Photography

Forms of Public Privacy is part of the larger FORMAT 2019 exhibtion ‘Changing Attitudes’ in Z33, Hasselt. As a critique on the current urban trend to overpragram and overdesign Belgium cities, and Western cities in general, a reasearch is done into five cases of abandoned and un-maintained spaces in Brussels. In the exhibition a series of sculptural models show architectural elements of the investigated spaces that provide a certain spatial intimacy and public privacy. These models, together with photographs of Axel de Marteau and a publication, argue for the value of these abandoned and un-programmed spaces within an urban setting. Their informal programs such as hangout spots, living spaces and meetings spaces form a vital part of the social spaces and commons of our cities.

This is the publication to that research.

In July 1971, Bernadette Mayer embarked on an experiment: for one month she shot a roll of 35mm film each day and kept a journal. The result was a conceptual work that investigates the nature of memory, its surfaces, textures and material. Memory is both monumental in scope (over 1,100 photographs, two hundred pages of text and six hours of audio recording) and a groundbreaking work by a poet who is widely regarded as one of the most innovative experimental writers of her generation. Presaging Mayer's durational, constraint-based diaristic works of poetry, it also evinces her extraordinary —and often unheralded— contribution to conceptual art.

Mayer has called Memory "an emotional science project," but it is far from confessional. This boldly experimental record follows the poet's eye as she traverses early morning into night, as quotidian minutiae metamorphose into the lyrical, as her stream of consciousness becomes incantatory. In text and image, Mayer constructs the mercurial consciousness of the present moment from which memory is —as she says— "always there, to be entered, like the world of dreams or an ongoing TV show."

This publication brings together the full sequence of images and text for the first time in book form, making space for a work that has been legendary but mostly invisible. Originally exhibited in 1972 by pioneering gallerist Holly Solomon, it was not shown again in its entirety until 2016 at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago and then again in 2017 in New York City at the CANADA Gallery. The text was published without the photographs in 1975 by North Atlantic Books in an edition that has long been out of print.

Bernadette Mayer (born 1945) is the author of over 30 books, including the acclaimed Midwinter Day (1982), a book-length poem written during a single day in Lenox, Massachusetts, The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994) and Work and Days (2016), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Associated with the New York School as well as the Language poets, Mayer has also been an influential teacher and editor. In the art world, she is best known for her collaboration with Vito Acconci as editors of the influential mimeographed magazine 0 TO 9.

Riso Paradiso is a collective of six individuals connected by research and creation in the fields of risography, graphic design, printing techniques, visual communications, photography, illustration and publishing.  

The book is continuation of a residency project that was held in January 2020 at the Hiša kulture Pivka gallery. Theme of the residency was inspired by the in-house LP collection of colleague Leon Zuodar who also co-runs the gallery. Through his record collection they recognised the spirit of their generation. 

Result of the residency was 6 different screen prints, but the idea was further upgraded as the project proceeded and an art publication in the risography technique was conceived.  

In collaboration with Laurent Poleo-Garnier, NIGHTNIGHT is an archive of images and texts from different sources addressing the theme of the night. Over the book as a party that degenerates with fatigue, alcohol and other stimulants, images and layout deteriorate, the subjects get tired, the vision is cloudy...

Nails is an archive of images of hundreds of manicure tutorials on youtube. "I wanted to bring out the strangeness that emerges from these claws metallized, both prosthetic and disabling, both objects of desire and disgust. Throughout the book, we find ourselves lost in piles of flesh, varnish that establish the uncomfortable as much by the sexual character that emerges as the misunderstanding of the image."