The latest volume of writing by influential New York–based critic and curator Bob Nickas collects his 2012–14 column for Vice magazine’s Komp-laint Dept. This column unleashed the full omnivorous range of the author’s interests. There are essays on musicians such as Neil Young, Sun Ra, Royal Trux and Lydia Lunch, which look at their biographies and the history of Nickas’ personal relationship with their music; there are lengthy and often very funny “complaints” about, among other things, two different presidents, Jeff Koons, New York architecture, the meeting of fashion and punk, religion in general, nostalgia and the problem with contemporary graffiti. Additionally, there are meditations on filmmakers such as David Cronenberg and Nicolas Refin. The book is rounded out by perhaps the definitive (two-part) examination of how and why Richard Prince uses appropriation.

Author: Bob Nickas

Publisher: Karma

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Showboat: Punk/Sex/Bodies explores sex in punk and punk in sex. Punk is often thought of as an almost asexual movement, in part because of its charged aversion to romance (see Johnny Rotten’s notorious description of love as “2 minutes and 52 seconds of squelching noises”). Yet, its raw street sound triggered an exuberant, primal physical release among its youthful followers.

For many punks, sex was used as a necessary shock tactic against the orthodoxies that held sway in conservative 1970s Britain. The status of punk as a radical subculture meant that it could freely explore sex without mainstream censorship; and this ability to openly express sex and sexuality provided punk with so much of its essential rawness and immediacy.

Beginning in 1972 and spanning right up to the present day, Showboat provides a chronological survey of the relationship between punk and sex as seen through original posters, flyers, record covers, photographs and ephemera drawn from the editor’s punk archive, The Mott Collection. Alongside written contributions from Julie Burchill, Paul Cook, Vivien Goldman, Eve Libertine, Bruce LaBruce, Amos Poe, Richard Prince and Will Self among many others. Designed by Jamie Andrew Reid.

 

Punk’s Dead. Simon Barker, Six. Divus.

In 1976, when I moved into the St. James Hotel in London, I bought myself one of the cheapest pocket cameras available. Fully automatic, with no controls or settings, it just required a simple slot-in film cartridge. An idiot could use it – and I did.
I knew I didn’t want to be like other photographers, so I chose never to take a black and white photograph or focus the camera. Subconsciously I concentrated on the women and artists at the heart of what would later be known as ‘punk’ in London.
Women such as JORDAN, SIOUXSIE, DEBBIE JUVENILE, TRACIE O’KEEFE, ARI UP, POLY STYRENE and NICO
Artists and writers such as MALCOLM MCLAREN, HELEN WELLINGTON-LLOYD aka HELEN OF TROY, BERTIE MARSHALL aka BERLIN and DEREK JARMAN.
The book PUNK’S DEAD is a product of that camera and those times – my family album covering the years 1976 to 78. The photos you see in it were all unplanned, spur of the moment shots taken by myself for myself and, up until now, with never a thought given to publication. In over thirty years, they have only been seen by a handful of close friends. I used to think they weren’t good enough to show people. Now I think they are almost too good.
-SIX aka SIMON BARKER

Text: Michael Bracewell, Damo Suzuki, Peter Tatchell, Michael Clark, Holly Woodlawn, Greil Marcus, Camila Batmanghelidjh| Design: Blanka Brixová a Simon Barker
152 pages of rare photographs and text on fine paper in hardback with sticker on cover
Size: 22 x 27 x 2 cm|
Year: 2011
ISBN: 978-80-86450-65-0||

34 €
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