Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

The third volume of a new series of publications by the collective Wages For Wages Against, acting for better work conditions in the visual arts and against all forms of discrimination.

In 2022, the collective Wages for Wages Against applied for the Swiss Art Awards with the ambition of questioning the very model of the prize and its impact on artists. Art competitions are presented as real opportunities for artists, and arise throughout their careers, starting with school—entrance selection procedure, juried evaluations, diplomas and honors distinctions—, all the way to professional recognition—Meret Oppenheim Prize, Marcel Duchamp Prize, Turner Prize, etc. Only a handful of artists are selected for merit-based reward. However, this logic of sorting and validation upholds an entire system that reproduces inequalities and that perpetuates precarity in a milieu that is exclusive, and thus excludes. The institutional practices of communication and selection, as well as the validation of unpaid labor, favor certain artists at the expense of others. In this context, we surveyed the artists who participated, are considering participating, or are not participating in the Swiss Art Awards competition, in the interest of understanding their experiences and sharing their demands. In a broader sense, we wish to rethink the founding principles of artists' support policies and work to build a less competitive art world.

Wages For Wages Against (WFWA, wfwa.ch) is a a militant collective and a campaign for the fair remuneration of artists in Switzerland, better work conditions, and an alternative economy of the arts.

Contributions by Nathalie Stirnimann & Stefan Stojanovic and Amandine Gay.

What gets counted within the category of heritage, and who gets to do the counting?

This book contributes to discussions about what counts as heritage now, who gets to do the counting, and broader related issues around the subject of cultural sovereignty. It unpacks historical narratives and political memories linked with objects, sites, and ceremonies that have been lost, looted, restituted, repatriated, revived, or reinvented. Through its diverse line-up of discourse, poetry, and original artistic contributions, it weaves together subjects and geographies that are not usually part of the same conversation —from plundered cultural belongings held in colonial collections, to processes of renaming or removing symbols of past eras— and considers how they relate in the context of recent social upheavals and political processes across continents.

In our era of dangerous revisionism, when history has become a battlefield for both the left and the right, we are asking: How can art reconfigure our collective foundational myths? And of what should we let go on the journey towards figuring it out?

18 July 1936, Bayonne. After hearing the news of the Fascist uprising, the Spanish dancer and bailaora Antonia Mercé y Luque, known as La Argentina, suffers a syncope and dies in fateful synchrony with the Second Republic. History, and the artist’s body, have been seized and broken by the event.

In close dialogue with images and historical documents, Isabel de Naverán pursues the reverberations of that shock and how it resonates with collective pain and artistic translations (by Federico García Lorca, Gertrude Stein, Kazuo Ohno and others). How does history affect and move through bodies? How do living bodies carry and pass on cultural legacy and collective memory? What do these complex movements reveal about the present? Wrap, History and Syncope is an affective journey that invites the reader into tracing and revisiting other bodies, to ultimately dance their difference and multiplicity for oneself.

Isabel de Naverán is a writer and researcher. Concern with the passage and use of time is the backbone of her work, which focuses on bodily transmission and the examination of the concept of historical time by way of ephemeral and fugitive practices. She holds a PhD in art from the University of the Basque Country.  

Translation from Spanish: Toni Crabb
Graphic design: Michaël Bussaer

The book Amplifying brings together written manifestations that trace the beginnings of Black feminism in the Netherlands. Amplifying means giving credit to, mentioning, over and over, and supporting the circulation of sources and authors that are formative for our thinking and practices. In the early 1980s, the political term “black” (zwart in Dutch) was introduced in the Netherlands to build alliances between women from different diasporic communities, who were faced with racism in their everyday lives.

Archival materials featured in this book include the original manuscript of the essay “Survivors: Portrait of the Group Sister Outsider” (1984), written by Gloria Wekker in collaboration with the Black lesbian literary group Sister Outsider, the seminal speech Statement of the Black Women’s Group (1983) by Julia da Lima, a contextualizing interview with Tineke E. Jansen and Mo Salomon (1984), excerpts from the book launch of Philomena Essed’s Everyday Racism (1984), and short texts authored by other Black feminist groups in the Netherlands, such as Zwarte Vrouwen & Racisme, Flamboyant, Ashanti, and Groep Zwarte Vrouwen Nijmegen.

The book Posting brings together a selection of feminist posters from Dutch archives to reflect on posting as an activist strategy, holding the potential to create counter-publics to mainstream culture and to fight against the erasure, exoticization, or tokenism of bodies and experiences that deviate from normative preconceptions.

As is the case for many professions, in the history of Dutch graphic design the absence of women, non-binary, queer, Black designers is striking. This doesn’t only point back to systematic processes of exclusion in the first place, but also to the biases at play regarding whose work is remembered and archived. While efforts have been made to add forgotten names to the existing canon, the many posters, flyers and other printed matter shelved in queer and feminist archives remind us to question the notion of single authorship altogether and instead study graphic design as a decisively collaborative and transdisciplinary practice, which is especially true for community-led and volunteer-based projects.

The posters featured in this book point to this rich landscape of feminist organizing, and were found at the International Institute of Social History and the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV-Atria) in Amsterdam.

The book (Re)claiming presents ways in which various queer and feminist communities and initiatives in the Netherlands have (re)claimed the triangle—along with other symbols, words and stories—and in doing so take up an empowering position in a hostile society.

Besides a collection of buttons, archival materials featured in this book include short statements and flyers by queer groups such as SUHO, Sjalhomo, Roze Front, Roze Driehoek, Roze Gebaar, Van Doofpot tot Mankepoot, Interpot/ILIS, Lesbisch Archief Amsterdam, Strange Fruit Vrouwen and Groep Zwarte Vrouwen Nijmegen, as well as a text by Karin Daan, the designer of the Homomonument in Amsterdam. With this selection, this book brings together queer, trans, crip, feminist, Jewish and Black perspectives on (re)claiming as an activist strategy.

Most of these materials were researched at IHLIA LGBTI Heritage in Amsterdam, with additions found at the International Institute of Social History and the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV-Atria) in Amsterdam, and LAN Lesbisch Archief Nijmegen.

The history and future of an alternative, oppositional translation practice.

The threat of machine translation has given way to an alternative, experimental practice of translation that reflects upon and hijacks traditional paradigms. In much the same way that photography initiated a break in artistic practices with the threat of an absolute fidelity to the real, machine translation has paradoxically liberated human translators to err, to diverge, to tamper with the original, blurring creation and imitation with cyborg collage and appropriation.

Seven chapters reimagine seven classic “procedures” of translation theory and pedagogy: borrowing, calque, literal translation, transposition, modulation, equivalence, and adaptation, updating them for the material political and poetic concerns of the contemporary era. Each chapter combines reflections from translation studies and experimental literature with practical guides, sets of experimental translation “procedures” to try at home or abroad, in the classroom, the laboratory, the garden, the dance hall, the city, the kitchen, the library, the shopping center, the supermarket, the train, the bus, the airplane, the post office, on the radio, on your phone, on your computer, and on the internet.

National Letters is the first book published by Letter Books. National Letters travels through the episodes of the past in which letters, languages, and scripts played an important role in creating nation-states and national identities. Through four case studies (Turkey, Israel, Georgia, Ethiopia), the main body of the book explores four languages and nations which were each, against all odds and for various reasons, able to develop and maintain their writing system throughout their entire history, up to the founding of their nation-state.

Edited and Designed by Marek Nedelka
Contributions and texts by Rusudan Amirejibi–Mullen, Ivo T. Budil, Birol Caymaz, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Marek Nedelka, William Safran, Emmanuel Szurek
Postcard letterings by Jan Horčík, Seb McLauchlan, Anežka Minaříková, Jan Novák
Translations by Ian Mikyska and Sam Mackay
Copy-editing and proofreading by Aren Ock
Co-published with UMPRUM (Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague)

Mysterious Letters is a private investigation into the unsolved mysteries surrounding the Voynich Manuscript. The manuscript is considered to be a “UFO of a book world” as it was written in an unknown language and script, in an unknown location in the 15th century. The book features interviews and essays from various experts in different fields, all pondering the question of what it means to encounter something that remains beyond our comprehension in a world where all information and knowledge seem to be readily available.

Edited and Designed by Anežka Minaříková & Marek Nedelka
Essays by Anežka Minaříková, Arnošt Vašíček
Interviews and Conversations with Ivan Zelinka, Vladimír Matlach, Barbora Anna Janečková, and Reed Johnson
Copy-editing and proofreading by Aren Ock

From the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Apartheid, to First Nations' mass campaigns against pipeline construction in North America, Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of some of the crucial struggles of our age. Rich with their unique histories, characteristics, and social relations, they are connected by the shared enemy they face: settler colonialism.

In this introduction, Sai Englert highlights the ways in which it has, and continues to shape our global economic and political order. From the rapacious accumulation of resources, land, and labour, through Indigenous dispossession and genocide, to the development of racism as a form of social control, settler colonialism is deeply connected to many of the social ills we continue to face today.

To understand settler colonialism as an ongoing process, is therefore also to start engaging with contemporary social movements and solidarity campaigns differently. It is to start seeing how distinct struggles for justice and liberation are intertwined.

If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand?

The endlessly fascinating question of whether we are alone in the universe has always been accompanied by another, more complicated one: if there is extraterrestrial life, how would we communicate with it? In this book, Daniel Oberhaus leads readers on a quest for extraterrestrial communication. Exploring Earthlings' various attempts to reach out to non-Earthlings over the centuries, he poses some not entirely answerable questions: If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand? What languages will they (and we) speak? Is there not only a universal grammar (as Noam Chomsky has posited), but also a grammar of the universe?

Oberhaus describes, among other things, a late-nineteenth-century idea to communicate with Martians via Morse code and mirrors; the emergence in the twentieth century of SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), CETI (communication with extraterrestrial intelligence), and finally METI (messaging extraterrestrial intelligence); the one-way space voyage of Ella, an artificial intelligence agent that can play cards, tell fortunes, and recite poetry; and the launching of a theremin concert for aliens. He considers media used in attempts at extraterrestrial communication, from microwave systems to plaques on spacecrafts to formal logic, and discusses attempts to formulate a language for our message, including the Astraglossa and two generations of Lincos (lingua cosmica).

The chosen medium for interstellar communication reveals much about the technological sophistication of the civilization that sends it, Oberhaus observes, but even more interesting is the information embedded in the message itself. In Extraterrestrial Languages, he considers how philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, science, and art have informed the design or limited the effectiveness of our interstellar messaging.

This publication shows the waiting archive of the Museum of Resistance. The Brussels Museum of Resistance is undergoing renovation. Hidden in the basements of the civil affairs department, the stacked archive awaits a new home. Boxes filled with recognition files, photo albums, exhibition panels, books, flags, furniture, and other scenographic materials are scattered throughout the entire floor plan. The recently appointed archivist Samuel and historian Agnes are sorting through the archive pieces and are striving to ensure a future. 

In a world propelled by swift technological progress and perpetual obsolescence, women frequently find themselves adapting and altering their daily experiences in order to remain functional. In the 21st century, as technology purports to comprehensively assess and address women’s conditions and physical discomfort, Cycles, the Sacred and the Doomed delves deeply into the realm of female health technologies, revealing a space where science, holistic methods, and mythology converge. This book challenges the idea of combining ancient wisdom with modern innovation and takes readers on a multidisciplinary journey to explore the intricacies of female’s health.

Mushrooms hold a peculiar place in our culture: we love them and despise them, fear them and misunderstand them. They can be downright delicious or deadly poisonous, cute as buttons, or utterly grotesque. These strange organisms hold great symbolism in our myths and legends. In this book, Nicholas P. Money tells the utterly fascinating story of mushrooms and the ways we have interacted with these fungi throughout history. Whether they have populated the landscapes of fairytales, lent splendid umami to our dishes, or steered us into deep hallucinations, mushrooms have affected humanity from the earliest beginnings of our species.  
           
As Money explains, mushrooms are not self-contained organisms like animals and plants. Rather, they are the fruiting bodies of large—sometimes extremely large—colonies of mycelial threads that spread underground and permeate rotting vegetation. Because these colonies decompose organic matter, they are of extraordinary ecological value and have a huge effect on the health of the environment. From sustaining plant growth and spinning the carbon cycle to causing hay fever and affecting the weather, mushrooms affect just about everything we do. Money tells the stories of the eccentric pioneers of mycology, delights in culinary powerhouses like porcini and morels, and considers the value of medicinal mushrooms. This book takes us on a tour of the cultural and scientific importance of mushrooms, from the enchanted forests of folklore to the role of these fungi in sustaining life on earth.

For years, Ukrainian journalist Maksym Eristavi has been mainstreaming the global awareness about the legacy of Russian colonialism. A few days before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he started a Twitter thread listing all Russian colonial invasions over the last century and highlighting one specific pattern that they all went by. The post has gone viral and is now dubbed the "mother of all Russian colonialism tweets". Together with a group of Ukrainian artists, Eristavi transformed it into an illustrated pocket guide to the 48 most recent invasions of Russian colonialism — to bring everyone’s attention to a pattern of serial behavior by the largest colonial empire.

Publication is prepared with the support of the MOCA NGO and the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund in collaboration with the Sigrid Rausing Trust. Some illustrations created during the illustrative workshop for the book Russian Colonialism 101 have been donated to the Ukrainian Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA).

Pour les révolutionnaires des deux derniers siècles, l’accumulation du capital devait unifier la classe ouvrière sous la bannière du sujet révolutionnaire. Le mouvement ainsi né était appelé à renverser la société de classes et les clivages divisant les prolétaires. Mais le mouvement de la valeur a finalement triomphé, pour donner naissance à la société de la séparation. L’atomisation a pris le pas sur les puissances du rassemblement. La civilisation du capital traverse aujourd’hui une crise sans fin, mais les forces capables de la défaire brillent par leur absence.

Ces textes tirés de la revue Endnotes, réunis pour la première fois en français, dessinent la carte d’un présent ponctué de paysages désindustrialisés, de centres logistiques et de bidonvilles où s’entassent les populations rejetées aux marges de l’accumulation – autant de coordonnées nécessaires pour continuer à penser le dépassement du capitalisme : une fois encore, reprendre le chantier de l’hypothèse communiste.

Endnotes est une revue théorique communiste produite par un groupe de discussion du même nom basé en Grande-Bretagne et aux États-Unis.

Traduction: Pablo Arnaud
Préface: Aaron Benanav Et John Clegg

A manifesto reclaiming the wives and mistresses of literary modernism that inspired a generation of writers and scholars, reissued after more than a decade.

On the last day of December 2009, Kate Zambreno, then an unpublished writer, began a blog called "Frances Farmer Is My Sister," arising from her obsession with literary modernism and her recent transplantation to Akron, Ohio, where her partner held a university job. Widely reposted, Zambreno's blog became an outlet for her highly informed and passionate rants and melancholy portraits of the fates of the modernist “wives and mistresses," reclaiming the traditionally pathologized biographies of Vivienne Eliot, Jane Bowles, Jean Rhys, and Zelda Fitzgerald: writers and artists themselves who served as male writers' muses only to end their lives silenced, erased, and institutionalized. Over the course of two years, Frances Farmer Is My Sister helped create a community of writers and devised a new feminist discourse of writing in the margins and developing an alternative canon. 

A sardonic and artful reconstruction of the brief life of the party boy who became a media sensation for shooting Gianni Versace.

First published in 1999, Gary Indiana's Three Month Fever is the second volume of his famed crime trilogy, now being republished by Semiotext(e). (The first, Resentment, reissued in 2015, was set in a Menendez trial-era L.A.) In this brilliant and gripping hybrid of narrative and reflection, Indiana considers the way the media's hypercoverage transformed Andrew Cunanan's life “from the somewhat poignant and depressing but fairly ordinary thing it was into a narrative overripe with tabloid evil.”

“America loves a successful sociopath,” Indiana explains. This sardonic and artful reconstruction of the brief life of the party boy who became a media sensation for shooting Gianni Versace is a spellbinding fusion of journalism, social commentary, and novelistic projection. By following Cunanan's notorious “trail of death,” Indiana creates a compelling portrait of a brilliant, charismatic young man whose pathological lies made him feel more like other people—and more interesting than he actually was. Born in a working-class exurb of San Diego and educated at an elite private school, Cunanan strove to “blend in” with the upscale gay male scene in La Jolla. He ended up crazed and alone, eventually embarking on a three-month killing spree that took the lives of five men, including that of Versace, before killing himself in a Miami boathouse, leaving behind a range of unanswerable questions and unsolvable mysteries.

In Catching Fire, the translation of Diamela Eltit's Never Did the Fire unfolds in real time as a conversation between works of art, illuminating both in the process. The problems and pleasures of conveying literature into another language—what happens when you meet a pun? a double entendre?—are met by translator Daniel Hahn's humour, deftness, and deep appreciation for what sets Eltit's work apart, and his evolving understanding of what this particular novel is trying to do.

It's in our food, our cosmetics, our fuel and our bodies. Palm oil, found in half of supermarket products, has shaped our world. Max Haiven uncovers how the gears of capitalism are literally and metaphorically lubricated by this ubiquitous elixir.

From its origins in West Africa to today's Southeast Asian palm oil superpowers, Haiven's sweeping, experimental narrative takes us on a global journey that includes looted treasures, the American system of mass incarceration, the history of modern art and the industrialisation of war. Beyond simply calling for more consumer boycotts, he argues for recognising in palm oil humanity's profound potential to shape our world beyond racial capitalism and neo-colonial dispossession.

One part history, one part dream, one part theory, one part montage, this kaleidoscopic and urgent book asks us to recognise the past in the present and to seize the power to make a better world.

The Fair Kin Arts Almanac is made with the voices of more than 130 artists, writers, and activists spinning their thoughts and experiences into 12 chapters around a year. Surprising perspectives, recipes, sound practices, and reflections around ecology, parenthood, the need to rest in a life that never stops, the urgency for space and infrastructure for artists, redistribution of resources, accessibility of the sector, artistic involvement in politics and much more.

The FAIR KIN ARTS ALMANAC is a circular book, filled with perspectives, recipes, astrological wisdom, ideas, games, proposals and in depth reflections around topics of social political relevance. For the Arts and beyond.

The book was edited by a team of 13 editors that in turn each worked with artists, art workers, writers and academics. Chapters range from politics, making space, education, parenthood, accessibility, ecology, mutuality, rest, migration, redistribution, property & open source and relationality.