Cut Cube book launch / Sandra Peters & Adam Feldmeth @ Motto Berlin. Wednesday, 02 August 2023.

Posted in graphic design, Motto Berlin event, Motto Berlin store, Motto Books on July 28th, 2023
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Dear Friends,

please join us on August 2, 2023 at 7:00pm at Motto Books, Berlin for a conversation with Sandra Peters and Adam Feldmeth to present Peters’ new book Cut Cube.

The book Cut Cube, (2022) results from Sandra Peters’ interest in the graphic interplay between two- and three-dimensional structures. The 11 possible ways to unfold a cube are laid out on white paper, whereas the seven cuts that make it possible to unfold a cube are printed on transparent paper and related to each of the six sides of each flattened cube. Turning pages generates a flow of information to make the viewer aware of the complex interplay between both types of structures. 

The book is published with Motto Books, Berlin/Lausanne. A book signing will follow the discussion.

Sandra Peters is an artist, writer, and educator based in Abu Dhabi, UAE. In her work she focuses on architecture and urban space. She is working towards a reciprocal integration of sensual, structural, and conceptual factors.

Peters has widely presented her work in Europe, the US, and the United Arab Emirates, including Performing the City at the NYUAD Project Space in Abu Dhabi (2023); Un–folded Cube (landscape mode) at Foyer-LA, Los Angeles (2023); Bilateral, Diagonal, Cubical at the Gallery Aanant & Zoo, Berlin (2012) and participated in the group exhibition Erschaute Bauten. Architektur im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Kunstfotografie at the MAK—Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst (2011).
She is teaching at New York University Abu Dhabi since 2014 in the Art and Art History Program, where she is Co-program head since 2021.

Adam Feldmeth lives in Los Angeles and Berlin. His work engages the social elasticity of art through situational discourse with those involved in its materialization. Critical contributions have been included at the Luminary Projects, St. Louis, Missouri; Contemporary Art Daily; the MAK Center, Los Angeles; Kunstbibliothek Sitterwerk, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University; and the 53rd Venice Biennale of Art. In 2008, he co-authored, “Nomad Post School,” with Guan Rong and in 2020 “Some Pedagogies of the Southland Institute” with Joe Potts

He is co-director of the Southland Institute in Los Angeles, teaches Film/Media studies at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California, and is a doctoral student at the European Graduate School where he is considering the cobblestone as a mediator of momentum at the confluence of urban space and cinematic montage.

Politics of Curatorship book launch / Norient Books @ Motto Berlin. Friday June 29, 2023.

Posted in Motto Berlin event, music, Theory on June 28th, 2023
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Dear Friends,

We are happy you invite you to an open-air summer evening with lectures, readings, and a music performance to launch our newest Norient Book Politics of Curatorship on June 29 at Motto Books Berlin from 19:00 onwards.

In essays, academic texts, photo essays, poems, and short comments by 32 writers, artists, journalists, and scholars from all over the world, this volume attempts to encourage different approaches to increase diversity and equality in curatorship within the cultural industry.  

For our Berlin release party, we have invited the Berlin-based curator and book contributor Andrea Goetzke & the activist and DJ Ari Robey-Lawrence for a panel discussion, the musician Tatiana Heuman aka Qeei to play an exclusive music performance, and the sound artist Lendl Barcelos and Norient founder Thomas Burkhalter (both contributors) for remote readings in the lovely courtyard of Motto Books Berlin. Moderated by Carla J. Maier and Philipp Rhensius.

Expect an engaging evening with critical questions, challenging sounds and refreshing drinks. Co-moderated by Norient Books editor and Sound Studies researcher Carla J. Maier and Norient editor and writer/musician Philipp Rhensius.

17.02.2023 from 6 pm: “ANSKA” by Agnė Juodvalkytė book launch + performance by Tania Elstermeyer @ Motto Berlin

Posted in Motto Berlin event, performance on February 13th, 2023
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Photo courtesy of Agnė Juodvalkytė


Please join us for the book launch of ANSKA with author Agnė Juodvalkytė and a performance by Tania Elstermeyer.

Friday 17 February 2023
from 6 pm

Motto (im Hinterhaus)
Skalitzer Str. 68 
Berlin, 10997

Agnė Juodvalkytė (b. 1987, Vilnius, Lithuania) is a visual artist currently living in Berlin and Vilnius. Her practice is focused on abstract painting and textiles mostly. She received BA in Painting at the Vilnius Academy of Arts (2010) and studied Visual Arts in Spain at the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha (UCLM, Cuenca) (2009). Her recent shows include solo exhibition Tools for the Future (ANSKA) at Galerie Bernau, Bernau bei Berlin (2022); Sweet Dreams Foundation at Nida Art Colony, Nida (2022); ‘Gathering’ at Atletika, Vilnius (2021); ANSKA at Blake & Vargas, Berlin (2021); group show Audra at Pamario gallery, Juodkrantė (2021); Terpė at (AV17) gallery, Vilnius (2020).

Tania Elstermeyers textual compositions bring registers of lyrical writing to mind, which are performed in alliance to a distinctive kind of music beyond established genres. During her performances, sceneries resemblant of theater backdrops are created, ultimately by operating with a vocabulary that is minimalism. Her work slivers traditional outlines of narrator and spectatorship by luring oneself into spaces of intimacy that attract interest and cause discomfort. (Text by Oliver Wellmann)

Links:
Agnė Juodvalkytė
Tania Elstermeyer

Photo courtesy of Philippe Gerlach


ANSKA

Authors: Agnė Juodvalkytė
Publisher:
Year: 2023
Pages: 224
Dimensions: 17 x 24 cm
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-00-074288-0

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

Order the book here

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

21.01: “Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig” by Nikolaus Gansterer, Klaus Speidel | book launch @ Galerie Crone Berlin

Posted in Events, Exhibitions on January 20th, 2023
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Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig
Nikolaus Gansterer & Klaus Speidel
Published by Éditions Dilecta, 2022

Book launch

21 January 2023
from 4pm

Galerie Crone Berlin
Fasanenstrasse 29
10719 Berlin


How do colours relate to memory? How does language relate to the world (and vice versa)? Can the invisible, such as thoughts, atmospheres or pain, be grasped through art? Artist Nikolaus Gansterer and philosopher Klaus Speidel discuss these and similar questions in their new book Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig, published by Éditions Dilecta and Centre d’art contemporain Les Tanneries. Taking Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as their starting point, Gansterer and Speidel have developed various works and formats, talking, drawing, assembling or doing all at the same time. Rather than just presenting results, the book documents the joint working process in numerous transcripts, which also reflect the genesis of the book itself. 

In the context of Nikolaus Gansterer’s exhibition Strange Wor(l)ds at Galerie Crone Berlin, Fasanenstrasse 29, a book presentation in collaboration with Motto Books will take place on Saturday, 21 January 2023. The afternoon begins at 4 pm with a dialogue between Nikolaus Gansterer, Klaus Speidel and the drawing expert Jan-Philipp Frühsorge. Afterwards, Gansterer and Speidel invite you to the first Berlin Language Game Lab, in which they will work with drawings and objects based on a remark by Ludwig Wittgenstein, resulting in an installation that takes up the methodology developed in the book. 

Galerie Crone, Motto Books and Éditions Dilecta cordially invite you to attend.

Playing with Ludwig opens with a conversation between the authors and the book’s designer Grégoire Romanet, where the first graphic ideas are discussed. It ends with the dialogue How to close a book, which prepares the final series of images. Exhibition photographs and works from the first exhibition documenting the research project Figures de pensée at the Centre d’art contemporain Les Tanneries have been annotated, continued or completed in drawings. Different styles and methodologies, which unfold in the chapters of the book, correspond to different methods and themes in Wittgenstein’s work. Two additional precise essays by Eric Degoute, director of Les Tanneries, and Roger Malbert, curator and drawing expert, elaborate on the dynamic relationship between thinking and drawing and reading as a form of friendship. In the series Philosophical Deviations, Nikolaus Gansterer draws on various paragraphs of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, exploring various forms and procedures. Gansterer explains: “It’s important to say that none of these drawings are illustrations. I try to record how the text operates within me, how it influences my ways of thinking and feeling and then to take this movement as a springboard for drawing. It’s not so much about what is being said, but how it moves a reader.” At the centre of the book stand the paragraphs of the Philosophical Investigations themselves, to which the various works and conversations in the book refer, annotated in writing and drawing by Klaus Speidel. Memories of ColourJust imagine a Rod and Now as One Thing, Now as Another are based on collections of hues, rods, and boxes (respectively). As Speidel, who obtained a PhD in philosophy from Sorbonne University, explains: “In our joint work, I am also interested in exploring the limits of philosophical abstraction. If we fail in our attempt at artistic concretization, this failure can in itself convey new insights in the sense of what Wittgenstein called ‚going against the frontiers of language’. I believe that art production enables philosophical insights.” This interference between philosophy and art can be experienced concretely in the titular series Playing with Ludwig. In this performative experimental arrangement, two or more people sit opposite each other. Starting from a text, a new language game unfolds with drawings and objects.

//

Wie sind Farben mit Erinnerungen verknüpft? Wie verhält sich Sprache zur Welt (und umgekehrt)? Lässt sich Unsichtbares wie Gedanken, Atmosphären oder Schmerz künstlerisch fassen? Diese und ähnliche Fragen diskutieren der Künstler Nikolaus Gansterer und der Philosoph Klaus Speidel im neu erschienen Buch Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig, publiziert von Éditions Dilecta und Centre d’art Les Tanneries. Ausgehend von Ludwig Wittgensteins Philosophische Untersuchungen, auf die sie sprachlich, zeichnend und performativ reagieren, haben Gansterer und Speidel verschiedene Arbeiten und Formate entwickelt. Anstatt nur Ergebnisse zu präsentieren, dokumentiert das Buch in zahlreichen Transkripten auch den gemeinsamen Arbeitsprozess, bis hin zur Entstehung des Buches selbst.

Im Rahmen von Nikolaus Gansterers Ausstellung Strange Wor(l)ds in der Galerie Crone Berlin, Fasanenstrasse 29 die zahlreiche Werke aus dem Buchkorpus und auch viele neue Werke zeigt, findet dabei am Samstag, 21.1.2023 eine Buchpräsentation in Zusammenarbeit mit Motto Books statt. Der Nachmittag beginnt ab 16 Uhr mit einem Gespräch zwischen Nikolaus Gansterer, Klaus Speidel und dem Zeichnungsexperten Jan-Philipp Frühsorge. Danach laden Gansterer und Speidel zum ersten Berliner Language Game Lab ein, bei dem sie ausgehend von einer Bemerkung Ludwig Wittgensteins mit Zeichnungen und Objekten arbeiten, so dass am Ende entsprechend der Methodologie von Playing with Ludwig eine Installation entsteht.

Dazu laden Galerie Crone, Motto Books und Éditions Dilecta herzlich ein.

Zu Beginn von Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig steht ein Gespräch der Autoren mit Grégoire Romanet, dem Designer des Buches. Am Ende steht der Dialog How to close a book, der die letzte Bildstrecke vorbereitet. Ausstellungsphotographien und Werke der ersten großen Projektausstellung Figures de pensée im Centre d’art Contemporain Les Tanneries werden zeichnerisch kommentiert, fortgeführt oder komplettiert. Die unterschiedlichen Stile und Methoden der Werke entsprechen dabei verschiedenen Themen und Methoden, die sich in den Kapiteln des Buches entfalten. Zwei Essays, einer von Eric Degoutte, Direktor von Les Tanneries, ein anderer von Roger Malbert, Kurator und Zeichnungsexperte runden das Buch ab und diskutieren einerseits die Beziehung zwischen Denken und Zeichnen und andererseits das Lesen als Freundschaft. In Philosophical Deviations reagiert Nikolaus Gansterer zeichnend auf verschiedene Paragraphen von Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations (Philosophische Untersuchungen). Gansterer erklärt: “Keine dieser Zeichnungen sind Illustrationen. Ich versuche festzuhalten, wie der Text in mir wirkt, wie er mein Denken und Fühlen beeinflusst und dann diese Bewegung als Sprungbrett für das Zeichnen zu nutzen. Es geht nicht so sehr darum, was gesagt wird, sondern wie es den Leser bewegt.” Im Zentrum des Buches stehen die Paragraphen der Philosophischen Untersuchungen selbst, auf die sich die verschiedenen Arbeiten und Gespräche des Buches beziehen. Klaus Speidel hat sie schreibend und zeichnend annotiert. Die Kapitel Memories of ColourJust imagine a Rod und Now as One Thing, Now as Another basieren auf Sammlungen von Farbtönen, Stäbe und Kisten. Speidel, der an der Sorbonne in Philosphie promoviert hat, erklärt: “Mich interessiert bei unserer gemeinsamen Arbeit auch das Ausloten von Grenzen philosophischer Abstraktion. Wenn wir beim Versuch einer künstlerischen Konkretisierung scheitern, kann das im Sinne eines ‚Anlaufens gegen die Grenze der Sprache‘, wie Wittgenstein es nennt, neue Erkenntnisse vermitteln. Ich glaube, dass Kunstproduktion philosophische Erkenntnisse ermöglicht.“ Diese Interferenz zwischen Philosophie und Kunst wird in der titelgebenden Serie Playing with Ludwig konkret erfahrbar. Bei dieser performativen Versuchsanordnung sitzen zwei oder mehr Menschen einander gegenüber. Ausgehend von einem Text entspinnt sich ein neues Sprachspiel mit Zeichnungen und Objekten.

Links:
Galerie Crone
Éditions Dilecta
Motto Books


Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig
Authors: Nikolaus Gansterer, Klaus Speidel, Eric Degoute, Roger Malbert
Publisher: Éditions Dilecta, Paris
Year: 2022
Pages: 160
Dimensions: 21 x 28 cm
Language: bilingual English / French
Graphic Design: Gregoire Romanet
ISBN: 978-2-37372-165-2

Order the book here

11.08: Panya Routes with UTC’s African Centre for Cities | Book Launch with the author, Kim Gurney, in conversation with Neo Muyanga @ A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town

Posted in Events, Motto Books on August 10th, 2022
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Order the book here

FRI JUNE 10 from 6.20pm > BLACK MED * book launch + listening session @ Dropcity, Milan

Posted in Events on June 10th, 2022
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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


Friday 10 June
from 6.20 to 7pm

//

See you there!

« Outro », a solo show by Robert Brambora | Vernissage & Book launch | Sans titre (2016) and Motto Books | Milan, Italy

Posted in Exhibitions, Motto Books on March 28th, 2022
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Dear friends,

We are pleased to invite you to the opening of

« Outro »
Robert Brambora
’s first solo exhibition in Italy.

Wednesday 30th March
6 – 9pm

Via Vincenzo Gioberti 1 – Milan, Italy

Organized by Sans titre 2016

The exhibition will be on view until April 9th, 2022

During the opening, the artist’s monograph published by Motto Books and Sans titre 2016 will be presented.

Robert Brambora – Images, Texts, Ceramics

with contributions by Susanne Mierzwiak, Moritz Scheper and a conversation between Lucie Sotty and Robert Brambora

Graphic design: Paul Bowler

Published by Motto Books

Order here




Robert Brambora (born in 1984, Germany) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He completed his studies in the class of Rebecca Warren at the Kunstak.

The work of the artist takes as its subject the current neoliberal system and its impact on the individual, as measured under Marxist analysis. It particularly approaches issues such as working conditions, school dropouts, stress-related illnesses, anxiety and loneliness, the housing crisis, and overpopulation as so many causes leading to alienation in our contemporary societies. Also at the heart of his questioning is the analysis of a sense of loss of points of reference, of a form of time distortion generated by these stress conditions. The artist seeks to extract the waking hallucination – the onirism – from these crisis situations.
Robert Brambora practice primarily develops itself in two ways: he creates on the one hand paintings and ceramics, in the realm of traditional techniques and media, and on the other hand large format panels upon which texts are laser-engraved. The most recent text works address issues such as the real estate market crisis and financial speculation. These texts are based on political journals, excerpts of conversations and comments from internet forums, as well as personal notes. The artist draws equally from scientific articles from medical journals, evoking afflictions related to anxiety, as well as theoretical essays on the economic competition faced by individuals. These extracts are then reworked, superimposed on each other to create a three-dimensional pictorial space, which sometimes evokes the outlines of architecture.

Dayna Grosz, Jana Nowack – MISTAKE or Miracle? book launch | Friday 22nd October @ Motto Berlin

Posted in Events, Motto Berlin event on October 21st, 2021
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mistake-or-miracle-dayna-gross-jana-nowack-9783000703256-1

Friday 22nd October

From 6pm @ Motto Berlin

MISTAKE or Miracle?

a collaborative project between artist Jana Nowack and writer Dayna Grosz.

Order the book here

Book launch: ‘CONQUERING THE PRESENT IN THE LONG SIXTIES: The curatorial birth of contemporary art’ at Motto Berlin. 28 September 2019

Posted in Events on September 20th, 2019
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conquering_the_present_poster_motto_file

Saturday, September 28th

5-7 PM. Talk at 5.30.

Motto Berlin Skalitzer Str. 68, 10997 Berlin, Germany

Kristian Handberg’s Conquering the present in the Long Sixties is an art historical essay. The book presents a new understanding of the art work in the 1960s and how a predominant interest in the present even brought a Soviet Cosmonaut to the Venice Biennale in 1968.

Talk with Terry Smith, author of Art to Come. Histories of Contemporary Art (2019).

Kristian Handberg., (b. 1980) Art historian, Ph.D., postdoc at the University of Copenhagen. Handberg has researched in the importance of exhibitions and their international circulation in the postwar era at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Terry Smith, Professor in Art History, University of Pittsburgh. A leading historian and theoretician on the history of contemporary art, Smith has just published the book Art to Come. Histories of Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2019), which will be available at the launch. Smith will be in conversation with the author on the notion of contemporary art and the exhibition as a way of staging the present.

OnCurating @ Motto Berlin. 23.07.2016

Posted in Events, magazines, Motto Berlin event on July 15th, 2016
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OnCurating Issue 31_Dorothee Richter_Motto books_1

On Curating @ Motto Berlin. July 23rd from 7pm

OnCurating #31- Spheres of Estrangement: Art, Politics and Curating

With contributions from

Josephine Baker-Heaslip, Jonas Becker, Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi, Benjamin T. Busch, Dan Bustillo, Lilian Cameron, Joey Cannizzaro, Carson Chan, Jeni Fulton, Ken Gonzales-Day, Matthew Hanson, Anke Hennig, Alistair Hudson, Alison Hugill, Suzana Milevska, Jared Pappas Kelley, Penny Rafferty, PUNK IS DADA, Claire Ruud, Jack Schneider, Adrian Shaw, Paul Stewart, Sam Thorne.
Editors: Jonas Becker, Benjamin T. Busch, Matthew Hanson, Penny Rafferty, Paul Stewart

Today’s estrangement is a fully incorporated component of the modern experience, a stimulant for ‘surplus alienation’. Therefore, this issue asks what artistic, architectural and curatorial approaches to estrangement offer current discourse in organisation, aesthetics and activism. The articles unpack estrangement for the political, social and cultural sprint of our time.

Publisher: Dorothee Richter
Co-Publisher: Michael BirchallRonald Kolb
Editors: Jonas Becker, Benjamin T. Busch, Matthew Hanson, Penny Rafferty, Paul Stewart
Proofreading: Stephanie Carwin
Graphic Design: Ronald Kolb, Biotop 3000

 

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