Object Lessons. Joe Scanlan. Dexter Sinister / Mu. Zee.

Two Objects
Two objects that may or may not go together.
Two objects that are distinct, but related.
Two objects roaming the earth in search of each other, like mythic lovers navigating the global network of book distribution, tracking, and sales

Smaller Object
In this volume, artist Joe Scanlan’s magazine columns from the past fifteen years have been gathered as one long, picaresque narrative in which democracy plays the dishonest but amiable lead role, from the Lumière Brothers’ use of their employees in the making of the first film to Tino Sehgal’s use of museum visitors in the production of his art. As Scanlan writes: Once again we regress to the familiar, not on the basis of its merits but because it puts the most people at ease. However vexed we were by modernist ideology, the products resulting from the current consensus-based, consumer-driven service economy are really starting to depress me. I miss having to accept something whether I like it or not, if only for the bits of stunning genius that single-mindedness made possible. Consumer culture, where is thy victory? Product, where is thy sting?

Larger Object
Remember
Which begs the question
It all started 100 years ago when
On the one hand
On the other hand
Of course
Which reminds me
That is why
Speaking of stylists
Meanwhile
That being said
I choose
Once upon a time

SMALLER OBJECT
paperback, 4-color, perfect-bound
text with four BW illustrations
17.5 x 10.8 cm, 96 pages

D 33 €

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Bulletins of The Serving Library #3, Stuart Bailey, Angie Keefer, David Reinfurt (Eds.), published by Sternberg Press.

With contributions by Andrew Blum, Bruno Latour, Graham Meyer, Pierre-André Boutang, David Reinfurt, Chris Evans, Jessica Winter, Ian Svenonius, Angie Keefer, Francis McKee, Benjamin Tiven, Louis Lüthi, Dexter Sinister, and Laura Hoptman

This issue of Bulletins of the Serving Library doubles as a catalog of sorts to “Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language,” a group exhibition curated by Laura Hoptman at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from May 6 to August 27, 2012. It is a *pseudo*-catalog in the sense that, other than a section of images at the back, it bears no direct relation to the works in the exhibition. Instead, the bulletins extend in different directions from the same title, and could be collectively summarized as preoccupied with the more social aspects of Typography.

D 10 €

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Onomatopee 52: Research project
Pre-specifics: access x!
Get access to the “X” imposed by designed culture!

Not only humankind might have an “X” Factor; an environment or a product may equally have one. If a person has an “X” Factor, his power increases. Similarly, as soon as an environment or a product has an “X” Factor, it gains control over us… Let’s make this production more accesible!

PRE-SPECIFICS: ACCESS X! not only showcases luring products, spaces and concepts by contemporary artists, designers, architects and others, but actually also provides insight into their strategies. The exhibition thus features both sensory works and accountable strategies and motivations. The accompanying publication offers further notions into designed culture’s X: its productive conditions and modes of mediation.

Over recent years, ‘Design’ has progressed into a collective term for various activities of research, conceptualisation, production and even criticality. As ‘Design’ became synonymous to widespread professional authority, ‘Design’ became the name for physically imposed control and personally imposed power at large: from the spatial design of McDonald’s to the branding of the new hybrid car, from the executive stance of the spin doctor to the services of the shrink and beyond. Li Edelkoort, design guru and former director of the Design Academy, even expressed a demand for the designer-politician…. The research project PRE-SPECIFICS: ACCESS X! offers you both a rich scope of forms of “X” as an instrumental toolbox to engage the “X” in our designed culture, offering ACCESS to X!

Onomatopee commissioned a variety of proposals, first of all to map out to what extent the addressed ‘design’ practice touches upon conditions of such a type of production and, second, to situate X in practice by means of a newly produced work. The proposals have been exhibited at Röda Sten Kulturforening Göteborg. From these proposals, Onomatopee has selected the majority to be actualised at Onomatopee Eindhoven during the Dutch Design Week.

Contributors: Platform for Pedagogy (US), Uglycute (SE), Olaf Nicolai (DE), Dexter Sinister (US), Joana Meroz / Andrea Bandoni / Saron Paz (NL), Unfold (BE), Metahaven (NL), Lust (NL), Claire Fontaine (FR), Société Réaliste (FR), Ryan Gander / Abake (UK), Dave Hullfish Bailey (US) Florian Conradi / Michelle Christensen (DE).

Curators: Freek Lomme (NL) & Michael Capio (US)
Exhibition design: Dave Keune (NL)
Graphic design publication: Eric de Haas (NL)

D 15€

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The Curse of Bigness (1) Coordinated by Dexter Sinister for an exhibition curated by Larissa Harris at the Queens Museum of Art

The Curse of Bigness exhibition book collects the reading material of curator Larissa Harris leading up to her exhibition of the same name at the Queens Museum of Art. Five texts, loosely gathered around the Progressive era in the United States and interrupted by summaries written by Dexter Sinister comprise this medium-sized publication.

Cover by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin.

D 4.5 €

Available for distribution

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Coming soon!

more here:
http://www.queensmuseum.org/the-curse-of-bigness

Dot Dot Dot issue 17 has just landed.

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