2nd edition – 100 numbered copies
A Manifesto for a fictional political movement that through satire and pop culture references shines a light on the sterotypes and prejudices within the gay male community.
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This glossary is meant to accompany the three-volume publication The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism Part 1, 2 and 3. It reflects the concerns contained in those volumes. It marks the beginning of a long-term process of creating a dictionary of terms with which to understand and eventually destabilize the complex ways through which a future Neural Capitalism will work in creating contemporary forms of neural subsumption. Neural subsumption is a future condition brought about by an assemblage of networked neural technologies that will link our brainwaves to the Internet of Everything (IoE) and then encode them to use in advanced data analysis. No thought conscious or unconscious will be left unrecorded, encoded or surveyed. Furthermore this data will be used for a future form of data inscription upon the connectome: the data set describing the con- nection matrix of the nervous system and which represents the network of anatomical connections linking neural elements together. This in the end constitutes what I have called the Statisticon. Warren Neidich is an interdisciplinary artist and theorist working between Berlin and New York. He studied photography, art, neuro- science, medicine, ophthalmology, and architecture. Recently his practice has focused on performance, sculpture, video and film to investigate the contested milieus of the social brain. He is founder and director of the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, New York and Berlin, 2015–2019. Its’ curriculum focuses upon the emerging conditions of cognitive capitalism in which the brain and the mind are the new factories of the 21st century. In 1995 he conceived of the website artbrain.org and the Journal of Neuroaesthetics. It officially appeared on the web in 1997 and concentrates on the capacity of artistic practice to deregulate and estrange the social-political-cultural milieu in the end activating the material brain’s neural plastic potential.
Published by Archive Books.
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“By their very nature secret practices, being secret, are generally hard to comment on. Still, we can imagine that the institution of secret marriage must be at least as old as that of the public one, possibly older, in fact, if one is to imagine the birth of ‘coupledom’ as taking place between two people alone under the cover of night. Secret marriage today remains an incalculable part of the institution – and perhaps one of its most romantic forms. […]
As though to compensate, we celebrate the secret ceremony – gay, straight or non-binary – not with equal but greater fervour. Just as a stolen glance is more arousing, a forbidden tryst more urgent, so too is the secret marriage more alive, more keen. Marry in secret in solidarity, in lust, out of an exhaustive need. Marry in secret and do with the heart what the gun cannot: melt the frozen conflicts, be they in Abkhazia or in Glendale.”
Excerpt from the publication
Offset print, 26 × 20 cm, 16 pages, stitched binding, mimeograph print
Edition of 35
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The Serving Library Annual comprises a number of individual “Bulletins” organized around a theme for an international audience of designers, artists, writers, and researchers. Newly published by ROMA Publications in a yearly format, this inaugural issue is realised in collaboration with Public Fiction, a journal and exhibition-maker based in Los Angeles. It deals with acts of civil disobedience and other forms of resistance, particularly in view of the relationship between entertainment and power. Contributors include Hilton Als, Tauba Auerbach, Anne Carson, Mark Leckey, Adrian Piper, Frances Stark, and Martine Syms.
Public Fiction’s next project, which runs broadly concurrent to this new Annual’s lifespan, is named The Conscientious Objector — a multifaceted endeavour commissioned by West Hollywood City Council that unfurls in parts from September 2017 to April 2018. Curated by Public Fiction founder Lauren Mackler and Serving Library editor Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey, The Conscientious Objector comprises a series of “commercials” produced by artists for public access TV, an exhibition of artworks and performances at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture’s Schindler House in West Hollywood, and the present publication.
WHAT IT MEANS TO LOVE TODAY
The contemporary 24-hour news cycle is a swirling gyre of political and economic intrigue, a rolling wave that surges ceaselessly, always building power but never forming a crest. To surf the slipstream of the news is to be forever on the brink of BREAKING.
Against all the uncertainty and fear, nothing seems more eternal, more universal and (unlike our political leaders) quite so strong and stable as love. Summer 2017 is therefore dedicated to what it means to love today. Leap into our fervid arms.
How (…) things that don’t exist
How to (talk about) things that don’t exist focuses on the processes that led to the artworks and arguments in ‘How to (…) things that don’t exist — an exhibition developed out of the 31st São Pau¬lo Biennial’ presented at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto. The publication continues the ide¬as and discussions that generated the exhibition and proposes unexpected synapses between different subject areas: Education; Reverse Colonialism; and Right to the City — Criminalization of the Poor. It includes a wide variety of texts, chronicles, lyrics, historical documents, drawings, collages, paintings, film stills and photographs many of which specifically conceived for this book by artists, curators, art historians, writ-ers, researchers, pedagogues, sociologists, urban planners, journalists, social workers and activists.
Como (falar sobre) coisas que não existem
Como (falar sobre) coisas que não existem centra‑se nos processos que conduziram as obras e discussões presentes na exposição “Como (…) coisas que não existem — uma exposição desenvolvida a partir da 31a Bienal de São Paulo” apresentada no Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves no Porto. A publicação propõe sinapses inesperadas entre os diversos temas tratados: Educação; Colonialismo Invertido; e Direito a Cidade ― Criminalização da Pobreza e inclui uma variedade de textos, cronicas, letras de musicas, documentos históricos, desenhos, colagens, pinturas, fotogramas e fotografias — alguns concebidos especificamente para este livro — da autoria de artistas, curadores, historiadores de arte, escritores, investigadores, pedagogos, sociólogos, urbanistas, jornalistas, assistentes sociais e ativistas.
39.90 €
Texts by Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Noura Al Sayeh
Taken at the height of the Assad days, the images of the photographer Giovanna Silva overlap in this publication with Syrian tourist guides’ images and texts, creating a net of intended and unintended relationships and time interconnections. As Pier Paolo Tamburelli writes in his essay, “Silva’s photo speak of time that is twice lost. […] When I look at them, I can smell that apparently eternal condition of no-change in Syria before 2011. I recognize the omnipresent, idiotic smile of Bashar – at the time still considered the gentle son of Hafez al-Assad (the ophthalmologist who lived in London and did not really wanted to leave to become a dictator and who finally had to substitute the nasty brother probably killed by Mossad). Now that the civil war has erased everything that belonged to that Syria, now that everything changed, I have the impression that that world is way more lost than many other episodes of the past. Both for Syrians and for foreigners the memories of the civil war will occupy all the space that could have been dedicated to these last twenty years of Syrian history. […] Not only are those moments gone, but they will not be remembered. The boredom of that period entirely disappeared in the cruel excitement of the war. The pictures are a strange homage to a lost world”.
€25.00
Dear friends and families,
Please join us to celebrate an Asexual international working day on May 1.
With contributions by Nora Schultz, Kayla Guthrie, Nicholas Sewitz, Clarice Lispector, Juliana Huxtable and Keren Cytter.
The event is hosted by Jack Gross.
On the occasion of Motto’s temporary bookstore at Wendy’s Subway, open every Saturday and Sunday from 12pm to 6pm and during evening events, May 1st through May 29th.
**Free Vodka**
May Day for Worker and Communists – “A decidedly non-pagan, asexual May Day celebration is that of International Workers’ Day, a holiday created by socialists and labor organizers in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot of May 4th, 1886 (also called the Haymarket Massacre or, more cautiously, the Haymarket Affair).
In post-Civil War America, the Industrial Revolution was in full blaze and workers were suffering. Machines were replacing skilled laborers, hours were increasing, conditions were worsening, and the wages were inadequate. The revolutionary ideas of socialism and Marxism caught on with many of these disenfranchised and antagonized laborers, and the movement for an eight-hour day had gained powerful momentum. With all of this brewing, disputes and riots ignited again and again. Then at a large protest in Chicago’s Haymarket Square someone threw a dynamite bomb at the cops, which triggered a battle that left at least twelve dead and many more wounded. The riot was followed by a hugely publicized trial and the eventual hanging of four anarchists, the “Haymarket Martyrs.” This violent clash in Chicago became a powerful symbol for radical labor groups. A few years later, the Second International officially initiated the tradition of May Day labor demonstrations that continue still.”
Poetry – “Literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.”
Prose – “written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure.”
Vodka – “an alcoholic spirit of Russian origin made by distillation of rye, wheat, or potatoes.”
London, Paris, New York, Milan, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Palo Alto – art is moving faster than capital like a god wind that no-one can stop let alone control. Meanwhile a lot of art writing and ‘critical theory’ is stuck in the comfort zone of the 70-90s when there actually was an avant garde or subculture. For art writing to get back on track it needs to shake out of this nostalgia and start engaging with the nuances of what is going on by covering the new breeds of involvement that have emerged since 2009 – the new sincerities and ironies, the more subtle art practices and social variations of market participation that have developed to deal with the institutional grip. For some time an aesthetic suspension of disbelief helped to provide an alibi that allowed us to participate as if we did believe the market was the key to “validation”, but then quickly vanished into feelings of depression after any agency seemed like an impossibility. As the contradictions got wider, different problems have emerged such as whether art is concurrent with the transitional moments of our present culture or technology, or whether art altogether has reached its informational limit. The art world has slowly transitioned from modernist pretensions that seem like delusional excuses to the public, to developing a new sensibility – one of silent, shared communion, retributions and confessions. It has taken the step into a reality that is more in keeping with the real world of business, design and branding than creating stark ‘alternatives’. Beyond short-term pragmatism and adaptability, how can artists aesthetically work alongside their authentic desire to participate in a logic of the market that by necessity must scale? How can we realistically judge the work of art institutions if they are frozen into following instrumental logics rather than relevance? With the availability of information online, there is no way these logics are not transparent to a committed internet user. Narratives like these happened in Pop Music years ago. Just as the Music Industry had to face up to its own protocols, the Art Industry needs to be judged on its changing developments; the ways art is being used as a financial instrument, art’s new marketing techniques, art as representation of different sociological interests, art as access to power, status, fame, participation and the rest of it. Until art writing gets really into these driving forces, it won’t be able to say anything interesting about art. It also won’t be able to grow or be writing that anyone really wants to read. Art Against Art marks a turning point – the one that says by breaking from the overbearing logic of what seems like an inevitability, we can get closer to the conceptualizations we would like society to experience but don’t. The Editors
9€
What’s wrong with redistribution? Wolfgang Tillmans. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.
Wolfgang Tillmans’ “truth study centre” became a fixed part of his exhibitions since he first showed a version of the multi-part tabletop installation in 2005. Often arising from local circumstances and current issues at the time of their creation, the “truth study centre” works mark an endeavour to create a clear view in ever more confusing times.
Tillmans observed the paradigm shift that defines politics today early on. The scope and complexity of this project become apparent for the first time through this book, the second we have published, after “manual” in 2007, dedicated to this set of works. Over 320 pages, printed using a high-resolution technique, Tillmans presents an alternative chronology of the present. Far exceeding his original and main medium of photography, he juxtaposes a variety of contrary opinions, statements and comparisons on recurring table formats. The dimensions of the wooden tables, which he designed himself, are not arbitrary: they are built using standard British door panels, 198 cm long, and with one of four different standard widths.
This book gives an overview, through lavish reproductions, of this new form of collage, in which picture, text and object “are only kept in place by their own weight.” An essay by Thomas McDonough, Professor for Art History at Birmingham University, New York, places Tillmans’ project within the context of twentieth-century collage, from Hannah Höch to Robert Rauschenberg.
This artist’s book, produced by Tillmans’ Berlin atelier, includes a Fresnel magnifying glass, making it possible to zoom in on the contents and read even the smallest of printed texts. The largest installation of “truth study centre” to date will be shown in Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof beginning November 28, 2015.
€48.00