Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land

Dutch graphic designer Karel Martens (born 1939) has been an influential figure in the visual culture of the Netherlands for many decades. Alongside his commissioned projects, Martens has maintained a commitment to this personal and iterative way of printing, which shows how creative practice often spans perceived disciplinary boundaries.

For each day of this elegant 2023 calendar, Martens has created a unique abstracted form to serve as a number—originally constructed using his signature method of printing letterpress monoprints from found metal forms, which are then digitized to comprise 365 compositions in total. The piece’s reference to the daily practice of art expresses Martens’ own approach as a designer and educator: “every day is a new day.”

Curator, writer and dealer Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013) is legendary for his promotion of Conceptual art in New York in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Acknowledging the unusual scope and essentially unclassifiable nature of his manifold interests and activities, this volume shows how Siegelaub’s projects and collections are underpinned by a deeper concern with printed matter and lists as ways of disseminating ideas. The book’s chapters explore the various facets of and connections in Siegelaub’s work, from his groundbreaking projects with Conceptual artists and his research and publications on mass media and communications theories to his interest in handwoven textiles and non-Western fabrics. It also highlights his collecting activity, which culminates in a unique ensemble of books on the social history of textiles and a textile collection comprising over 750 items from around the world. The survey also reflects on current practices through contributions by contemporary artists, such as Mario Garcia Torres and writer Alan Page, who co-created a new work inspired by Siegelaub’s bibliographic project on time and causality.

With essays by art historians and curators, a previously unpublished conversation between Siegelaub and artist Robert Horvit and an annotated chronology, this comprehensive survey pays homage to one of the most distinctive characters in 20th-century exhibition-making.

Published in conjunction with the first major U.S. museum show of Joan Jonas’s art in nearly fifteen years, this monograph features new scholarship on her multimedia installations and performance practice from the early 1970s to the present. Inspired by the format of a reader, it breaks new ground by contextualizing and expanding understandings of Jonas’s body of work through three thematic approaches: the critical notions of gender, being and otherness; the politics of landscape and ecology; and new conceptions of medium specificity and un-specificity. Richly illustrated, with never-before-published sketches and drawings, the volume includes an interview with the late Douglas Crimp and Jonas’s personal reflection on their enduring friendship.

Edited by Barbara Clausen and Kristin Poor with Kelly Kivland, with an introduction by Clausen; essays by Clausen, Adrienne Edwards, André Lepecki, Poor, and Jeannine Tang; interview with Douglas Crimp; writings by Joan Jonas; conversation between Heather Davis, Joan Jonas, and Zoe Todd; and coda by Kivland

An extensive catalog dedicated to Jonas' under-explored drawing practice. 

The installation, performance and video works of American artist Joan Jonas (born 1936) are emblematic of the '70s-'80s downtown New York avant-garde. Jonas privileged form over content, generating rigorous pieces with thematic concerns such as time, space and feminine subjectivity. Significant as these works are, other parts of Jonas' diverse and dynamic oeuvre deserve their due attention. This book is the first comprehensive catalog to elucidate an under-examined component of the artist's practice. Fascinated by the tension between motion and transcription, Jonas developed "endless drawings" composed of lines that weave around themselves or through a grid. She also began to draw natural things – plants, animals, minerals – both from her own environment and from fiction.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition at the Drawing Center, this volume examines several decades of Jonas' drawing practice, presented in chronological order. The drawings are accompanied by extensive images from the artist's notable performances and exhibitions.

Foreword by Annie Ratti, Fabio Cavallucci. Text by Marina Warner, Joan Jonas, Anna Daneri, Roberto Pinto, Cristina Natalicchio, Andrea Mattiello.

Three dialogues between Marguerite Duras and Jean-Luc Godard from 1979, 1980 and 1987.

“The two demonstrate a profound shared passion, a way of literally being one with a medium and speaking about it with a dazzling lyricism interspersed with dryly ironic remarks, fueled by a conviction that inspires them to traverse history. Their point of intersection is obvious. Duras, a writer, is also a filmmaker, and Godard, a filmmaker, has maintained a distinctive relationship with literature, writing and speech.”—Cyril Béghin

Introduction, afterword and footnotes by Cyril Béghin.
Translation by Nicholas Elliott.

The materials collected in the publication have been developed departing from the documentation, transcription and translation of textual, visual, sculptural and audio materials produced between March and November 2021 for STILI DRAMA. 

STILI DRAMA is an open-ended episodic para-cinematographic project, which functions as a spontaneous expression of MRZB research. STILI DRAMA XVIII-XXI and LA GIOSTRA DI LULU XLI-XLIV are the two first fragments of the work.

Language: English, Italian
Edition of 100 copies

BE GOOD, IF YOU CAN’T BE GOOD, BE GOOD AT IT Boom Boom Boom Boom is a publication composed of letters, notes, anecdotes,translations, stills and images: all traces of the creative process. The artists Rebecca Jane Arthur and Eva Giolo bring together their correspondence on the act of writing and of filmmaking, in all its complexity, struggles and playfulness.

The letters unpack themes such as the challenge of making personal work and the strength found in sharing vulnerability; the act of writing itself, language and translation; writing on moving images, on their practices and that of others; and the notion of a place as a container of memories, of interiority and the confrontation with home. The publication uses words and texts as images, and all images of persons or things are hidden. The publication acts as a negative to the films that we create, revealing that which cannot be.

Publisher: Les éditions du CVB
Publication Date: March 2021
Language : English & French
ISBN: 978-2-9601799-7-2
Softback, 311 pages, fully illustrated

Jack Smith presented his performance Irrational Landlordism of Bagdad as part of the Cologne Art Fair fringe in the summer of 1977. Many other events were documented photographically and can now be found in the Cologne Art Fair archives - not so Smith's performance.

This book shows him in his fair stall and during his performance for the first time. The pictures are perfect documents of a completely eccentric transaction by this pioneering director and performance artist.