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Cover of God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin

Dancing Foxes Press

God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin

Hilton Als ed.

€40.00

Baldwin's life and legacy as remembered by a pantheon of artists and writers: from Jamaica Kincaid and Barry Jenkins to Richard Avedon and Alice Neel.

When author James Baldwin died in 1987, he left behind an extraordinary body of work: novels, poems, film scripts and, perhaps most indelibly, essays. A friend and supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, Baldwin was a critical voice in the civil rights movement. After reaching acclaim in his early career as a writer, he struggled to retain the author's "I," while taking on the "we" of the people.

Edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hilton Als and growing out of his landmark exhibition at David Zwirner in 2019, God Made My Face brings together an impressive assembly of contributors, ranging from Baldwin biographer David Leeming to novelist Jamaica Kincaid and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, to create a memorial mosaic: one that not only mirrors Baldwin's various tones but also closely examines his singular contributions to cinema, theater, the essay and Black American critical studies. These essays are illustrated by artwork from modern and contemporary artists who were either personal contemporaries of Baldwin or directly inspired by his work. In each piece assembled here, the authors speak from a personal, informed perspective, illuminating Baldwin's deeply anguished and enlightened voice and his belief that, ultimately—because we are human—we share the potential to love, connect and live together in all our glory.

Artists include: Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Don Bachardy, Alvin Baltrop, Anthony Barboza, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Beauford Delaney, Marlene Dumas, Glenn Ligon, George McCalman, Alice Neel, Elle Pérez, Cameron Rowland, Kara Walker, James Welling, Larry Wolhandler.

Authors include: Stephen Best, Daphne A. Brooks, Teju Cole, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Barry Jenkins, Jamaica Kincaid, David Leeming, Darryl Pinckney.

recommendations

Cover of the ALL-OVER

Dancing Foxes Press

the ALL-OVER

Amy Sillman

Monograph €40.00

Shifting between figuration and abstraction, comedy and doubt, order and mess, Amy Sillman's painting has greatly influenced generations of American artists.

New York-based Amy Sillman (born 1955) is one of the most beloved and quietly influential contemporary American artists. The ALL-OVER provides a comprehensive overview of her most recent bodies of work, including painting and serially exhibited large-scale abstractions, as well as diagrams, drawings, animations and sculpture.

The title of the book, and the exhibition it accompanies at Frankfurt's Portikus, refers to a concept often used to describe abstract painting (the classic instance of which is the work of Jackson Pollock). Much of Sillman's oeuvre can be categorized as such, although her abstractions often suggest recognizable forms and figures. In the 24-canvas series Panorama, motifs seem to run continuously around the walls of the exhibition space, but in fact are repeated prints of the artist's drawings with painterly interventions. The materiality is lost through the superimposition of print and oil paint; what remains is pure color and gesture. Also present here are stills from an animation developed by Sillman to be exhibited alongside Panorama and an insert made especially for the book by the artist. Alongside essays by Manuela Ammer, Yve-Alain Bois and Sillman herself. The book includes a conversation with the artist by Fabian Schöneich.

Cover of If They Come in the Morning...

Verso Books

If They Come in the Morning...

Angela Y. Davis

One of America's most historic political trials is undoubtedly that of Angela Davis. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Davis, and including contributions from numerous radicals such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins, this book is not only an account of Davis's incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United State.  

Since the book was written, the carceral system in the US has seen unprecedented growth, with more of America's black population behind bars than ever before. The scathing analysis of the role of prison and the policing of black populations offered by Davis and her comrades in this astonishing volume remains as pertinent today as the day it was first published.  

Featuring contributions from George Jackson, Bettina Aptheker, Bobby Seale, James Baldwin, Ruchell Magee, Julian Bond, Huey P. Newton, Erika Huggins, Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, and others.

Cover of Ponk!

Nightboat Books

Ponk!

Marcus Clayton

Fiction €20.00

A punk rock anti-memoir told through the eyes of a biracial Afrolatino punk academic. 

¡PÓNK! follows Moose, an alienated academic and lead guitarist for Pipebomb!, as he navigates through spaces in and out of South East Los Angeles: punk clubs, college classrooms, family gatherings, street protests, and euphoric backyard shows.Oscillating between autofiction, memoir, and lyric, Clayton blurs genres while articulating the layered effects of racism, trauma, immigration, policing, Black hair, performance, and toxic academic language to uncover how one truly becomes an "ally." Borrowing from the spatial lyricism of Claudia Rankine, the genre-bending storytelling of Alexander Chee, and the racial musings of James Baldwin, ¡PÓNK!'s narrative takes back punk rock and finds safe space in the mosh pit.

Cover of Aftershow

Sternberg Press

Aftershow

Pauline Boudry/ Renate Lorenz

Performance €25.00

A monograph / artists' book that engages with the recent film installations of Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz. Installation shots, research material, scripts, and film stills give an insight into the artists' investigation of performance in film and their dense net of references to experimental film, the history of photography, sound, and underground (drag) performances.

The book's title alludes to an interest in opaque events that are belated, left backstage or off-screen. A number of (fictitious) letters to friends and collaborators such as Sharon Hayes, Yvonne Rainer, Ginger Brooks-Takahashi, and Jack Smith place the work of Boudry & Lorenz in a context of debates around temporalities, activism, the archival, decolonizing practices, and queer histories. Published following the exhibition “Patriarchal Poetry” at the Badischer Kunstverein, September 27– November 24, 2013.

Cover of The Premise of a Better Life

After 8 Books

The Premise of a Better Life

Sam Pulitzer

An artist's book by New York-based author and artist Sam Pulitzer (born 1984), The Premise of a Better Life combines photographs with ethical and existential questions addressed to the viewer, in an allegory of the contemporary condition. These photographs of everyday things, ambiguous details, nondescript landscapes and cityscapes were mostly taken in New York, although the city appears as the pale reflection of a model city.

Each picture is accompanied by a question: "Can you afford yourself?" "Are you waiting for a moment that just won't come?" "If you knew then what you know now, would it make a difference?" "Do you trust happiness?" The montages offer a complex, personal, at times satirical image of the present age.

An original essay by Pulitzer unfolds the project's philosophical and political issues, notably discussing a key reference for the project, Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope.

Cover of Auditing Intimacy

Fantôme Verlag

Auditing Intimacy

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence

Auditing Intimacy is a collection of postal correspondence, photographs and declassified documents produced by Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly between 2015 and 2020 under the banner of their shared practice The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence. In a spirit of transparency and full disclosure, the publication contains a certified, independent and critical audit of the practice by Alicja Melzacka. The project was undertaken to commemorate the fifth anniversary of O.J.A.I.

Edited by Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly
Artworks by Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly
Essay by Alicja Melzacka
Design by Zero Desk
Documentation by Pauline Miko
Published by Fantôme Verlag
174 pages

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence is the collaborative practice of artists Chris Dreier (DE) and Gary Farrelly (IRE/BE). The work is fuelled by a recurring obsession with architecture, infrastructure, finance,  institutional power and DIY ritualism. O.J.A.I. pursues a strategy of self-institutionalisation where tools and codified rules of engagement are appropriated from economic and political infrastructures for the purposes of structuring intimacy and conjuring autonomy.

Cover of Having a party (hope you will be there)

Damien & The Love Guru

Having a party (hope you will be there)

Mickael Marman

"Having a party (hope you will be there)", is a catalogue of an exhibition organized by Mickael Marman and D&TLG at CFAlive in Milan with artists from the black European diaspora, including original contributions, photos of the show, as well as a brand new intro text by Olamiju Fajemisin.

Cover of Psalmist Kaput

Cloak

Psalmist Kaput

Cloak

Through the harsh noise of reality, a signal appears. At first faint, but slowly, as we approach, it grows louder, more defined. Aerial photographs depict odd structures and garbled sounds, blurred images of decaying media, alien architecture. It calls out your name.

Psalmist Kaput lures the reader into a misama of fragmented speech, disembodied voices, deteriortating thresholds, and lo-res nightmares. Fusing text and image, it is a work undefinable and wholly its own.

Enter the exclusion zone, witness its monuments, and if you're able, find your way back out again. "Soon we will all be submerged."