Klara Liden

Statement

Part of me is this poor architect dealing with the prob lem of existing structures in the city, part of me is this amateur dancer or performer who wants to return ideas of rhythm to the activity of building, or of re-appropriating the built environment. Building is also un-building, re cycling or improvising new uses for what’s already been set up in places like New York, Berlin or Stockholm, whether in a museum or in my own apartment, and th ques tion of re-appropriating privatized, urban space always somehow begins with the body, its ways of moving and the temporalities it engages when it goes to work or opens up spaces of non-work in work. There is an idea of play that prefers not to decide what is and what isn’t work, what is and what isn’t useful in the activity of building. Use, most of the time, means diverting materials or spaces from their prescribed functions, inventing ways of making these things improper again. Aside from my interventions in galleries and museums, I have done things like set up a year-long, free postal service in Stockholm, built an underground house on city property in Berlin, removed ad Vertisements from downtown areas, made music with my house keys and moonwalked around Lower Manhattan.

Artist book on the occasion of the exhibition Non-solo show, Non-group show, interview with Ei Arakawa, Nikolas Gambaroff, Nick Mauss, Nora Schultz and Klara Liden (Engl.), 236 pp. with 200 b/w images, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2010.
The book is a joint project by the artists Ei Arakawa, Nikolas Gambaroff, Nick Mauss and Nora Schultz, realized on the occasion of their exhibition Non-solo, Non-group show in Zurich in 2009. It s the first monograph on Klara Liden and documents her works from the recent years – performances, videos and installations, that often incorporate found materials to explore the conditions of physical as well as of psychic spaces. It choses a form between artist book and catalogue, that draws on the DIY-aesthetic of Liden’s works and gives an overview of her artistic practice.

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“The explorer of himself navigates in a sea that does not exist. He steers the small rowboat towards the rocky coastline, guided by the roar of the breaking waves.” 

Photographs by Gerardo Montiel Klint
Texts by Mauricio Ortiz and Rebeca González

100 copies

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This text is an attempt to explain the importance of comfort regulation, through sensory stimulation. Whether that be from fidgeting, through masturbation to cuddling and other activities. This thesis is about self-regulation and the objects which visualise that need. From the Freudian psychoanalysis idea of child development through transitional objects introduced by Donald Winnicot to Dakimakura phenomena in otaku culture in a Japanese society that seeks closeness to cute pastelle vibrators which are overflowing the sex toys market. The attempt to answer this question: “Why do hoodie strings taste so good?” seeks to answer the overarching need for constant adjustment to the environment we live in.

I’m intrigued by the need for biting, sucking, and tapping random objects. The fidgeting era is here! We are overwhelmed by all kinds of spinners, popping toys, anti-stress devices, dopamine booster, etc. What is it all about and why have fidget spinners became such a hype in the recent years? Have you ever considered why your hoodie strings taste so good? Have you caught yourself while compulsively sucking them in the metro or at the bus stop? This thesis will endeavour to answer these questions. The answer might be much easier and more pragmatic than we think. In contradiction to my deep analysis in the following sections, one of the reddit users wrote in response to the above question: Why do hoodie strings taste so good?

“Just don’t do it! After sucking them a few times, they become bacteria factories/colonies, so taste (and probably smell) evolves over time. Don’t suck and chew them!! They do, however, work as good, reachable things to practise finger dexterity – to tie knots into and practice rope binding”.

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Lo Yuen Yi is an artist that is hard to define. She specialises in using text to document artists and their creative endeavours and using drawing to deconstruct and reconstruct both words and concepts. Traces is divided into two parts—words and drawings—but the same questions underlie the two: who am I? What is art? What is the essence of memories? Each question is independent yet intertwined. 



The drawings are a collection of pencil sketches, including portraits of a hand, mad women speaks featuring frames, work in progress which records the making of a hardbound book, cosmos-shells unearthed in my garden collecting shells from soil, tools Dad remade with tools as the subject etc. From defining oneself, to symbols of doubt, to capturing the broken traces left by memories. 



The words are made up of seven essays which start with a discussion about the space for creativity and end at fixation on cities. As everything disappears, Lo asks: what are memories? Are there any left? In response, she replies:



The meaning of memory is within each person’s experience

It has its own language

Your memories are not mine

My memories are not bigger than his or hers


Pages: 2 books, 170 pages in total with 4 postcards

Binding: Pamphlet binding & Saddle-stitching

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Inside this box is a book that holds thirteen letters written between 2019 and 2022 by the artist Yamine Elmelegy to the sculptor and industrialist Fathy Mahmoud (1918-1982). Yasmine never met Fathy Mahmoud but started writing these letters shortly after she discovered that a cup she has at home is signed by him. This happened only days after she learnt that Fathy Mahmoud was responsible for a series of iconic public statues in Cairo and Alexandria. The letters show Yasmine’s search for what is left from Fathy Mahmoud’s artworks, the porcelain plates and cups he produced, the factories he founded and the history he left behind about the relationship between art and industry. 

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Texts by Brad Feuerhelm, Juri Marian Gross, Marija Repšytė, and Nele Ruckelshausen
Edited by Philippe Gerlach and Agnė Juodvalkytė
Design by Marijn Degenaar

Through photographs of the studio process and visual sketches the first publication ANSKA by artist Agnė Juodvalkytė offers an overview of the artist’s studio practice from the past years while creating a sensory world of recollection. The book marks the conclusion of the ANSKA cycle in her work.

“In Agnė Juodvalkytė’s work, the weave that is bound by cloth, ash, dirt, and dye, invokes memory, utility, and hand-infused labor. The stains, folds, and strained fraying edges of her chosen material are also infused, caked, and distressed to provide new readings of production. There is something familiar in her use of textiles. Each fold of fabric is detailed by a weave birthed from the center spiraling out in an obstinate mosaic of emotion wrought from the plunder of self.”
— Brad Feuerhelm

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The images in this book are preparative studies for large paintings. The 220 x 220 cm enameled aluminum frames are fixed on motorised axes, which allow the paintings to turn at 90 or 180 degrees. When it flips, the figure reveals its duplicity; elusive lines on a twisted path, bouncing back and forth from an illusion to another… “A duck with a fish in its beak” becomes “a rabbit with a carrot in between the ears”. “Nothing special” becomes “Something special”. “A saw in a log” becomes “a crocodile love”, etc.

First edition, 2023

About the author:
Under various pseudonyms Cornelius de Bill Baboul has received the Berlin Art Prize (DE), was nominated for the Aperture PhotoBook Award (US), has entered private and public collections such as MACBA (Barcelona), has been published by Nieves (CH) and exhibited at Paris-Photo (FR), MoMA PS1 (US), Swiss Institute (US), Huis Marseille (NL), Bank Gallery (JP). His work appears in the international press like the British Journal of Photography (UK), Purple (FR), CURA. (IT), Aperture (US), Elephant (UK), Zeit Magazin (DE), The New York Times (US), The Paris Review (US), Luncheon (UK), It’s Nice That (UK).

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In Sculptor’s Notebook, originally written in 1985, the artist Pushpamala N evaluates the artistic practice that she had been developing until then. Centred largely around themes of adolescence and womanhood, her sculptures had won her the Sixth Triennale Award and the National Award. While the sculptures take centre stage, in this dissertation can be found a longing to move further towards performance, humour, and play-acting—themes that the artist would go on to develop over the following decades. Both an artist’s statement and a notebook-format prophecy, Sculptor’s Notebook charts the motivations, struggles, and desires of the artist’s multi-medium practice.

Published for the first time by Reliable Copy and Sharjah Art Foundation, Sculptor’s Notebook was written as part of Pushpamala N’s Master’s in Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. The complete facsimile of this dissertation is accompanied by a recent interview with the artist by Nihaal Faizal and Sarasija Subramanian.

Born in Bangalore in 1956, Pushpamala N has been called “the most entertaining artist-iconoclast of contemporary Indian art.” In her sharp and witty work as a photo- and video-performance artist, sculptor, writer, curator, and provocateur, and in her collaborations with writers, theatre directors, and filmmakers, she seeks to subvert the dominant cultural and intellectual discourse. She is known for her strongly feminist work, for her rejection of authenticity, and her embracing of multiple realities. Pushpamala exhibits widely in India and internationally, and speaks often at seminars and conferences.

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ca. 100 Hundetüten gesammelt von Simon Freund, kuratiert von Leonie Herweg, gesetzt von Paul Jürgens, mit Texten von Sophia Eisenhut und Olga Hohmann. Jedes Buch ist ein Unikat, die Anordnung der Bilder variiert.

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In the United States, there are many cities called Rome. These pictures document the photographer’s journey from Rome to Rome across North America. Fuelled by a curiosity for these parallel ‘eternal’ cities, this body of work subtly mixes genres. Here, the American road trip meets the postcards of imperial Rome. Both subjects have been overly photographed; with their essence exhausted by representation, the allure of the American Dream and a never-ending fascination with the remnants of history.

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