David Senior, Bibliographer at the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York, will discuss a history of artists’ publications in the 20th and 21st centuries. Senior presents examples of how artists and designers have used little publications as experimental containers for new ideas, creating lively and accessible spaces to communicate work and archive art actions. Most examples will come from the collection of books that he works with at the MoMA Library and several recent library exhibitions he has organized of artists’ books and ephemera.

This event is presented by Wendy’s Subway and Motto Books, Berlin, on the occasion of the Motto Books temporary bookstore, open weekends from 12pm to 6pm, May 1st through May 29th.

David Senior is the bibliographer at the Museum of Modern Art Library, where he manages collection development, including the library’s artists’ books collection. Senior lectures often on the history of artists’ publications and contemporary art and design publishing. He also curates exhibitions of MoMA Library materials including: THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY (2016), Ray Johnson Designs (2014), Please Come to the Show (2013), Millennium Magazines (2012), Access to Tools: Publications from the Whole Earth Catalog, 1968–74 (2011). Please Come to the Show, a book documenting his exhibition of artists’ invitations and show flyers from the MoMA Library, was published by Occasional Papers in 2014. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Dot Dot Dot, Bulletins of the Serving Library, ART PAPERS, and C Magazine. He organizes a regular program of events for Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair and the LA Art Book Fair called the Classroom. Senior edited an artist’s book series through Printed Matter and the NYABF from 2008-2014, which included publications with Dexter Sinister, David Horvitz, Emily Roysdon, Aaron Flint Jamison, James Hoff and Eve Fowler. He serves on the board of directors of Primary Information and Yale Union.

Labyrinth. Four Times Through the Labyrinth. Olaf Nicolai, Jan Wenzel. Spector Books, Rollo Press.

*New English Translation

“This book on labyrinths is wonderful! It enlarges the traditional catalog of labyrinths so much and so well, being itself labyrinthine,” remarked Jean-Luc Nancy, the French philosopher, on the German edition, published by Spector Books, ISBN 978-3-940064-82-0, in summer 2012. Sadie Plant, author of “Zeroes + Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture”, has now translated Labyrinth into English.

The starting point for this transcript of four lectures, all held in Leipzig in 2010, is a public art work that Olaf Nicolai installed in Paris in 1998. By exploring and combining a broad spectrum of topics that relate to the theme of the labyrinth, this book serves as both, a reference system to Nicolai’s work as well as an independent source book dealing with labyrinthian matter ranging from the minotaur to the floorplans of IKEA. Published in collaboration with Rollo Press.

320 pp., ca. 280 black-and-white illustrations,
softcover, perfect bound

Price: €12.00

Buy it