Books
Books
Paperback
Die, My Love
In a forgotten patch of French countryside, a woman is battling her demons embracing exclusion yet wanting to belong, craving freedom whilst feeling trapped, yearning for family life but at the same time wanting to burn the entire house down. Given surprising leeway by her family for her increasingly erratic behaviour, she nevertheless feels ever more stifled and repressed. Motherhood, womanhood, the banality of love, the terrors of desire, the inexplicable brutality of another person carrying your heart forever Die, My Love faces all this with a raw intensity. It s not a question of if a breaking point will be reached, but rather when and how violent a form will it take?
A manic, bruising stream of conscious portrayal of a mother and wife struggling to maintain both a normal life and her sanity.
Compared to Nathalie Sarraute and Virginia Woolf, Ariana Harwicz is one of the most radical figures in contemporary Argentinian literature. Her prose is characterised by its violence, eroticism, irony and criticism of the clichés surrounding the notions of the family and conventional relationships. Born in Buenos Aires in 1977, Harwicz studied screenwriting and drama in Argentina, and earned a degree in Performing Arts from the University of Paris VII as well as a Master's in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She has taught screenwriting and written plays, which have been staged in Buenos Aires. Feebleminded (which has also been adapted for the stage in Argentina and Spain) is her second novel and a sequel in an 'involuntary' trilogy, preceded by Die, My Love (Charco Press, 2017) and followed by Precocious. Her fourth novel, Degenerate comes out in June 2019. Die, My Love was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (2018) and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (2018). It has been translated into more than ten languages.
Telling Invents Told
Telling Invents Told is the first collection of writings by artist and filmmaker Lis Rhodes.
It includes the influential essay Whose History? alongside texts from works such as Light Reading, Pictures on Pink Paper and A Cold Draft, together with new and previously unpublished materials. Since the 1970s, Rhodes has been making radical and experimental work that challenges hegemonic narratives and the power structures of language. Her writing addresses urgent political issues – from the refugee crisis to workers’ rights, police brutality, racial discrimination and homelessness – as well as film history and theory, from a feminist perspective.
An important figure at the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, Rhodes was also a founding member of Circles, the first British distributor of film, video and performance by women artists.
Bodies of Extraction
Lydia Xynogala, Lorena Vicini and 1 more
What does it mean to drill deep and interfere with the configuration of tectonic plates? What does it mean to hollow out and alienate islandic undergrounds? How is wealth extracted and exploited from the ground, crumbled into fragments, transformed into matter, pieces of power, moved away to be represented elsewhere? Whose lungs and souls are capitalized upon and hidden under the suffocating dust in mining shafts? To whom do the surface of the land and its underground belong?
This book takes proto-industrial mining in the Aegean island of Serifos as an entry point for disclosing historical and contemporary consequences of politics of the soil through land extraction, and looks at how mineral evidence was historically produced, disseminated, and capitalized upon in the Aegean region and beyond.
Contents:
Mineral Travels:
Fragments of Geographies on the Move
by Lydia Xynogala
The Evil in the Surface
by Lorena Vicini
Consuming Land at Serifos
by Asli Özdoyuran
and David Bergé
Letter from Frikas Fortress
by Constantinos Speras
Iron Lungs
by Milica Ivic
Walking on Marble: Materialized Histories
by Anna Run Tryggvadottir
The Beach Machine
Aggressively rebounding after recessions and the pandemic, sprawling landscapes of tourism in the Mediterranean continue to build upon the iconic spatial typology of sea & sun vacationing: the beach. But behind the leisurely scattered bodies and the quiescent summer shores, beachfronts are assembled as intensely ordered infrastructures for the heavy machineries of tourism.
Approaching the beach as an operational socio-technical landscape, this book unpacks stories of construction, programming, and maintenance: from traces of moving sands in Lefkada island to mirror postwar developments in Delos and Mykonos islands, and from historic and bodily excursions to workings of the Athenian riviera to rituals of eco-certification under Blue Flags.
The texts frame the beach as a machine, one with protocols of function and metabolic needs, studying how it directs the capture of land and bodies, while establishing forms of environmental control. As a repeatable and proliferating type of infrastructure space, the beach has the potential to expose parallel evidence of seeming globalizations and patchy planetarities.
Contents:
Flying Flags, Fixing Sands
by George Papam
Moving Sands: Ammoglossa
by Eleni Grapsa
Delos Symposia
and Delos LTD:
Making Global Leisurescapes
by Petros Phokaides
Beach Making:
The Naked Body on the Rocks
by Phevos Kallitsis
Beach Effect
by Hannah Freed-Thall
Hello Hygiene:
A Guide for Bathers
by Lydia Xynogala
Mamma Rassise n°4
Fanzine de poésie à tendance médiévo-queer et son assortiment de goodies: encart BD et planche de stickers.
Avec :
@trobairitz_lactans @guillaumeseyller @matricule.mouche @ricardoakajohan
@sarahkorzec @constanceburgerleenhardt #HaroldBarme @touche_moulin #GraceGrenadine @estelle.coppolani @ninoa.andre @annesarah_huet @selibkide
Kwetsbaarheid — Over raken en geraakt worden
Marlies De Munck en Pascal Gielen
In een competitief bestaan verbergen we onze zwakke plekken. Evaluatiedrift en de voortdurende dwang tot innoveren duwen mensen steeds verder weg in een bolster. Hoe danook gaan we allen als knoeiers door het leven, vindt Marlies De Munck. Ze roept daarom op tot openheid en mededogen. Want dat bolsteren hindert je om te raken. En om geraakt te worden. Pascal Gielen houdt een warm pleidooi voor een esthetische kunde: het vermogen via al onze zintuigen een rammelende en fragiele werkelijkheid toch als een samenhangend geheel te ervaren. Dat is de potentie van kunst en cultuur: om ons te verzoenen met een chaotisch en kwetsbaar leven.
Marlies De Munck is cultuurfilosofe. Ze is als docent verbonden aan het Departement Wijsbegeerte van de Universiteit Antwerpen en aan het KASK & Conservatorium in Gent. Als lid van het Culture Commons Quest Office (CCQO) aan het Antwerp Research Institute For the Arts (ARIA) doet ze onderzoek naar de gezondheid van cultuur.
Art and Solidarity Reader
Solidarity has re-entered the global zeitgeist with resounding force in the last decades and is especially urgent to consider today. Yet this concept – both a potent ideal and a slippery notion – is one of the least analysed within the arts. Why? It is perhaps because colonialism, Neoliberalism, hyper-individualism and Western-centred concepts of art have eroded visions of a care-based society. Creating a fair and vital social fabric inspired by mutual dependencies between living beings and all entities including fauna, flora, air, land and water, is fundamental for our collective existence.
A critical toolbox with intersectional perspectives is needed to examine this minefield and reveal meaningful and inspiring narratives that can guide our future.
Contributors: Reem Abbas, Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, Noor Abuarafeh, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Ali Hussein Al-Adawy, Salvador Allende, Beth Brant, Wendy Carrig, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Emory Douglas, Ntone Edjabe, Ingrid Fadnes, Eva Maria Fjellheim, Katya García-Antón, Soledad García Saavedra, Gavin Jantjes, Shoili Kanungo, Geeta Kapur, Lara Khaldi, Ixchel León, Audre Lorde, Chelsea Manning, Olivier Marboeuf, Barbara Masekela, Naeem Mohaiemen, Mário Pedrosa, Ram Rahman, Laura Raicovich, farid rakun/ruangrupa, Aban Raza, Devika Singh, Irene Soria Guzmán, Kwanele Sosibo, Eszter Szakács, Dulce Celina Ureña Hernández, Alice Walker.
Textes à lire à voix haute
A collection of texts by fifteen contemporary Brazilian authors who approach the notions of care and privilege from a transfeminist, anti-racist and decolonialcritical perspective.
Edited by Diane Lima, Cíntia Guedes, abigail Campos Leal.
Texts by Ricardo Aleixo, Pacha Ana, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Monna Brutal, Rebeca Carapiá, Pêdra Costa, Ingrid Martins, muSa Michelle Mattiuzzi, Jota Mombaça, tatiana nascimento, Elton Panamby, Grace Passô, Miro Spinelli, Preto Téo, Lucas Veiga.
Translated from the Portuguese (Brasil) by Luana Almeida, Valentina D'Avenia, Léa Meier, aurore/a zachayus.
Or, on Being the Other Woman
Throughout this book-length poem, Simone White considers the dynamics of contemporary black feminist life, attesting to the narrative complexities of writing and living as a black woman and artist.
In Or, on being the other woman, Simone White considers the dynamics of contemporary black feminist life. Throughout this book-length poem, White writes through a hybrid of poetry, essay, personal narrative, and critical theory, attesting to the narrative complexities of writing and living as a black woman and artist. She considers black social life—from art and motherhood to trap music and love—as unspeakably troubling and reflects on the degree to which it strands and punishes black women. She also explores what constitutes sexual freedom and the rewards and dangers that come with it. White meditates on trap music and the ways artists such as Future and Meek Mill and the sonic waves of the drum machine convey desire and the black experience. Charting the pressures of ordinary black womanhood, White pushes the limits of language, showing how those limits can be the basis for new modes of expression.
Hippias Minor or the Art of Cunning: A New Translation of Plato's Most Controversial Dialogue
One of Plato's most controversial dialogues, Hippias Minor details Socrates' claims that there is no difference between a person who tells the truth and one who lies, and that the good man is the one who willingly makes mistakes and does wrong. But what if Socrates wasn't merely championing the act of lying—as the dialogue has been traditionally interpreted—but, rather, advocating the power of the creative act?
In this new translation by Sarah Ruden, Hippias Minor is rendered anew as a provocative dialogue about how art is a form of wrongdoing. The accompanying introduction by artist Paul Chan and essay by classicist Richard Fletcher argue that an understanding of the dialogue makes life more ethical by paradoxically teaching one to be more cunning.
The Lesbian Avenger Handbook
Launched in New York City, in 1992, the Lesbian Avengers rejected the picket line and ordinary demo for media-savvy, nonviolent direct action.
They were superheroes arriving "to make the world safe for baby dykes everywhere;" warriors with capes and shields doing a line dance; dykes "Lusting for Power," pushing a giant bed float down Sixth Avenue in New York (with lesbians on it); nationally-ambitious Avengers eating fire in front of a hostile White House; lovers reuniting a statue of Alice B. Toklas with Gertrude Stein, then waltzing in the snow in Bryant Park. And homos who shamelessly chanted, "Ten percent is not enough, recruit, recruit, recruit."
Originally published in 1993, Homocom edition 2021
Gossiping is Not (Just) Bitching
Gossiping is Not (Just) Bitching is a zine transcribing a performance revolving around the clichés attributed to gossip, addressing the oppression exerted on women and queer voices. Informal discussions, defined as futile, are discredited as marginal, practised by people who don’t always have access to public speech. The performance deconstructs different uses of gossip, exploring its political significance through the interpretation of sources from sociology, literature, chick-flicks and reality TV.
More images at
https://aurianepreudhomme.com/gossiping-is-not-just-bitching-artist-book-2022/
And Then Comes the Chorus
In the high-octane essay And Then Comes the Chorus, Jon Refsdal Moe pursues the imagination of theatre opened up by Alfred Jarry when he slipped an ‘r’ into a profanity as he exclaimed ‘Merdre!’ on stage. ‘What matters is that the words became flesh and that this flesh exploded right in the world’s face. What matters is that literature stood up at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre on December 10, 1896 and cried FUCK! and all hell broke loose and the world has never been the same since.’
Jon Refsdal Moe is a writer and dramaturg from Oslo. He has written two novels, one doctoral dissertation, several essays and a lot of criticism. He was artistic director of Black Box teater in Oslo from 2009 to 2016 and is now professor of dramaturgy at Stockholm University of the Arts.
Published by Varamo Press in the essay series Gestures
First edition November 2022
48 pages, 11.0 x 16.5 cm, sewn perfect binding
ISBN: 978-82-691492-8-9
Graphic design by Michaël Bussaer
Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism
Autotheory—the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography—as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism.
In the 2010s, the term “autotheory” began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.
Fournier argues that the autotheoretical turn signals the tenuousness of illusory separations between art and life, theory and practice, work and the self—divisions long blurred by feminist artists and scholars. Autotheory challenges dominant approaches to philosophizing and theorizing while enabling new ways for artists and writers to reflect on their lives. She argues that Kraus's 1997 I Love Dick marked the emergence of a newly performative, post-memoir “I”; recasts Piper's 1971 performance work Food for the Spirit as autotheory; considers autotheory as critique; examines practices of citation in autotheoretical work, including Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts; and looks at the aesthetics and ethics of disclosure and exposure, exploring the nuanced feminist politics around autotheoretical practices and such movements as #MeToo. Fournier formulates autotheory as a reflexive movement, connecting thinking, making art, living, and theorizing.
How to Become Irrésistibles
How to become Irrésistibles est une édition de l'école supérieure des beaux-arts de Bordeaux réalisée avec la maison d'édition How to Become.
Cette édition est née de l'énergie d'un groupe d'autrices étudiantes de l'école des beaux arts de Bordeaux. Elles (car il s'agit d'une majorité de femmes) se rassemblent dans les séminaires Irrésistibles – briser les cases (art-femmes-territoires) dirigés par Marie Legros, artiste et professeure. Ce séminaire a été créé par cette dernière en 2016 afin d'encourager les pratiques féministes dans l'écriture. Qu'est-ce que c'est ? Des façons autres d'écrire le genre (l'identité) et les genres (littéraires), la langue (nationale) et de faire entrer du commun dans l'écriture (en arrêtant d'en exclure les femmes, les homos, les personnes racisées, les prolos). Les étudiantes qui participent à ce séminaire, issues de nationalités différentes, s'en sont saisis pour tordre la généalogie poétique franco-française masculiniste. L'autrice et éditrice sabrina soyer (éditions How to become), invitée à prendre part aux recherches dans ce séminaire, a coordonné cet ouvrage en l'axant sur des échanges de traduction entre autrices et l'usage du français comme langue étrangère. Le livre explore – c'est à dire donne de la valeur à – différentes formes de contacts entre auteurices : traductions, réponses adressées, écriture sous influence ou fan fiction... Chaque langue et voix se tisse en écho à une autre, pas de poèmes isolés, un grand texte comme un grand corps amassé par rebonds et frottements.
Avec : Hani Yikyung Han, Nayun Eom, Charles Dauphinot, Layan Qarain, Viktoria Oresho, Samuel R. Delany, Seobin Park, Jie Liang, Rami Karim, Yu-Wen Wang, Ching-Chuan Kuo, Mélanie Blaison, Barbara Sirieix, sabrina soyer, Yan Tong Liu, Jessica Guez Karen Johanns, Marie Legros M, Esther Sauzet, Mira Mattar.
What Makes an Assembly? – Stories, Experiments, and Inquiries
Laurent Jeanpierre, Anne Davidian
A crossdisciplinary inquiry into the practices and forms of assembly making, through multiple times and geographies.
Assemblies are ancestral, transcultural ways of coming together as a community. Over the past decades, multiple social movements have reappropriated these forms of collective organisation as a prominent component of political struggle, to defend radical visions of democracy. At the same time, governments across the globe have sought to reframe public deliberation as a response to the failures of representative democracy.
How can we analyze this double movement, and could assemblies of equals once again offer possibilities to reimagine and renew the ways politics is practiced? To address these questions, we need to move beyond simply asking what assemblies can do, and instead examine how they are made. This means departing from the shores of a speculative, deliberative ideal and restoring attention to both their diversity of forms, and their capacities to perform, deform, and transform.
Bringing together accounts written by those who practice assemblies, and contributions from artists, activists, historians, philosophers, and social scientists, as well as three architectural experiments that attempt to imagine models for a future assembly, the book proposes a critical inquiry into the potential of assemblies to shape political subjects. From assemblies in Indigenous territories of Brazil to those of the Yellow Vests in France, from medieval communes to street parliaments in Africa, from citizens' assemblies set up by public authorities to practices forged from emancipatory traditions, What Makes An Assembly? examines the tensions that exist in all assemblies between the need for form and the danger of formalization; between the scripts, rituals, and architectural settings from which they derive, and their capacity to erupt and emerge anew.
Contributions by Ayreen Anastas, Andreas Angelidakis, Hans Asenbaum, Frédérique Aït-Touati, Richard Banégas, Sandra Benites, Jean Godefroy Bidima, Patrick Boucheron, Florence Brisset-Foucault, Manuel Callahan, François Cooren, Armando Cutolo, Pascale Dufour, Ben Eersels, Tallulah Frappier, Rene Gabri, Delphine Gardey, Alana Gerecke, Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation, Laurent Jeanpierre, Pablo Lafuente, Laura Levin, Stacey Liou, Catherine Malabou, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Florian Malzacher, Piersandra Di Matteo, Markus Miessen, raumlabor, Philippe Urfalino, Yellow Vests, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, Ana Terra Yawalapiti.
Spike #73 – Vulnerability
To live means to be exposed, to be vulnerable, and seek safety. But what if we give up control and don't try to cover the wounds any more? Could we ultimately transcend to openness? This is one of the core questions Spike asks in its autumn issue. From the imperfections of the body to automated text generators, from poor images to pop stars. Spike #73 is about art's soft underbelly, why writing in first person is a risk, why humans fear each other, and grappling with grief, paranoia, and intoxication. Let's find out what happens if we take off our shells.
With contributions by: McKenzie Wark, Marlene Dumas, Tosh Basco, James Richards, Raimundas Malašauskas, Joanna Walsh, Kandis Williams, Mire Lee, Gustav Metzger, Rob Horning, Tea Hacic-Vlahovic, Constance Debré, Luca Lo Pinto, Simone Forti...
Sint-Lucas School of Arts Antwerp
TYPP #8 — Blind Spot
The human eye is designed with a flaw that is common to all other vertebrates: we have a blind spot, the punctum caecum, a small patch on the inside of our boisterous orbs of vision with no photoreceptors. A blind spot can also be psychological or social. We tend to be biased towards situations or people we cannot fully ‘see through’. How can we enlighten our blind spots? What kind of artistic practices can inspire new readings of history, art, music, or even politics?
With contributions by Bent Vande Sompele, Pierre-Antoine Vettorello & Stella Nyanchama Okemwa, and Haseeb Ahmed. Design by Ward Heirwegh. Chief Editor: Zeynep Kubat. Editorial Board: Mekhitar Garabedian, Caroline Dumalin, Saskia Van der Gucht, Paul Hendrikse.
Identity Pitches
A collaborative artist's book of musical scores based on Norwegian knitting patterns.
For Identity Pitches, artists Cory Arcangel (born 1978) and Stine Janvin (born 1985) have composed conceptual music scores based on the knitting patterns for traditional Norwegian sweaters known as Lusekofte. Utilizing three of the most popular designs (Setesdal, Fana and the eight-petal rose of Selbu) of this ubiquitous garment, Janvin creates scores for both solo and ensemble performers by mapping the knitting patterns onto the harmonic and subharmonic series and integrating the tuning principles of traditional Norwegian instruments. These scores are further manipulated by Arcangel using a custom "deep-fried" coding script to create a series of image glitches.
A foreword and an interview between the two artists, both based in Stavanger, Norway, provide context for the work, delving into the history of Norwegian folk music tunings and the Lusekofte sweater and their intersection with the cultural identity of the country over the last millennium.
ABÉCÉDAIRE
“I wrote (more or less, for promises are always hard to keep, even those made to oneself ) for five days a week for a year. I wrote no more than a page, or rather, I wrote only for the length of the analytic hour, fifty minutes (though I also practiced the variable session at times)… I followed Freud’s model of train travel for his theory of free association, acting ‘as though, for instance, [you were] a traveller sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which [you] see outside’. As for my characters, many of their names begin with A. Some of these women exist or existed, others are from fiction, or write fiction. Some are friends or acquaintances. None are credited but a keen reader could recognise many of them. I invented nothing. I am the aleph.”
Robida magazine n. 8 — Isola Otok Island
Robida 8 is imagined and organised as a journey, that can explore aspects of island life along a narrative thread, as if developing the structure of an epic voyage: from the Embarkation – where introductory perspectives on islands are offered –, then into the Departure – which considers the islands from afar, as conceptual entities –, through the Tempest – representative of the turmoils and movement that island stand for –, passing from the Strandedness – where the island coincides with stillness –, to finally approach the Homecoming, and the island as repository of collective as well as personal memory. The aim is for this journey to enrich our understanding of islands, as fertile ground for exploring what it means to inhabit a place.
Robida is a multilingual cultural magazine. It is published yearly by the association Robida which is based in Topolò, a village of twenty inhabitants on the border between Italy and Slovenia. The magazine explores different topics – such as abandonment, silence, the relation between domesticity and wildness, forest etc. – which are connected to the place where the magazine comes to life, namely Topolò. The eight issue reflects on the island which is explored through essays, photography, art projects, academic texts, interviews and personal written by authors from all over the world, from Argentina to Poland, from US to Slovenia.
Trilingual edition: Italian / Slovenian / English
Editorial board: Dora Ciccone, Maria Moschioni, Elena Rucli, Vida Rucli, Laura Savina, Aljaž Škrlep, Janja Šušnjar.
Contributors: Adele Dipasquale and Cristina Lavosi, Adriana Gallo, Agnieszka Dragon, Ajda Bračič, Alessandro Simone and Francesca Cassi, Alice Pedroletti and Alessandra Saviotti, Ana Escariz Péres, Anna Bierler, Anne Kathrin Müller, Antônio Frederico Lasalvia, Brechje Krah, Camilla Isola, Camilla Marrese and Gabriele Chiapparini, Chiara Alexandra Young, Chiara Dorbolò, Constanze Flamme, Deborah Mora, Dora Ciccone, Elena Rucli, Federica Carlotta Lai, Gabriele Zagaglia and Fernanda Villari, Giacomo Bianco, Giampaolo De Pietro, Giuditta Trani, Greta Biondi and Vittoria Rubini, Guglielmo Giomi, Haydée Touitou, Igor Martinig, Kaja Rakušček, Katrina Pelikan Bašelj, Laura Savina, Léna Lewis-King, Livia Galtieri, Ludivine Gragy, Ludovica Battista, make LARMO, Mara-Luna Brandt Corstius, Marcos Beccari, Margherita Falqui, Marie Ilse Bourlanges, Marie Kerkeling, Marta Marini and Cecilia Bima, Marta Marini and Francesca Matracchi, Mauro Tosarelli, Melissa Carnemolla, Mercedes Villalba, Ola Korbańska, Olya Korsun, Opher Thomson, Rachele Daminelli, Romane Bourgeois, Silvia Sfiligiotti, Siria Falleroni, Stefano Conti, Tanja Marmai, Titta C. Raccagni, Tymon Hogenelst and Jesse van der Ploeg, Valerija Intihar, Vidya Narine, William Belloche.
The Letters of Douglas Oliver and J. H. Prynne
Douglas Oliver (1937–2000) and J. H. Prynne (b. 1936) are two of the most original and ambitious poets of the contemporary era. Eschewing the conservativism of mainstream postwar British verse and embracing influences from America and Europe, each developed their craft through continuous correspondence and exchange as part of the febrile scene of poetical community and contestation that emerged in Cambridge in the 1960s. Their works over the following decades exhibit frequent shifts in form and style, from Prynne’s radical transformation and dispersal of the lyric tradition to Oliver’s adaptation of dream visions and medieval-inspired verse satires.
Their letters are a record of both the high stakes and playful experiments that constitute the writing lives of two singular poets determined not just to engage with modern political and social life during decades of crisis and upheaval, but to contribute through the circulation and publication of poetry to what Oliver calls “a community of political ethic.” Over the course of more than thirty years of friendship and mutual appreciation, the motivations for, and consequences of, their poems are constantly worked through, tested out, evaluated, and contradicted, always with a view to what the poetry means for the other, for the poetical communities they inhabit, and for the life of poetry itself.
This volume collects for the first time the majority of Oliver and Prynne’s correspondence, allowing new insights into the literary, political, and historical contexts of their lives and writing. An introduction, notes, and appendices provide a scholarly apparatus to situate Oliver and Prynne among the poets and publishers with whom they worked and socialized, and to identify and expand upon their frequent references to an enormous range of source material and reading matter.
“The correspondence between J. H. Prynne and Douglas Oliver is gripping and illuminating, brilliantly edited and completely absorbing. Two great poetic intelligences respond to each other’s work and to the society around them, thinking through the issues at stake in their poetic practice, their differences in approach, the different worlds they inhabit, their shared commitment to writing poetry and their admiration of each other’s work. The letters, complex as their matter can be, repay repeated reading; taken together, over a period of 33 years, they chart the context and creation of some of the most significant work in late twentieth-century poetry. This is an utterly engaging volume, and should be read by anybody interested in poetry and its place in the contemporary world.”—Ian Patterson
“For writers who welcome each other as peers, the exchange of letters is the spontaneous moment of exposure, the drawing out of selves. It is thinking in mutuality. In this thoughtfully edited and carefully, even beautifully, presented correspondence between Douglas Oliver and J. H. Prynne, two of the preeminent poets of the ‘British Poetry Revival’ of the post-World War II generations, we witness two writers of immense gifts thinking with each other, coming alive to thought and, ultimately, a shared world or community of wish. There is life, there is death; there is grief, there is anger – and love – but always there is a seeking, an attempt to arrive at a language for our worlds. Henceforth, one cannot imagine reading the work of either Oliver or Prynne without this correspondence and all that it offers in openings onto what Oliver himself saw as ‘the poet’s full performance [which] is the whole life’s work.’ It is a glimpse into an athanor of poetic creation.”—Michael Stone-Richards
The Lost Space
Publication devoted to the only statement the Belgian artist has ever published about his own work.
Those familiar with Guy Mees know that he used the enigmatic title Lost Space to describe two major bodies of work, distinct in origin and form, and separated by a gap of more than twenty years: the geometric objects and panels covered in lace created in the 1960s, and the works he started producing in the 1980s featuring colour paper cutouts pinned to walls. This publication is dedicated to a lesser-known chapter in this story: the writing process of a short text entitled, likewise,The Lost Space. An ambiguous manifesto for Mees' work, the text went through a number of revisions, with Mees contributing suggestions, but never authoring it himself. This book reproduces eight extant versions of the text for the first time, in facsimile and typographic transcription as Richard Hamilton did with the Large Glass notes of Marcel Duchamp.
Published on the occasion of Guy Mees at MU.ZEE, Ostende, in 2019.
Limited edition of 350 copies.
Guy Mees (1935-2003) is a Belgian artist whose oeuvre encompasses photographs, videos, sculptures, and fragile works on paper that combine formal rigor with delicacy and a conceptual approach. A leading figure of the Belgian avant-garde, Mees left behind an outstanding body of work that transgresses geometric abstraction, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and applied arts.
Edited by Lilou Vidal.
Graphic design: Joris Kritis.
Screensaver Error
Nº 49 / October 2022
In her work, Lisa Vlaemminck explores the boundaries of painting, creating an exciting, vibrating and disorienting universe. In her images, she questions very classical phenomena in painting, such as the landscape and the still life, by freezing them behind semi-transparent layers of paint. We catch a glimpse that feels familiar, but soon find that nothing is what it seems. Vlaemminck’s work oscillates between the microscopic and the interstellar, as well as the amorphous spaces in between. Image, material, shape, texture and form mutate into compositional playgrounds floating in a newly created universe where different laws and rules apply.
The book “Screensaver Error” is conceived as a symmetrical, folded stack of sheets with images of Lisa’s paintings and collages.
At the heart of the book is the sixty-metre long, worm-shaped textile sculpture, which runs like a stream through the book for many pages.
Dominique De Groen wrote an electrically charged shimmering poem tailored to the work. The introductory text was written by Simon Delobel.
In KIOSK, Lisa Vlaemminck presents a series of new paintings and a sixty-metre long textile sculpture that will occupy the various exhibition spaces. For the design of the fabric, Lisa worked patterns that form a long colour gradient.
At the end of the exhibition, the sculpture, Meat A Morph Hose, will be cut into 35 separate, new sculptures that will be offered as artworks at € 350 each. Each work is a part of the colour gradient and has a unique print. The proceeds will finance the book. Details: Printed cotton, latex spaghetti filling, the ends are closed with climbing rope
40 cm diameter x 130cmA signed copy of the book will also be delivered together with the work.
The sculptures can be collected from KIOSK at the book-launch: Sat. 26 November
The artist is reprented by gallery rodolphe janssen