Ape Culture. Anselm Franke, Hila Peleg (Eds.). Spector Books

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, writing on July 16th, 2015
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With contributions by Christophe Boesch, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Ines Doujak mit John Barker und Matthew Hyland, Cord Riechelmann and others.

»Ape Culture« traces the long cultural and scientific obsession with humanity’s closest relatives. In the Western historical representations of modernity, depictions of apes were traditionally used to show the absence of culture. Standing as a liminal figure separating humans and animals, the ape has, since ancient times, played a central role in the narrative of civilisational progress. This book, which appears in conjunction with the exhibition of the same nameseeks, however, to go beyond the mere examination of apes as signifiers of difference. The juxtaposition of artworks with documents taken from popular culture and the history of primatology gives the reader an insight into what the science historian Donna Haraway has termed the »primate order« — a hall of mirrors reflecting the scientific and cultural projections that turned the ape from an instrument of humanity’s self-definition into an integral element in testing out the possibility of reconstructing human »nature«. »Ape Culture« will be shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt from 30 April to 6 July 2015.

€29.00

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trail. Natascha Sadr Haghighian. Spector Books

Posted in writing on July 8th, 2015
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With contributions from Michael Boßdorf, Herr Düsterdieck, Anselm Franke, Avery Gordon, Ayse Güle, Reza Haeri, Tom Keenan, Volker Lange,Helmut Weich, Allen S. Weiss

Co-published with the documenta archiv.

Design: Ça ira !
Editors: Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Pola Sieverding, Jasper Kettner

»trail« harks back to a path that Natascha Sadr Haghighian laid out at the Auehang in Kassel in 2012 as part of dOCUMENTA (13). The trail was located next to a memorial to the fallen German soldiers of the two World Wars and »accompanied« by onomatopoeic sounds. In the process of laying out the path, Haghighian discovered that the entire slope consisted of rubble from the Second World War. In the book she follows the ‘trail’ of this debris together with Pola Sieverding and Jasper Kettner and ends up with the Kassel-based armaments industry, with stories of migration and forced labour, with military vehicles named after animals, and with flowers that only grow in rubble. Via an exchange of letters with Anselm Franke, Avery Gordon, Ayşe Guelec, and a number of other correspondents, the findings are linked and examined together, revealing a view of historical continuities, loops, and ruptures, resembling the layering of the debris itself.

€28.00

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Modern Monsters – Death and Life of Fiction. Anselm Franke, Brian Kuan Wood (Eds.). Spector Books

Posted in writing on April 1st, 2015
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David Der-Wei Wang, Nabil Ahmed, Chen Chieh-Jen, Reza Negarestani, Jow Jiun Gong, Joachim Koester, James T. Hong, Jei Li, Bavand Behpoor, Sophie Wahnich, Ian Svenonius, Eric Baudelaire, Masao Matsuda, Mark Fisher, Alberto Toscano, Hu Fang, Chihiro Minato, Natasha Ginwala

Departing from the figure of the Taowu, a Chinese mythological monster of evil inclination used recently by histo- rians and writers to symbolize the violent fate of Chinese utopian modernity, this publication interrogates the role of systemic and structural violence in the making of modernity and its artistic representations, and uses the monster as a vantage point to capture global dimensions of the current crisis of social imaginaries.

ca. 300 pp., 18 x 26 cm, English, 100 black-white illustrations, thread-sewn softcover

Design: ZAK Group, London
Editors: Brian Kuan Wood for Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Anselm Franke, curator of the Taipei Biennial

Price: €24.00

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“The magic of mimesis. On personal and technological media.” Joachim Koester & Anselm Franke @ Motto Berlin. 14.09.2014.

Posted in Events on September 12th, 2014
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Joachim Koester & Anselm Franke @ Motto Berlin. 14.09.2014.

“The magic of mimesis. On personal and technological media.”

Joachim Koester will be talking with Anselm Franke about his recent work. He is included in the three-person show, with Allison Gibbs and Ken Jacobs, which Franke has curated with Heidi Ballet at Dan Gunn, opening on Saturday 13th September. Anselm Franke is the director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Joachim Koester is based in Copenhagen and has exhibited widely, including recent shows at SMAK Ghent, Palais de Tokyo Paris, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Centre d’art Contemporain Geneva.

 

Sunday 14th September, 17.00.

 

Motto Berlin
im Hinterhof
Skalitzer Str. 68
10997 Berlin