)
Voice, Other [Mauv] – Benek (5) (tracks: B2)

Author: 2/5 BZ

Publisher: Gözel Records

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The sound of each individual’s voice is thought to be entirely unique. Like a fingerprint, its composition is distinct, nuanced, and one-of-a-kind. While all this is true, it’s a concept that has been challenged in recent times by the refinement of AI-powered systems which are able to emulate voices to a tee. And not only voices, for that matter, but whole styles and aesthetics: an AI-generated facsimile of Drake and The Weeknd’s voices titled “Heart on My Sleeve” made the rounds this year and was even submitted for Grammy consideration. It’s a legitimate song, and a proposal that does not only keep legal departments busy, but also allows for myriad reflections on originality and, bluntly, the future of music. But as the future of music is a broad and daunting topic to speculate on, we want to hone in on what’s been prefaced above: issue #28 of zweikommasieben centers the voice as means of expression, and wants to expand on what is meant by that: it’s not only what is heard, but also why a voice is used and by whom. This latest edition considers what it means to voice, and its physical, societal and political dimensions.

Truthfully, voices as a topic might be even more daunting to tackle. Its political implications are manifold and have to be considered in seriousness. Voice can’t be separated from reflections on the ingrained power of attitudes, beliefs, and norms that dominate. Exhibit A for these complex entanglements is a conversation Dounia Biedermann had with South Korean artist bela. The musician explains how they use all kinds of different voices other than their recognizable speaking voice to articulate and access deeply felt emotions towards their home country and identity. “Whispering, growling, screeching, and inhaling” help them in disrupting cultural boundaries of power that historically constrain and silence marginalized identities. With this approach, bela finds an ally in Krista Papista: in conversation with Jazmina Figueroa she informs that her latest album was an explicit tribute to the lives of victims of femicide in Cyprus, and the marginalized voices that are not heard within the Cypriot national ideology. By subverting traditional music genres and poetics, both Krista Papista and bela push forward the need to queer history and to reveal longstanding, harmful, national myths.

In a queer history, we are no longer pointed towards dominant and singular voices, but instead expand to a context that is polyvocal—a term we encounter in artist Claudia Pagès’ contribution to this issue: through the tools of light, drums, and text, a different temporality and reading of history is proposed. Tuning out of the prevailing source of authoritarian speech, and tuning in to the voices of many, also leads us to consider the articulation of the collective. In his interview with Helena Julian, artist Tianzhuo Chen points to the shared voice of humankind as a whole, and its yearning for a state of flow and togetherness.

For the latest iteration of the visual column “Formations”, Imane Djamil provides a portfolio of photographs taken in the Moroccan seaside town Tarfaya. In the series, we are confronted with the boundaries that can be imposed on one’s legitimacy to express. We witness glimpses of everyday life, in close proximity to the severely precarious migratory sea passage towards Europe. Hearing the voice of the local community, we equally become aware of whose voice is missing.

Naturally, the voice is also an instrument that is shaped by its limitations. Although, still today, it seems to have preeminence above all other forms of human expression. The full width of the use of voice and sounds produced by individuals is further explored in an essay by Dagmar Bosma. The artist and writer muses on the act and appearances of different forms of stimming, which is a verb that originates from the neurodivergent community. Bosma highlights the sonic dimension of stimming with its vocalizations and repetitions of sounds and rhythms, as a way to equally express and soothe.

A recurring interest of zweikommasieben is, to speak with Claudia Pagès, to be polyvocal. Previous issues tried to achieve this by highlighting all the different people involved in bringing a magazine to life (in issue #22) or allowing authors, translators, photographers, and designers to make additional editorial notes (in issue #23). This time around, the graphic designers Kaj Lehmann and Raphael Schoen are using typographic matter to create a similar effect: different cuts of the same font (which was designed by Lehmann and previously used in issue #17) are applied to choral effect.

One could argue that for a voice to exist, it needs to be heard. In this 28th edition, we wish to offer exactly that. In the next pages, you will perceive a multitude of voices—from roars to whispers—, sometimes out of tune or out of time, with the intention to be recognised by those who dare to listen.

Author: Helena Julian, Mathis Neuhaus (Eds.)

Publisher: Präsens Editionen; Motto Books

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”Wenn man mit der Main-Weserbahn
von Frankfurt nach Kassel fährt und sich dem Bahnhof Treysa nähert, so eröffnet sich rechts ein weites, fruchtbares Tal: der Schwälmer Grund, so genannt nach dem Flüßchen der Schwalm.“

Author: Janosch Feiertag (Ed.)

Publisher: Schwalm

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This edition comes packed in a plastic cover with the “L.A. Lawless” game, 2 silkscreen printed posters, “Table de presse n°5” and “HORS SERIE n°1”

La version papier de TDP N°7 – AVRIL 2020 – CHANGEMENT DE DÉCOR est parue ! Elle est disponible en 50 exemplaires dans une pochette plastique avec le jeu «L.A Lawless», deux affiches sérigraphiées et notre premier hors série : Table de presse n°5 — fevrier 2020 HORS SERIE n°1.

La ville, pour nous, a toujours été le décor de batailles politiques et poétiques entre le sérieux technocratique du béton et du verre et le charme désuet d’un coin de rue devenu archipel d’émancipation. Interroger la ville alors que nous sommes contraints de la déserter, lutter en proposant d’autres manières de la parcourir, et le jour de nos retrouvailles, reprendre la rue.

Pour notre septième table de presse, nous nous sommes interrogés sur notre façon d’habiter la ville. Face aux mesures exceptionnelles prises en réponse au coronavirus, notamment le confinement en France, nous avons été contraints à l’unité nationale. Est-ce que le confinement total était la seule réponse possible à la COVID-19 ? Cette crise offre la possibilité de questionner nos actions, artistiques ou autres.

Tabledepresse.com a été créé il y a 11 mois pour remettre en question nos “manières de faire et de montrer de l’art”. L’autonomie que nous avons cherché à instaurer est devenue essentielle aujourd’hui. Il est urgent d’introduire l’économie du don et la culture de l’open source dans la production artistique pour éviter la monopolisation par les grandes entreprises du numérique.

La ville, pour nous, a toujours été le décor de batailles politiques et poétiques entre le sérieux technocratique et le charme désuet d’un coin de rue devenu archipel d’émancipation.

–

Le 20 Mars 2020,

un bidonville de plusieurs familles d’une communauté de voyageurs a été expulsé de la rue de l’Acacia à Montreuil. La quasi totalité des maisons contruites ont été détruites. Le lieu qui s’apparente à une décharge depuis la destruction de leurs habitations est surveillé 7sur7 24sur24 par plusieurs agents de sécurité.

Je me suis rendu à plusieurs reprises dans ces lieux où j’ai photographié les cabanes encore en place, les tags inscrits sur les murs et les quelques traces restantes de celles et ceux qui ont vécu là plusieurs années.

–

fanzine imprimé au Sbis quai saint-vincent, à Lyon le 20 février 2020

Table De Presse et Studio Arpentage

C’est à la lueur d’un feu fait de résidus trouvés en route que nous nous réunissons. Une poussière grisâtre tombe du ciel et enveloppe le décor d’un épais manteau sec. Le banquet est court, le temps nous est compté.

Joyeux et incertains, nous traînons nos corps le long de la rive. Autour de nous, tout a changé de visage. Chacun porte à sa main un flambeau et je vois dans la lueur des flammes la complexité de leurs traits. Nous marchons côte à côte et à mesure que nos corps se frôlent, on a l’impression de déjà un peu mieux se connaître. De grimage en grimace je perçois la folie furieuse qui anime quelques un.e.s. On s’amuse de la situation; ça aurait pu être pire. L’odeur de la cendre n’est pas si âpre, la chaleur du sol pas tant brûlante.

L’une glisse le long de la colline derrière nous, elle s’est confectionnée une luge en laquelle elle a confiance et j’en- tends ses éclats de rire qui raisonnent dans cet espace im- mense. Nous avançons à pas de loup dans le brouillard épais, le temps est lourd mais les retrouvailles joyeuses.

Author: Table de Presse

Publisher: Table de Presse

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