Fantasies of the Library

… is a sequence of pages wherein the reader-as-exhibition-viewer learns, rather surprisingly—but with growing conviction—that the library is not only a curatorial space, but that its bibliological imaginary is also a fertile territory for the exploration of paginated affairs in the Anthropocene.

Fantasies of the Library inaugurates the intercalations: paginated exhibition series. Virtually stacked alongside Anna-Sophie Springer’s feature essay “Melancholies of the Paginated Mind” about unorthodox responses to the institutional ordering principles of book collections, the volume includes an interview with Rick Prelinger and Megan Shaw Prelinger of the Prelinger Library in San Francisco; reflections on the role of cultural memory and the archive by Hammad Nasar, Head of Research and Programmes at the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; a conversation with media theorist Joanna Zylinska about experiments on the intersections of curatorial practice and open source e-books; and a discussion between K’s co-director Charles Stankievech and platform developer Adam Hyde on new approaches to open source publishing in science and academia. The photo essay, “Reading Rooms Reading Machines,” presents views of unusual historical libraries next to works by artists such as Kader Attia, Andrew Beccone, Mark DFantasies of the Libraryion, Rodney Graham, Katie Paterson, Veronika Spierenburg, Andrew Norman Wilson, and others.

published by K. Verlag, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Paperback, thread-bound, 160 pages
30 color + 15 black/white images
ISBN: 9780993907401

15.99€
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The Subjective Object, Anna-Sophie Springer (Ed.), published by K Verlag.

THE SUBJECTIVE OBJECT engages with the controversial site of the ethnographic museum and the role of the archive. In particular, the 1920’s photographic archive of the indigenous people of India by the German physical anthropologist and racist theorist Egon von Eickstedt (1892–1965) serves as a case study for an investigation into the role of historical artifacts in light of contemporary political situations. The nine interviews with curators, artists, anthropologists, and social workers provide the core of the book actively discussing the complicated issues around the archive’s function in producing knowledge. An annotated thread of images serves as a critical apparatus addressing the visual history of ethnographic display and classification practices—both in the scientific field as well as the cultural field at large. Questioning the assumption that the archive presents the “fact” of the “Other,” three literary texts counterpoint the inherent fantasies within scientific research. Just as the book begins with an archive—the Eickstedt photos—the book ends with a new archive—photos of the exhibition “The Subjective Object—(Re)Appropriating Anthropological Images” at the GRASSI Ethnographic Museum of Leipzig—illustrating the project’s desire to not only engage with the history of display but also to propose a future of display strategies and social engagement.

INTERVIEWS WITH: Carola Krebs, Meghnath, Theo Rathgeber, Nora Sternfeld, Alexandra Karentzos, Christopher Pinney, Philip Scheffner, Britta Lange, Jesko Fezer + Raqs Media Collective
LITERARY TEXTS BY: Franz Kafka, Brion Gysin + Suzan-Lori Parks
DESIGN BY: Timm Häneke
LANGUAGE: German and English

D 10 €

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Loveland. Charles Stankievech.

Concept + Design by Charles Stankievech
With Texts by M.P. Shiel, Mark von Schlegell, Mark Lanctôt + Anna-Sophie Springer

LOVELAND is a monograph conceptualised and designed by Canadian artist Charles Stankievech that collects primary sources, fiction and critical texts for his artwork produced for the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the Sobey Art Award in the Fall of 2011. Typical of the artist’s research methodology, the book links a spectrum of fields across a broad span of history. Somewhere between the two poles of colour field painting and military colonisation in the Arctic, Stankievech has created a dense web that connects the birth of synthetic pigment and chemical warfare to the Romantic landscape and contemporary geopolitical issues. As curator Mark Lanctôt writes in his critical essay: “Stankievech’s work … directs us away from a-political modernist pictorial utopias towards something more telling: how the relationship between the narrative of history and the site it is connected to can veer into unsuspecting directions, escaping our perceived mastery over it.”

An exquisite edition of 300 with letterpress embossed cover, collation of unique paper stock for each section and 5 colour offset printing.

D 22€

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