Until Due Time, Everything Is Else

In How to Mend: On Motherhood and its Ghosts, Kayfa ta’s 4th monograph, Iman Mersal navigates a long and winding road, from the only surviving picture of the author has with her mother, to a deep search through what memory, photography, dreams and writing, a search of what is lost between the mainstream and more personal representations of motherhood and its struggles. How to mend the gap between the representation and the real, the photograph and its subject, the self and the other, the mother and her child. 

Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet and associate professor of Arabic Literature and Middle Eastern Studies in the University of Alberta, Canada.

Editors: Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis
Co-publishers: Kayfa ta and Sternberg Press
Design: Julie Peeters
Size: 9.6 x 14.8 cm

The Weight of the Concrete explores the legacy of the Turinese artist and publisher Ezio Gribaudo (1929–2022), examining his multifaceted oeuvre at the confluence of image and language. This publication, named after Il Peso del Concreto (1968)—a seminal work that featured Gribaudo’s early graphic creations alongside an anthology of concrete poetry edited by the poet Adriano Spatola (1941–88)—places Gribaudo’s work in conversation with approximately forty artists and poets from different generations, all of whom similarly engage with explorations of text, form, and visual expression.

Reflecting the editorial premise of Il Peso del Concreto, The Weight of the Concrete revisits the influential anthology, including archive material that documents its production, and reimagines it, pairing Gribaudo’s graphic work with a new selection of historical and contemporary concrete and experimental poetry.

At the heart of the volume is Gribaudo’s emblematic Logogrifi series, developed from the 1960s onward. The Logogrifi reveal his deep engagement with the art of bookmaking and fascination with industrial printing processes, relief matrices, typefaces, and language games.

In this new edition, the editors take the opportunity to revisit Gribaudo’s pioneering work, examining previously overlooked dimensions—gendered, geographical, and technological—and exploring contemporary associations beyond the original context. The book also includes essays that elucidate the poetic and political interplay between image, language, and materiality.

This publication is released following Ezio Gribaudo – The Weight of the Concrete, an exhibition held at the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz, Austria (2023–24), and at the Museion—Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy (2024).

Edited by Tom Engels and Lilou Vidal
Published by Axis Axis and Grazer Kunstverein

Contributions by Anni Albers, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Irma Blank, Al Cartio, Paula Claire, CAConrad, Natalie Czech, Betty Danon, Constance DeJong, Mirtha Dermisache, Johanna Drucker, Bryana Fritz, Ilse Garnier, Liliane Giraudon, Susan Howe, Alison Knowles, Katalin Ladik, Liliane Lijn, Hanne Lippard, Sara Magenheimer, Françoise Mairey, Nadia Marcus, Giulia Niccolai, Alice Notley, Ewa Partum, sadé powell, N. H. Pritchard, Cia Rinne, Neide Dias de Sá, Giovanna Sandri, Mary Ellen Solt, Alice Theobald, Colleen Thibaudeau, Patrizia Vicinelli, Pascal Vonlanthen, Hannah Weiner, and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

Essays by Alex Balgiu, Tom Engels, Nadia Marcus, Luca Lo Pinto, Mónica de la Torre, and Lilou Vidal

This book follows the first exhibition of Robilliard’s notebooks, ‘Disorganised Writings and Sketches’ with Rob Tufnell in Cologne in April 2019. It was made with support from the Elephant Trust and the book’s designers, A Practice for Everyday Life and with assistance from James Birch, one of David’s gallerists, and Chris Hall, custodian of the estate of Andrew Heard. The book is dedicated to Andrew Heard.

Rob Tufnell presents a new publication of extracts from the notebooks of the poet and artist David Robilliard (b.1952 – d.1988). After his premature death from an AIDS-related illness in 1988, Robilliard left a large number of notebooks in the care of his close friend and fellow artist Andrew Heard. These were obsessively filled with drafts of poems, diary entries, addresses and telephone numbers, blunt observations, quiet reflections, short stories, ideas for paintings, portraits and crude drawings. Robilliard’s superficially simple, pithy prose and verse is riddled with the dichotomies of an era that was both exuberant and miserable. His notebooks reveal his creative process, his interests, ideas, ambitions and then his illness but always embody his often repeated belief that ‘Life’s not good it’s excellent.’ 

Many of the books contain the inscription: ‘If found please return to 12 Fournier Street, London E1. Thank you’ – the home and studio of his patrons, Gilbert & George. In their lament ‘Our David’ (1990) they describe their protégé as: 

“...the sweetest, kindest, most infuriating, artistic, foul-mouthed, witty, sexy, charming, handsome, thoughtful, unhappy, loving and friendly person we ever met... Starting with pockets filled with disorganised writings and sketches, he went on to produce highly original poetry, drawings and paintings.”

The publication exists in two editions: yellow and pink.

“In Facing Blackness, Ashley Clark traces the contours of Bamboozled, guiding readers through Lee’s intricate representation of race, politics, and popular culture. Clark moves beyond straightforward film criticism to situate the film within a complex history of blackness and American entertainment, making a powerful argument for its ongoing relevance and vitality. Thoughtful, rigorous, and witty, Facing Blackness is a thoroughly engaging analysis of this monumental film that is imperative reading for fans of Spike Lee and cinephiles more broadly.” — Racquel Gates, author of Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture

Ashley Clark is a writer, critic and film programmer. He was born in London, lives in Jersey City, and works in Manhattan. Facing Blackness, initially published in 2015, is his first book. This revised second edition contains a new foreword.

This publication brings together two original screenplays for yet-realized video works by Robinson along with a collection of research material presented as a retrograde calendar. The screenplays, / Imagine Prompt: Catfish Monogamy and The Jealousy of Sagittarius A*, both deal with contemporary life and creative labor as they intersect with digital culture and current anxieties regarding AI. In addition, the screenplays are followed by A Faggot is a Unit (Homage to Hanne Darboven), a collection of archival photographs, scanned objects and ephemera, as well as stock imagery and graphics from the internet collected by Robinson over the course of seven years (2015–2021). The imagery further splits the disorienting narratives presented in the two screenplays to offer a kaleidoscopic and unpredictable way of reading stories while functioning simultaneously as visual companion and counterpoint to the scripts.

Writing and editing is central to Robinson’s published and film work, inquiring into queer histories and the contemporary economy of the image, not as novelty subjects in themselves, but as forms of knowledge integral to questioning histories of perceived liberation. We are committed to representing diverse voices and perspectives that challenge and build upon our vision of bringing material from the fast-paced digital experience to the book form.

Padraig Robinson is a Berlin-based artist, filmmaker and writer. 

The theme was built around the idiom “VOSTOK”, the title given by Stéphanie Pécourt to her cycle dedicated to performative semantics, in which carte-blanches signed by guest curators at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles are deployed. Buried beneath several kilometers of ice, Lake Vostok acts as an invitation that both fascinates and refuses us. This sub-glacial lake on the edge of Antarctica, the largest identified, becomes the mirror-object of our desires and fears for the abyssal depths. The title of the program, Now I am a Lake, is taken from Sylvia Plath's poem Mirror (1961).

This booklet includes the scripts and texts of the performances, translated exclusively into French for the occasion, as well as images from the videos presented at the eponymous event. The compilation focuses on Sylvia Plath's poem Mirror, and includes an introductory text by curator Pauline Hatzigeorgiou. 

edited by SB34
graphic design by Raphaëlle Serres / Solid Éditons

Contributions by Signe Frederiksen, Pauline Hatzigeorgiou, Margaux Schwarz, Hagar Tenenbaum, Sylvia Plath & Eleanor Ivory Weber

This collection of the correspondence between artist Rosemary Mayer (1943-2014) and poet Bernadette Mayer (born 1945) occurs between the years of 1976 and 1980, a period of rich creativity in New York's artistic avant-garde, and one which includes the development of major bodies of work by the two women.

Rosemary Mayer was creating sculptures, watercolors, books and temporary monuments from weather balloons and snow, while Bernadette Mayer was working on some of her best-known publications, including the book-length poem Midwinter Day and the poetry collection The Golden Book of Words.

Spanning the worlds of Conceptual art, Postminimalism, feminism, the New York School, Language poetry and more, these letters elucidate the bonds of sisterhood through intimate exchanges about art, relationships and everyday life.