Islands of Kinship – A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions

First monograph dedicated to the American artist, poet, and activist John Giorno, this publication introduces some of the many ways Giorno wove poetry into all aspects of daily life—by putting words on the wall, on the performance stage, on LP vinyl records, or on the telephone, in the context of the iconic Dial-A-Poem, one of his most celebrated works. A wide range of archival documents, images, and ephemera also form an intimate portrait of Giorno as an activist, performer, Buddhist practitioner, collaborator, and friend.

Published on the occasion of the eponymous retrospective exhibition at the MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, in 2026.

Emerging from the New York downtown scene of the 1960s, John Giorno (1936–2019) developed a singular artistic voice at the crossroads of poetry, performance, painting, and political activism over the course of more than six decades. By bringing the written word off the page and into performance, technology, and visual art, Giorno consistently challenged disciplinary boundaries and advanced a radical vision of language as central to human expression. Though often positioned at the margins of multiple downtown scenes—the Beats, Andy Warhol's Factory, punk music, queer counterculture, anti-war activism—he was in fact an influential presence within all of them, operating as a conduit between coexisting cultural communities. His collaborators included Robert Rauschenberg, William S. Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, and Ugo Rondinone, among many others.

This publication aims to provide a critical and profound reading of Alice Neel's humanism, constructing a journey through her artistic and personal life. The book includes texts by academics and artists, enriched by an extensive number of illustrations, archival photographs and documents.

Alice Neel: I Am the Century accompanies the first major retrospective in Italy dedicated to the US artist Alice Neel (1900–1984), presented by Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin. Conceived as both a critical and a narrative journey, this publication offers an in-depth exploration of Neel's artistic and personal life, expanding on the exhibition through a rich selection of essays and visual material. It brings together sixty works reproduced in dialogue with archival documents, highlighting Neel's role as a pioneer and one of the most important painters of the twentieth century. Contributions by curators, scholars, and artists—including Kelly Richman-Abdou, Jennifer Higgie, Mira Schor, and Annie Sprinkle—provide multiple perspectives on Neel's practice, situating her radical approach to portraiture within broader artistic, social, and political contexts.

Merging realism with surrealism and empathy with unflinching clarity, Neel captured the psychological and emotional depth of her sitters. The publication emphasizes her capacity to chronicle life's stages and relationships—childhood and adulthood, sexuality and intimacy, community and political consciousness—through works that continue to resonate with contemporary audiences. Positioning Neel as both artist and witness, I Am the Century underscores her enduring humanism and her singular vision of the "human comedy," offering readers a comprehensive entry point into a body of work that is still influencing new generations of artists.

Born in 1900 in Merion Square, Pennsylvania, Alice Neel lived in Philadelphia and Havana before settling in New York (where she lived until her death in 1984), becoming part of the social milieu of the Harlem neighbourhood. She painted figuratively throughout her life, often using the people "around her" as subjects, models and muses. For Neel, this meant portraying both the residents of Harlem as well as  strangers, friends and intellectuals who often shared her proximity to the Communist Party. A figurative painter in an era dominated by Abstract Expressionism, Neel developed remarkable and radical new ways of representing the human body in painting, such as with her celebrated nudes of pregnant women.. The introspective aspect of Neel's work, her ability to capture the essence of her subjects and their souls, has made her today one of the most appreciated and respected artists of the twentieth century.

Neel's work has been the subject of retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. It forms part of the permanent collections of institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Moderna Museet in Stockholm; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Tate Modern in London; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Edited by Sarah Cosulich and Pietro Rigolo.
Texts by Sarah Cosulich, Jennifer Higgie, Kelly Richman-Abdou, Pietro Rigolo, Mira Schor, Annie Sprinkle.

Regions surface often in this issue—across arts, tales, and gatherings of individuals and meanings—as a possibility to bypass the borders of nation-states and the meta-geographies of colonial modernity.

Slavs and Tatars; Hera Chan on Stephanie Comilang; Stephanie Bailey on Ho Tzu Nyen; Drifting into the Atmospheric by Sohrab Mohebbi; Lauren Cook contributes nine newly commissioned note-like fiction pieces; Asad Raza on Édouard Glissant; Mira Dayal in conversation with Shanzhai Lyric, TJ Shin, and jina valentine; Temporary Communities, Four Points on Radically Public Institutions by Elvira Dyangani Ose; A Signature Truer Than the Name by Dani Blanga Gubbay; tidbits: Ruoru Mou by Amy Jones; Virginia Ariu by Brit Barton; Bagus Pandega by Harry Burke; Ceidra Moon Murphy by Alex Bennett; Oshay Green by Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi; Shafei Xia in conversation with Danielle Shang; books by Christian Rattemeyer; Guest Design: Lamm & Kirch.

This issue comes with different covers, randomly distributed.

Mousse is a bimonthly contemporary art magazine. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format.

A photographic archive of the transgender community in Bologna in the 1980s. With critical texts by scholars and queer theorists.

This book is inspired by the pictures that Giordano Bonora, a young streetcar operator and aspiring photographer, took of Bologna's small transgender community in 1980 (although it would be more correct to speak, in this case, of proto-Transgenderism). Reproduced here for the first time, these raw and gilded images reflect—during a period in Italy characterized by subversive movements and political revolts that were not just rooted in questions of identity—attempts made by T* people at a construction of the self outside the binary logic of the genotypically XY male/genotypically XX female. By people like Valérie—a woman's face, a hairless chest with no breasts, a fleur-de-lis tattooed on the shoulder, and two pairs of pantyhose—for whom “gender” is not determined biologically but something to be embraced depending on the circumstances. A box containing a jigsaw puzzle with a picture that is constantly changing. Bundled with the photographs, a handful of texts set out to explain how the question of gender involves two cultural levels of sexual difference, the normative and the dissident, and how the decision-making power over organs outside heteropatriarchal systems of sexuality and processes of disidentification are the stakes in the new “somato-political” struggle against hegemonic regimes of oppression conducted by enchanting, allied, opaque, and vulnerable bodies.

Texts by Paolo Barbaro, Paul B. Preciado, Helena Velena, Salvatore Vitale, Wendy Vogel.

Andrew Berardini on Artificial Intelligence; Pepón Osorio; Arash Nassiri; Gloria E. Anzaldúa; Marcela Guerrero speaks with C. Ondine Chavoya; Daisy Lafarge; Dani Blanga Gubbay; Davide Stucchi speaks with Alex Bennett; Luca Lo Pinto on Hanuman Editions; Reynaldo Rivera & Abdellah Taïa; Jungle Books...

This issue comes with different covers, randomly distributed.

A children’s book without a specific age category, offering a glimpse into the small rituals and shared moments that shape a day with Fifi Paris.

Fifi, a Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix, came into the lives of Angelica and Kris a few years ago. Taking care of a puppy is taking responsibility for building their world and letting the small animal transform yours. As her human caretakers, the authors created Fifi’s world with toys, cuddles, rules, snacks and walks in the park. In return, she transforms our world by bringing our community together and reminding us of the importance of caring for one another. In this book, Kris and Angelica narrate a day in the life of Fifi, from the moment she wakes up to when she falls asleep at night. Along the way, they share how they connect with her, how they see her understanding her surroundings and what she has taught them about companionship.

Design by Amy Suo Wu
Copy-editing by Clem Edwards
Photography by Lili Huston-Hertreich

Le Collectif Occasionnel a organisé en Suisse deux expositions qui présentaient les oeuvres de personnes à la fois artistes et travailleureuses du sexe. Cet ouvrage prolonge leur travail en proposant des textes et des entretiens avec des Tds ou des alliéxes. Permettant l’auto-représentation des personnes interrogées, les entretiens mettent en lumière la pluralité des pratique du travail du sexe, mais aussi l’importance de construire des solidarités travailleuses, des outils pour défaire les stigmates et des perspectives de luttes intersectionnelles.

In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, died after being beaten by police officers who arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic’s dress code. Her death galvanized thousands of Iranians—mostly women—who took to the streets in one of the country’s largest uprisings in decades: the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. 

Despite the threat of imprisonment or death for her work as a journalist covering political unrest, state repression, and grassroots activism in Iran—which has led to multiple interrogation sessions and arrests—Fatemeh Jamalpour joined the throngs of people fighting to topple Iran’s religious extremist regime. And across the globe, Nilo Tabrizy, who emigrated from Iran with her family as a child, covered the protests and state violence, knowing that spotlighting the women on the front lines and the systemic injustice of the Iranian government meant she would not be able to safely return to Iran in the future. 

Though they had met only once in person, Nilo and Fatemeh corresponded constantly, often through encrypted platforms to protect Fatemeh. As the protests continued to unfold, the sense of sisterhood they shared led them to embark on an effort to document the spirit and legacy of the movement, and the history, geopolitics, and influences that led to this point. At once deeply personal and assiduously reported, For the Sun After Long Nights offers two perspectives on what it means to cover the stories that are closest to one’s heart—both in the forefront and from afar.

Things Bigger Than What Can Be Seen is a collection of Oraib Toukan’s essays, translated to Arabic for the first time. In close dialogue with Palestinian pedagogue Munir Fasheh on the topic of turbeh (local soil in Arabic), Toukan crafts a haptic perspective on images from what she terms their ‘soil grain’.

Recorded and transcribed throughout the 1960s, Carla Lonzi’s Self-portrait ruptures the narration of post-war modern art in Italy and beyond. Artmaking struck Lonzi as an invitation to be together in a ‘humanly satisfying way’, and this experiment in art-historical writing is a testament to her belief. Lonzi abolishes the role of the critic, her own, seeking change over self-preservation by theorising against the act of theorising.

The life and work of Carla Lonzi (1931–1982) is inseparable from the cultural, political, and social history of Italy in the decades following the Second World War; she occupies a singular position, which today merits reevaluation. A reputed art critic of the 1960s artistic scene, both friend and collaborator of such figures as Carla Accardi, Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini, and Jannis Kounellis, she wrote “Autoportrait” in 1969, a “love letter” to the artists and to creation, but also a farewell chorus to art criticism and the art world. The following year she founded Rivolta Femminile, an active feminist collective, thus becoming the central figure of Italian feminism.

Interviews with Carla Accardi, Getulio Alviani, Enrico Castellani, Pietro Consagra, Luciano Fabro, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Nigro, Guilio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Mimmo Rotella, Salvatore Scarpita, Guilio Turcato, Cy Twombly.

Afterword by Claire Fontaine.
Translated by Allison Grimaldi Donahue.

978-1916425088
105 b&w illustrations
21.6 x 13.9 cm
364 p.
Paperback
November 2021

"Para- hosting" as a cooperative methodology for arts institutions.
What can established art institutions learn from small-scale organizations' approaches to invitation, hosting, and publicness? In Beyond Caring: Para-hosting as Curatorial Escape, Paul O'Neill explores how new forms of invitation can reimagine host–guest relations and open escape routes from fixed institutional roles. Moving between speculation, critique, and proposition, the essay introduces "para- hosting" as a cooperative methodology of generosity and self-organization without absorption. For O'Neill, para-hosting is a form of escape that enables transformative possibilities beyond existing power structures within institutions and otherwise.

In the early 2010s, the idea of "the curatorial" arose after a short but intense debate about what it means to curate exhibitions. The books in the On the Curatorial series look at the consequences of that discussion today and ask: Do we need different curatorial tools to engage with deepening social, political, and ecological crises? The series allows earlier participants in the debate to reflect on how their concepts and practices have changed, while younger generations of curators explore the ongoing need for new conceptual approaches to curation.
The series is edited by Carolina Rito, who is professor of creative practice research at the Research Centre for Arts, Memory, and Communities, Coventry University, UK, and executive editor of Contemporary Journal.

Paul O'Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer and educator. He is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space and reading room in Vallila Helsinki, since 2017.

Edited by Carolina Rito.
Contribution by Gerrie van Noord.