Archival Textures - Posting

The book (Re)claiming presents ways in which various queer and feminist communities and initiatives in the Netherlands have (re)claimed the triangle—along with other symbols, words and stories—and in doing so take up an empowering position in a hostile society.

Besides a collection of buttons, archival materials featured in this book include short statements and flyers by queer groups such as SUHO, Sjalhomo, Roze Front, Roze Driehoek, Roze Gebaar, Van Doofpot tot Mankepoot, Interpot/ILIS, Lesbisch Archief Amsterdam, Strange Fruit Vrouwen and Groep Zwarte Vrouwen Nijmegen, as well as a text by Karin Daan, the designer of the Homomonument in Amsterdam. With this selection, this book brings together queer, trans, crip, feminist, Jewish and Black perspectives on (re)claiming as an activist strategy.

Most of these materials were researched at IHLIA LGBTI Heritage in Amsterdam, with additions found at the International Institute of Social History and the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV-Atria) in Amsterdam, and LAN Lesbisch Archief Nijmegen.

Moving beyond the usual genres of form in graphic design’s canonical history, ‘Designing History’ proposes a model centred on bureaucratic instruments of identity, ownership, value, and permission: money, passports, certificates, property deeds, etc. It considers the implications of a design history of the document, where the designer shifts from being a practitioner of conventional design histories to become subject and agency of bureaucratic authority. The book is a revised edition of ‘Immutable: Designing History’ (2022) and includes an extended essay that contextualizes the project as a remapping of graphic design’s historical, pedagogical, and practical assumptions.

This book stems from the author’s discontents with Lacanian Psychoanalysis, by drawing from psychoanalysts like Félix Guattari and Sándor Ferenczi, as well as authors like Viveiro DeCastro, and Thomas Lamarre, to whom the book is dedicated. 

As Lucas Ferraço Nassif elaborates on the possibility of a multiplicitous Unconscious, or rather, a mass of many Unconscious(es), he attempts here to fold the book itself into the text, to make the organisation of the physical book itself a part of the elaboration. 

This 2nd Edition comes with a few editorial changes, and a slightly different design approach. It is being presented now with a suite of endorsements from a group of exciting writers and researchers, including Persis Bekkering, Thomas Lamarre, and Yuchen Li. Much of the first edition is preserved, and an extra text has been added, written by the editor as a part of the lecture at Ifilnova. There has been a focus on making this book more accessible, so we have reworked the design of this edition in Black & White. 

The Unconscious is Semiotic, not Linguistic, and it only jumps out when you read between the lines. Do you remember, back in 1997, when 600 kids had epileptic shocks whilst watching Television—the Pokémon Shock? This might sound strange at first, but Lucas Ferraço Nassif theorises that, contrary to the claim that this was caused by oscillations of blue and red light alone, it could have been caused by microperceptions and intensities within narrative. As Porygon takes Ash and friends into the digital world, the immanence of unconscious assemblages drags viewers in, too. 

Such is the haptic and imagetic nature of this book. Using several design and editorial strategies, and a particular mode of writing, the author attempts to elaborate on their work on the Unconscious by recreating a similar possibility—where book, language and reader collapse into a composition, an assemblage or a haecceity. Unconsciousness operates as the multiplanar compositions of Japanese Anime do, so this book has been organized accordingly—different texts, different temporalities, different voices—and like the Japanese concept of Ma (negative space), or even like CoreCore, something jumps out of the breaks, the gaps in between the layers, and therein lies, for this book, a departure point for elaborating on not just one, but many, Unconscious(es). 

A reader documenting the exhibition and symposium on eight schools, educational organisations and independent, self-organised educational programmes which see themselves as alternatives to traditional art academies and currently occupy central positions in the field of contemporary art.

The Educational Web: Reader brought together eight schools, educational organisations and independent, self-organised educational programmes at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. Often with a strong theoretical orientation, each of the programmes can be understood as a space for learning, a network and a community that does not rely on traditional curricula, but is organised around a form of immediacy and the relationship between artistic practice and local context. The programmes were invited to exhibit their own pedagogical approaches, resulting in an exploration of the interface between pedagogy, artistic practice and curatorial work.

Artists, researchers, and educators came together for the symposium on 1 and 2 July 2023 to articulate and reflect on recent developments in artist-initiated pedagogy and institutional practice. The symposium continued the questions raised by the exhibition and was expanded by a series of contributions, which are now collected for the first time in revised form in this volume, The Educational Web: Reader.

Texts by Luis Camnitzer, Feza Kayungu Ramazani, Maria Lind, Ghislaine Leung, Christian Nyampeta, Sofía Olascoaga, Emily Pethick, Laurence Rassel, Anja Steidinger, Nora Sternfeld, Prodige Kevin Tumba Makonga, Marina Vishmidt, Mi You.

A legendary choreographer’s personal and practical guide to the art of dance-making. 

Yvonne Rainer was a founding member of Judson Dance Theater, a 1960s New York artists’ collective that championed ordinary, spare movements and spontaneity. Rainer’s decades of creativity—in dance and in filmmaking—have inspired generations of avant-garde, political, and feminist choreographers. Her many works include the iconic dance Trio A and the film Hand Movie. 

In this book, Rainer dancer and choreographer Emmanuèle Phuon helps Rainer gather teaching notes from her dance classes and workshops, passages from her creative journals, and her newer thoughts on movement and art, opening a window on to the life’s work of a transformative artist. With fifty prompts for improvisational movement (“39. Travel a long distance as fast as you can while making regular changes in your means of locomotion”), sly illustrations by Pascal Lemaître, and an illuminating interview with Phuon, this workbook makes Rainer’s friendly, humorous, and down&-to-earth creative practice available to everyone. Because, as Rainer says, if you can move, you are a dancer.

Studies on Squats is an evocative exploration of embodied resistance and political movement that uses the multifaceted posture of the “Asian Squat” as a lens through which broader concepts of migration, illness, and resilience are examined. In Studies on Squats, the body—in its most vulnerable and potent states—becomes a speculative site for reclaiming agency by crafting new forms of protest that draw from ancestral strength, humor and eroticism. This posture, rich with cultural resonance, offers as an entry point to imagine ways in which the body can engage in acts of defiance against systems of oppression. Studies on Squats  invites the audience to consider how dance and choreographic thinking can serve as tools for envisioning alternative futures, where artistry empowers those enduring systemic social injustices to transform their realities.