Beginning with a meditation on the affirmative potential of no alongside the dissident capacity of yes-saying as a species of refusal. The Yes of the No advocates different models of daily practice through which to perform everyday life – the as is – in the subjunctive key of what if or even what might be.
Existing in the space between imaginative proposition and a call to action, The Yes of the No is an assemblage of provocations, proposals and potential ways of operating – ranging from navigating the city and inhabiting the margins to errant acts of reading; from preparing for the unexpected to learning how to ‘not know’, from minor acts of singular sedition to collective expressions of an insurgent ‘we’.
One of the most unique books by one of the most compelling artist-writers today, The Yes of the No is the first collection of writings by Emma Cocker. The book draws together selected fragments of writing produced in dialogue with, parallel to and as art practice (from between 2007–2016). The book is organised into 111 pieces of highly playful and poetic prose. Emma Cockers work wittily explores many themes; actions like ‘doing and undoing’, concepts like the fabric of time and interpreting the real meaning of words, common and uncommon.
„I once heard a song and the lyrics to me sounded like: « use your other eyelid ». (…) D enters the waiting room. Name some of your angels here : Write them down or say them out loud or think them to yourself. If it’s not ok, then it’s not the end, thoughts getting cut cut and cut”
Log 54: Coauthoring gathers essays by and conversations with architects, curators, historians, and collectives that, as guest editors Ana Miljački and Ann Lui write, begin to “imagine the field of architecture orienting around coauthoring instead of authoring” and “challenge the model of architectural authorship that dominates both architectural discourse and the market.” In so doing, the contributors to this 176-page thematic issue “enter the space of political and identity negotiations to relinquish absolutes and to open up to multiple forms of agency.” These forms of agency manifest in numerous ways, from the Fluxus Manifesto to the words of an Enlightenment painter, from bats to spider webs, from cartography to geological deep time, from AI-generated toys to PowerPoint and Miro boards.
Miljački and Lui talk with Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers from Dream the Combine; J. Yolande Daniels and Amanda Williams from the Black Reconstruction Collective; architect and curator Andrés Jaque, and 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial curator David Brown about their collaborative practices. Sumayya Vally and Moad Musbahi transcribe site-specific music, while Curtis Roth uses gig workers’ gestures to create paintings. The Architecture Lobby and Dark Matter University discuss the implications of coauthorship through their cowritten dialogues; Timothy Hyde and Lisa Haber-Thomson study Welsh building codes; Sarah Hirschman looks at US copyright law; and De Peter Yi and Laura Marie Peterson document how residents use the Detroit Land Bank. Historians Anna Bokov, S.E. Eisterer, and Michael Kubo recount coauthorship in Soviet education, resistance in gestapo prisons, and today’s anonymous architectural megacorporation.
Galería La Monja es un proyecto cooperativo de acondicionamiento, implementación y desarrollo de un espacio móvil para la experimentación, investigación y difusión de arte contemporáneo, desde la Región de Los Lagos, Sur de Chile.
Ediciones La Monja es una extensión del colectivo de artes visuales, cuyo fin es la exploración de soportes editoriales como contenedores de sentido, capaces de facilitar la circulación de investigaciones, procesos y obras. Entendemos la edición material como una estructura de autonomía, que expande las posibilidades espacio-temporales y sus limitaciones, constituyéndose en un campo de autodeterminación.
Please join us to welcome artist duo and cultural association, HAWAPI, for a presentation of their publications and discussion with curator Harm Lux.
Thursday 23rd June, 2022 from 7 to 9pm
Motto Berlin Skalitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof) 10997 Berlin
7:00 until 7:45pm > HAWAPI introduce their work (intro by Harm Lux), followed by Audience Talk
7:50pm > Presentation of HAWAPI’s Publications
8:20pm > Open Discussion
*HAWAPI’S WORK PROCESS*
After some preliminary regional research, knowledge exchange and a get together, a concept grows and HAWAPI (Susie Quillinan & Maxim Holland) invite colleagues to participate in order to carry out artistic research and actions on site.
Two examples: In northern Peru, in the mountainous region of Sorochuco, lies the property of the weaver Maxima Acuna (family). The latter is now increasingly surrounded by Conga mining, a mining company that is not afraid to appropriate and privatise public water sources. Thirteen artists worked on site several times, and results were presented to the public.
In the “Pondores” project, 12 artists stayed – for longer periods of time – in the Colombian FARC transitional settlements to develop Empathy-building, playing and acting together with these young ex-combatants.
We will also be presenting new publications from La Monja, books from Arequipa based artist- designer-theoretician, Sebastián Baudrand.
Contributors: Alexia Achilleos, Zach Blas, Frances A. Chiu, Ami Clarke, Régine Debatty, Mary Flanagan, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Srecko Horvat, Salvatore Iaconesi, Olga Kopenkina, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Shu Lea Cheang, Gretta Louw, Joana Moll, Laura Netz, Eryk Salvaggio, Devon Schiller, Guido Segni, Gregory Sholette, Karolina Sobecka, Alan Sondheim, Michael Szpakowski, Eugenio Tisselli, Ruben Verwaal, Paul Vanouse.
Frankenstein Reanimated is a book for our strange times. Bang up to date it includes essays and artworks that engage with the Covid-19 pandemic, through to weird new imaginings of humanmachine hybrids. A striking cover with flaps displays a tryptich by artist Carla Gannis, a bespoke narrow format, and over 100 illustrations inside make this an attractive book for a wide range of audiences.
Mary Shelley’s classic gothic horror and science fiction novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has inspired millions since it was published in 1818. Today, we are witness to many different horrors and phantoms of our own creation. Chronic wealth and health inequalities, climate change, democratic collapse, and the spectre of nuclear apocalypse are among the diffuse, monstrous products of our “advanced” technological moment. Frankenstein Reanimated presents a dynamic collection of artworks, essays, and conversations, addressing surveillance, biohacking, viruses, colonialism, digital culture, and more. It retraces and contextualises three international art exhibitions exploring themes within Frankenstein, and speculates on what Mary Shelley would think about the world today. Collectively, the book offers a lens through which to look at our current situation, and how art practices shape, and are shaped by, contemporary society.
“This collection shines a light on artists as critically engaged citizens providing a kaleidoscopic view on our unevenly distributed future. These are the Frankensteins we need!” — Felix Stalder, Zurich, University of the Arts
“Frankenstein Reanimated is an important record of some incredible artists working today, who both dismantle and rebuild our contemporary technological systems, profoundly reimagining everything from facial recognition to AI, 3D printing to virtual gaming environments.” — Sarah Cook, University of Glasgow
Bibi Salme by HOUSE is an expanded facsimile of the first English version of ‘Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar’, published by D. Appleton, New York in 1888. Released with no author and circulating mostly as ‘harem literature’, the Memoirs are in reality an autobiography penned by Emily Reute | Sayyide Salme bint Said, who was born Princess Sayyide Salme bint Said, one of the thirty six children of Sayyid bin Sultan (1791-1856), ruler of Muscat and Oman and of Zanzibar. Her recollections offer a complex historic narrative on family, the ‘nature of women in the East’, Islam, East-West dichotomies, governance, and the slave-labor relationships maintained by settler Omanis in Zanzibar and the east coast of Africa during the 19th century.
The treatment of the memoirs by 19th and early 20th century publishers presented her life as more of an Oriental fantasy than a factual, autobiographical account. Since its first printing, Bibi Salme’s work has been published as an academic-style text, numerous print-on-demands, a romance novel and a Victorian Erotica Kindle book. In rare cases, such as the romance novel, the text has been altered, but in most cases the transformation has been an act of repackaging and advertising. In this edition, we attempt to reconstruct the circulation of her memoirs but also present them as a rebuke to the Orientalist worldview that she had always intended it to be. –HOUSE
Curator and Editorial Advisor: Amit Kumar Jain Translation: Kadamboor Neeraj
Stranded in Najibabad (Uttar Pradesh) during the lockdown, Ahmadzai like others was uncertain about what the future held, and if she would be able to visit Kabul to be with her husband. It was during this time, confined in her barsati (terrace) studio room at her parents home that Ahmadzai delved into a practice of writing letters to her husband, revealing to him in a one-sided communication her anxieties, daily routine, loss of loved ones and their marriage.
Titled Nafas, or the Isolation Diaries, the letters include references from poetry and writings of Rabia Basri, Jalauddin Rumi Balkhi, Bedil Shanaz, Jaun Elia, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ghalib, T.S.Elliot, Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, each having their own impact on Ahmadzai’s life and her thought process as a contemporary artist.
These letters highlight the concerns of a woman, who is unable to come to terms with her life in flux- one with its roots in a country where religious isolation, propaganda and intolerance have become a norm, and the uncertainty of life and political instability in the other. The series, as well as an earlier series titled Lihaaf, comments on the state of the marginalized societies, such as Muslim women, where many such voices are never heard or spoken of.
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Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai’s (b. 1988) works are deeply connected to the experiences of women that rarely find a voice and are subdued under societal and political pressures or are bound within religious orthodoxies. Her works, though narrate a personal experience, are inspired by a much larger community of women who have been marginalized in history. Working within a disciplined studio practice and through collaborative community projects such as Lihaaf (Quilt), Arshi has struck a powerful chord with contemporary feminist art theory.
Her prolific art practice finds its foundation in the history of stitching by rafoogars (darners) of Najibabad. Surrounded by a large community of women who share their embroidery over songs, compassion and sisterhood, it was only natural for Arshi to turn to the fabric as her canvas. These exchanges have led to large scrolls as well as smaller works, where she juxtaposes image and text to comment on women and their roles, their sexuality, their freedom and their desires- some in love and some victims to political terrorism. An avid reader of poetry and philosophy, she not only questions patriarchy, but demands that her voice is heard and accepted.
Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Art from the Aligarh Muslim University, 2011 and a Masters in Fine Art from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 2013. Her first solo titled Nafas (Isolation Diaries) was held at Blueprint12, New Delhi, 2021. Her group exhibitions include ‘May we meet again’, a collaborative project for Noor Riyadh light festival, Saudi National Museum, 2021; ‘Head in the Clouds’ at Chatterjee & Lal, 2021; ‘Seeds are being sown’ at Shrine Empire Gallery, 2020; The India Art Fair, 2020; ‘Out of your shadow’ by Blueprint12 at Gallery Espace, 2019 and a solo presentation at 1Shanthi Road Gallery in 2019. She is one of the recipients of the Five Million Incidents grant from the Goethe-Institut, New Delhi and the Inlaks Fine Arts Award in 2019.
When starting to work on the 25th issue of our magazine, we were discussing whether there should be some sort of content to celebrate this milestone and the past ten years leading up to it. But, as further reading will indicate, there are no texts praising past issues or reflections on the musical developments we documented over the years. However, the anniversary helps in presenting the underlying theme of this issue. As loyal readers might know, zweikommasieben started out as a fanzine and aspired to keep this character somewhat alive. Therefore, in zweikommasieben #25, we would like to reflect on various aspects of what fandom entails.
As fans, the authors, editors, and photographers of this magazine are dependent on artists — niche or mainstream — to be willing to have their practice documented. To put it bluntly: if they don’t want to speak to us, there is not much we can do. Likewise, and without overestimating the impact of our small publication, it might have positive consequences for artists to be featured in zweikommasieben, which is not simply a unidirectional channel between fans and artists: over the years some artists highlighted their own fandom, interviewing other artists they admire for this very magazine, while some contributors developed artistic practices which led them to having fans on their own.
Such an ever-changing web of dependencies is highlighted on the following pages. This edition features a text by media theorist and artist DeForrest Brown Jr. dedicated to the multiple talents of singer-songwriter Dawn Richard: an exploration of why fans could be drawn to her practice over the past 15 years. Jasmin Hoek visits a new museum in Amsterdam that is dedicated to techno and club culture to investigate whether such an institution can be true to something we all have been fans of. In Anna Froelicher’s interview with Price, the artist elaborates on how he plays with both institutions’ and fans’ conceptualization of his music. The complexities of being a fan not only relate to other people and institutions but also to oneself and one’s personal development. In a new essay, Friedemann Dupelius uses his ever-evolving fascination with trance to reflect on the genre’s current status quo.
Motto is pleased to invite you to the presentation of Black Med (Humboldt Books), by Invernomuto, with Giovanna Silva, Alexis Zavialoff, moderated by Luca Galofaro.
Dropcity Auditorium tunnel 60 Via Sammartini, 20125 Milano
