mono.kultur #40 : EDMUND DE WAAL : W IS FOR WHITE. mono.kultur.

Posted in magazines, Motto Berlin store, writing on June 1st, 2016
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Edmund de Waal is a potter. His pots, plates, and vessels are the result of craft and mastership, but they are also so much more than that: they are experiments in form and function, abstractions of thoughts on silence and space, on repetition and failure, on substance and fragility, on memory contained.

Edmund de Waal is an artist. He arranges his objects in complex choreographies that are as mysterious as they are mesmerizing. Displayed in galleries and institutions worldwide, his considered installations play with architectural concerns, integrating ideas of space, light and obscurity.

Edmund de Waal is a writer. In 2010, his intimate memoir of a kind, ‘The Hare With Amber Eyes,’ intertwined the biography of a collection of netsuke figures with the biography of his family and became a surprise bestseller, winning several awards. His latest book, ‘The White Road,’ presents a highly personal and engaging research into the history of porcelain.

Whether he sculpts with words or with clay, what Edmund de Waal works with are concepts, ideas, and desires. In a body of work that is at odds with our times and yet oddly successful, his writings and objects overlap and integrate each other in an attempt to understand and transcend our complex relationship with objects and our surroundings.

In an interview with mono.kultur structured like an A-Z of notes and ideas, Edmund de Waal talked about his rules of attachment, the impossibility of repetition, and why ‘doubt’ is the most beautiful word.

Visually, the issue takes inspiration from that most perfect of materials: porcelain. Printed entirely in double-sided splendour, the two finishings of the paper – shiny gloss and smooth matt – evoke the texture of ceramics before and after glazing.

Interview by Mareike Dittmer / Artwork by Edmund de Waal / Design by Designbolaget

5€
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mono.kultur #39 Terre Thaemlitz: The Arrogance of Optimism

Posted in magazines, music on May 19th, 2015
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‘In relation to these larger dynamics, the music is pretty irrelevant,’ says Thaemlitz during our interview, ‘these larger dynamics’ referring to the political undertones of nightlife, as safe spaces for social interaction in general and gender and sexual variance in particular.

Interview by Melissa Canbaz

€6.00

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Mono.Kultur #36: Ricardo Bofill

Posted in magazines on June 12th, 2014
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Mono.Kultur #36: Ricardo Bofill.

mono.kultur #36
RICARDO BOFILL: THE FUTURE OF THE PAST

“I’m interested in my own history of errors.”

‘It is enough to say that Ricardo Bofill is one of Europe’s most famous and prolific architects of the last century. To add any more is to inevitably leave out too much.’ With these words we begin the journey of our new issue mono.kultur #36 into the mind and work of Spanish architect and enfant terrible Ricardo Bofill.

And indeed, where to begin with an architect as over the top as Ricardo Bofill, notorious since the 1970s for his vast city-like housing estates that look like surreal experiments in crossbreeding desert caves with Star Wars; an architect who has designed over 1000 projects in the space of five decades, from perfume bottles to city plans, and pretty much everything in between; who has worked in a style – or a hundred styles – that is as unique as it is impossible to describe; who founded a leftist collective that would eventually end up building airport terminals; whose life reads somewhat like a fairytale itself, taking us from fascist Spain under Franco’s rule to the celebrity frenzy of our modern times, with the Bofill clan holding a somewhat unique position among Spanish tabloids? To add any more is to inevitably leave out too much.

In short, Ricardo Bofill is a gloriously fascinating character with a penchant for the extra-large, in life as well as in work, and we are terribly pleased to dedicate mono.kultur #36 to the Spanish master.

With mono.kultur, Ricardo Bofill talked about fifty years of architecture, the vagaries of ambition and how Modernism killed the city.

Visually, the issue offers a disorienting journey of architectural splendour with plenty of previously unpublished images from the archives of Ricardo Bofill (as well as the odd film still of naked bodies). Using partial high gloss varnish throughout, it is a pleasing juxtaposition of the natural and the artificial, the intellectual and the sexual, the rigorous and the decadent.

Spring 2014 / English / 15 x 20 cm / 48 Pages
Introduction & Interview by Carson Chan
Images courtesy of Taller de Arquitectura
Design by Vela Arbutina & John McCusker
Publisher: Kai von Rabenau

Price: € 5.00

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mono.kultur #35: Marina Abramović

Posted in magazines, performance, writing on November 22nd, 2013
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mono.kultur #35: Marina Abramović

“I’ve been attacked and ridiculed all my life.”

Autumn 2013 / English / 15×20 cm / 48 Pages

Interview by David Levine
Introduction by Anna Saulwick
Artwork by Marina Abramović
Design by Nirit Binyamini & Gila Kaplan

Price: D €5 EU €6 WW €7

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mono.kultur #34: Brian Eno

Posted in magazines, music on July 31st, 2013
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mono.kultur #34: Brian Eno

mono.kultur #34
BRIAN ENO: REVALUATION (A WARM FEELING)
“I think of surrendering as an active verb, not a passive verb.”

Summer 2013 / English / 15×20 cm / 44 Pages
Interview by Irial Eno
Introductions by Jess Gough & Irial Eno
Portrait by Matt Anker
Design / published by Kai von Rabenau

D 5€ EU 6€ WW 7€
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mono.kultur #33 – KIM GORDON: DISSONATINE.

Posted in magazines, music on March 16th, 2013
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mono.kultur #33 – KIM GORDON: DISSONATINE.

“I hope that it still retains a certain wrongness.”

Kim Gordon, of course, created a legacy of musical innovation. Thriving on the playgrounds of noise music for more than three decades, her band Sonic Youth stoically pursued their own particularly dirty blend of noise-punk experimental rock music, building along the way not only a league of dedicated followers, but also miraculously achieving mainstream success without ever ceding ground to mediocrity. If anything, Sonic Youth became a household name for integrity and that specific kind of cool in a genre where cool is firmly attached to youth – which certainly had a lot to do with the detached charisma of Kim Gordon.

While Sonic Youth’s influence on past and current generations of experimental and punk music is undisputed, Kim Gordon’s role as a female figurehead in music and also in the visual arts might be a more complex one, based on the highly personal pursuit of her diverse interests without, unlike so many of today’s pop stars, any discernible strategy or intentional provocation. Instead, it seems to be Gordon’s unfailing belief in subculture and staying true to herself that over the years gave her a voice that would be heard clearly even within mainstream culture.

While, for personal reasons, the future of Sonic Youth remains uncertain, Kim Gordon shows no signs of standing still, returning to her beginnings as a fine artist and pursuing her fascination with noise, in sound and on canvas.

With mono.kultur, Kim Gordon talked about the vulnerability of male rock stars, the myths of New York and why fine art was her first love.

True to Kim Gordon’s DIY philosphy, the issue is somewhat of a treasure chest filled with new and old artwork by Kim Gordon, coming in a set of loose sheets and cards in varying sizes and printed on no less than five different paper stocks, all held together by the most basic commodity of all: the good old rubber band.

Spring 2013
Interview by Fiona McGovern
Artwork by Kim Gordon
Design by Willem Stratmann / Studio Anti

Price: 5€

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mono.archiv #2: Limited Edition Box Set Containing mono.kultur #16 – 30

Posted in Fashion, Film, magazines, music, photography on December 19th, 2012
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“With our eyes firmly set on the future rather than the past, it’s sometimes surprising to stop and catch our breath for a moment only to realise, ‘Blimey! We’ve passed issue #30 already!’ Meaning: High time for our second collector’s box set mono.archiv #02, gathering mono.kultur issues #16 to 30 in one pretty and screenprinted box, in that strange grey/blue/green hue which tends to lean towards one or the other depending on the time of day. Once again including a sweet little wrap-around (water!), and once again your very last chance to get your hands on beloved issues such as Miranda July or Ai Weiwei, which have been well and truly sold out for what feels like years. Strictly limited to 150 copies, and 150 only.”

mono.archiv #02:
Miranda July
Paweł Althamer
MVRDV
Michael Ballhaus
Dries van Noten
Tilda Swinton
Ai Weiwei
Sissel Tolaas
Cyprien Gaillard
Dave Eggers
Manfred Eicher / ECM
Ryan McGinley
Bless
Chris Taylor / Grizzly Bear
Chris Ware

Size: 21 x 16 x 6 cm
Weight: 1.2830 kg
Price: €95.00

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