The Subjective Object. Anna-Sophie Springer (Ed.) K.Verlag.

Posted in Exhibitions, photography, politics on September 7th, 2012
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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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Khhhhhhh. Slavs and Tatars. Mousse Publishing / The Moravian Gallery.

Posted in history, politics, writing on August 21st, 2012
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Khhhhhhh. Slavs and Tatars. Mousse Publishing / The Moravian Gallery.

A reconsideration of pedagogy, progress, and the sacred role of language via the perspective of a single pesky phoneme, [kh]. Khhhhhhh explores the thorny issues of knowledge versus wisdom and the immediacy of the oral versus the remoteness of the written word thru a fireside chat around sacred hospitality and Velimir Khlebnikov.

English and Czech
64 pages
23 x 31 cm

D 18€

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Surfing the Black: Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema… and its Transgressive Moments. Jan van Eyck Academie.

Posted in Film, history, politics on August 10th, 2012
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Surfing the Black: Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema… and its Transgressive Moments. Jan van Eyck Academie.

The Yugoslav black wave cinema of the sixties and the seventies is one of the grand, though hidden, chapters of cinema history. Talented young authors, working under the sign of individual expression and aesthetic experimentation, pushed and explored the limits of the constraints of a socialist state. Their efforts lead to a new path of visual expression, so outstanding by its social and political engagement, its formal invention and its courage. 



This book is the result of a multi-disciplinary research attempting to cross over politics, philosophy, design, art, architecture, and some speculative thinking. Starting from archival work, interviews, seminars, screenings and a conference, Surfing the Black has found its (temporary) conclusion in a publication consisting of six theoretical essays and three fanzines that open up the black wave film experience to current affairs. This is Yugoslavia, and modern cinema, at its blackest and brightest.

With six theoretical essays (by Boris Buden, Pavle Levi and Owen Hatherly, among others) and fanzines comprising an interview with one of the most important Yugoslav filmmakers, Želimir Žilnik, and a comprehensive glossary of terms that belong to the period and field of Yugoslav culture and politics, this is the first book on the subject in the English-speaking world.

Edition of 300

216 Pages
Text in English

D 22€

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The Bakery: IDEA IN ACTION. Spector Books.

Posted in performance, politics, writing on July 10th, 2012
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The Bakery: IDEA IN ACTION, Christine Peters, Richard Siegal, Dieta Sixt (Ed.), Spector Books

American dancer and choreographer Richard Siegal created an artistic network called THE BAKERY in 2005 devoted to interdisciplinary research and production. Along with performing artists, Siegal works with architects, composers, new media experts, designers, curators, and theoreticians. Together they explore new directions in performance related to technology and the other arts. The exploration of these relationships has resulted in interactive installations, such as IF / THEN INSTALLED or LOGIC GATE, which have been shown in various museums and exhibition halls, as well as dance performances and site-specific projects, as the most recent works ©OPIRATES and CIVIC MIMIC exemplify.

THE BAKERY also promotes the If / Then Methodology, Siegal’s choreographic framework, a game-based, syntactical and notational system, as described in the dvd publication IF / THEN DIALOGUES. Since its founding, THE BAKERY has continued to widen its network on an international scale. A cross-disciplinary initiative, it invites others to partake in an ongoing discourse. This book presents contributions by internationally acknowledged artists, writers, and curators who look at performance-making from the points of view of their specific fields.

Contributors: Tim Etchells, Didier Faustino, Barbara Formis, Heiner Goebbels, RoseLee Goldberg, Hubert Machnik, Chantal Pontbriand, Chris Salter, Susan Sgorbati

D 24 €

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Jeremy Deller. Joy in People. Hayward Publishing.

Posted in politics on June 30th, 2012
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Joy in People, Jeremy Deller

To accompany the Hayward Gallery exhibition of the same name this 216 page catalogue on the artist, filmmaker, curator and cultural archivist Jeremy Deller presents compelling, subversive works from his entire career.

The Turner-Prize winning artist has been hugely influential and this comprehensive catalogue is the first book to cover his entire career. In addition to essays by esteemed cultural theorist Stuart Hall, music historian Rob Young and Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff, there is also a conversation between Deller and curator Matthew Higgs and a focus piece by the artist’s mother.

Contains 180 colour illustrations.

D 32.80 €

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South # 1

Posted in magazines, politics, poster, Theory, writing on June 27th, 2012
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South Magazine #1 . Summer 2012,

SOUTH magazine a new collaboration / co- publication of LifO and Kunsthalle Athena

SOUTH is an arts and culture magazine published in Athens and distributed internationally. Possessed by a spirit of absurd authority, we will try to contaminate the prevailing culture with ideas that derive from southern mythologies such as the “perfect climate”, “easy living”, “chaos”, “corruption”, and the “dramatic temperament”, among others. Through our twisted – and “southern” – attitude…, expressed through critical essays, artist projects, interviews and features, we would like to give form to the concept of the South as a “state of mind” rather than a set of fixed places on the map. People from different – literal or metaphorical – ‘Souths’ will renegotiate the southern attitude, partly to define it and partly to invent it, within the post-crisis world. Opening up an unexpected dialogue among neighbourhoods, cities, regions and approaches, SOUTH will be both a magazine and a meeting point for shared intensities.

Published by: Dyo Deka Ekdotiki SA, A collaboration of LIFO free press & Kunsthalle Athena
Editor-in-Chief: Marina Fokidis
Creative Director: Yannis Karlopoulos
Editorial Team: Daphne Mangalousi, Eleanna Papathanasiadi, Angeliki Roussou, Apostolos Vasilopoulos
Editorial Consultants: Dimitris Politakis, Pablo León de la Barra

€ 10

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THE MAKING OF THE CHINESE NEW WORKING CLASS THIRTY YEARS OF MIGRATION Chinas neue Arbeiterklasse Dreißig Jahre Wanderarbeit. Ludlow 38. Spector Books.

Posted in photography, politics, writing on June 1st, 2012
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THE MAKING OF THE CHINESE NEW WORKING CLASS THIRTY YEARS OF MIGRATION Chinas neue Arbeiterklasse Dreißig Jahre Wanderarbeit. Ludlow 38. Spector Books.

Vor 30 Jahren wurde in China eine Reformpolitik eingeleitet, die sich der westlichen Globalisierung öffnete. Als Ergebnis entstand eine neue Arbeiterklasse: die Wanderarbeiter, die mittlerweile mehr als 200 Millionen zählt und den wirtschaftlichen Aufstieg Chinas im weltweiten Wettbewerb überhaupt erst ermöglichte.

D 14 €
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Mountainislandglacier

Posted in politics, Theory, writing on March 31st, 2012
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Mountainislandglacier 

After a game-changing year when Europe, in all its tangible and intangible consequences reached far and wide, BDP are proud to announce one of our most ambitious compilations of art, writing and investigation on our contemporary’s troubled, shape-shifting realities. In a unique dual book publication (English/Spanish editions) edited by the group ‘Correspondence from Eyjafjallajökull’ the book contains the artistic results and research of the group, along with eleven probing and insightful carefully selected ‘collaborations’. These diverse entries take many forms, including fiction, essay, polemnic,
After working together as a research group centering around the event that was Eyjafjallajökull in May 2010, ‘Correspondence from Eyjafjallajökull’ went about re-examining the idea of Europe. With no air traffic possible, Europe found itself connected in a very physical way, a unity that is the opposite in many ways of how ‘Europe’ has been so recently conceived. Through various forms of artistic research and development new, kaleidoscopic perspectives of Europe came about, moving from peripheries such as Turkey and Iceland itself, moving inward to the imaginative world of European identity creation.

With a strong focus on the problematic nature of European discourse as it currently is offered, the recent rise of protests movements in Spain appear in contributions from Maria Ptqk, Emanuele Guidi, Juan Freire and Santiago Eraso: the 15th May Movement in Spain and The Arab Spring pre-dated but also foretold the wider Occupy movement of 2012, an incredible year in which protest and the right to protest swept the world in myriad forms. The playful use of fiction to create stories and identity is evident in contributions from Pavla Ascher, John Holten and Alan Pauls. Re-imagining the line of Europe’s borders opens the anthology with Urzsula Wozniak’s essay on Turkey’s relationship with Europe, while Markus Miesson offers an extension of the realm of what can be thought of as ‘Europe’ with an extract from his East Coast Europe project.

D 10 €

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Design Act. Sternberg Press

Posted in graphic design, politics, Uncategorized, writing on January 27th, 2012
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Design Act. Sternberg Press

Edited by Magnus Ericson, Ramia Mazé
Contributions by Magnus Ericson, Natasha Marie Llorens, Ramia Mazé Interviews with Ana Betancour, Otto von Busch, Mauricio Corbalan, Pelin Dervis, Anthony Dunne, Joseph Grima, Peter Lang, Yanki Lee, Tor Lindstrand, Helena Mattsson, Ou Ning, Doina Petrescu, Fiona Raby, Meike Schalk, Christina Zetterlund

Design Act: Socially and Politically Engaged Design Today—Critical Roles and Emerging Tactics is a project that presents and discusses contemporary design practices that engage with political and societal issues. Since 2009, the Iaspis project Design Act has been highlighting and discussing practices in which designers have been engaging critically as well as practically in such issues. Itself an example of applied critical thinking and experimental tactics, the process behind the Design Act project is considered as a curatorial, participatory and open-ended activity. Design Act has developed through an online archive, public events, and an international network.

Co-published with Iaspis
Design by Johanna Lewengard

D 19 €
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White Fungus # 12

Posted in magazines, painting, photography, politics, writing on January 12th, 2012
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White Fungus # 12

White Fungus is an experimental arts magazine based in Taichung City, Taiwan. Featuring writing on art, new music, history and politics, plus original artworks, poetry, fiction and comics, White Fungus is an ongoing experiment in community media art.

Often described as a work of art in itself, White Fungus is held in library collections including The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Southbank Centre (London), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Spain), National Library of Australia and Te Papa (National Museum of New Zealand).

Complimenting its publishing schedule, White Fungus holds interdisciplinary arts events at galleries around the world. Past events have been held at P.P.O.W (New York), Taipei Contemporary Art Center, ARTSPACE (Auckland) and Adam Art Gallery (Wellington).

WF, from their unique vantage, come across one minute as hardcore situationist anarchists yet offset with the economic nerdiness and steadfast verve of a William F. Buckley; it’s captivating to follow how the gears shift. – FANZINE, 2010

As the spores have been released its creators look forward to seeing which way the wind blows. The only thing more uncertain than its future is its past.

D 15 €

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