The Illusion of a Crowd

An extensive and comprehensive polyphonic exploration of the work of The Otolith Group, coming at a pivotal point in their practice.

The work of this London-based artist's collective comprised of Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun covers politics of race and diversity and incorporates film making and post-lens-based essayistic aesthetics that explore the temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions, and synthetic alienation of the posthuman, the inhuman, the non-human, and the complexity of the environmental conditions of life we all face. 

Presenting all bodies of work contained in the Xenogenesis exhibition, this publication includes many materials and graphics from The Otolith Group's broader practice, including performance, lecture and research material. The outcome of over four years of collaboration, research and conversation, the publication is not a chronological exhibition catalogue or retrospective but a cross-section of their work which includes substantial contributions from the artists themselves, in the form of writing and direct engagement with its production.

The publication also brings together important thinkers, scholars, art historians and writers from disparate fields, who know and have worked with the group, as well as those who are writing from a contemporary perspective. They include Denise Ferreira da Silva, Annie Fletcher, Anselm Franke, Shanay Jhaveri, George E. Lewis, Mahan Moalemi, Fred Moten, Grant Watson, Vivian Ziherl and the late Mark Fisher each of whom reflect on a particular aspect of the Group's practice with supplementary materials such as archival images, documented conversations, early lecture performances as well as other accompanying texts and examinations of their research sites.

A collection of essays, librettos, lyrics, memories, photos, personal anecdotes by musicians, visual artists, researchers and archivers that pays homage to the work and life of African-American composer, musician, performer, activist Julius Eastman.

The book investigates his legacy beyond the predominantly Western musicological format of the tonal or harmonic and the framework of what is today understood as minimalist music. By trying to complicate, deny or expatiate on the notions of the harmonic, tonal hierarchy, the triadic, or even the tonal centre, Eastman's compositions explore strategies and technologies of attaining the atonal. One might be tempted to see Eastman in the legacy of Bartok, Schoenberg, Berg and others, but here too, it is worth shifting the geography of minimal tendencies and minimalism in music. It is worth listening and reading Eastman's music within the scope of what Oluwaseyi Kehinde describes as the application of chromatic forms such as polytonality, atonality, dissonance as the fulcrum in analysing some elements of African music such as melody, harmony, instruments and instrumentation. This publication constructs a non-linear genealogy of Eastman's practice and his cultural, political and social relevance, while situating his work within a broader rhizomatic relation of musical epistemologies and practices.

Julius Eastman (1940-1990) was an American composer, pianist, vocalist, and dancer whose work fell under minimalism. He was among the first composers to combine minimalist processes with elements of pop music.

Contributions by Talal Afifi, Elena Agudio, Antonia Alampi, Ana Alenso, Alexander Apóstol, Iván Candeo, Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein, Haris Epaminonda, Eirini Fountedaki, Filippos Koutsaftis, Lal Laleş, Nikola Madzirov, Sarah Maldoror, Olivier Marboeuf, Marco Montiel-Soto, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Erika Ordosgoitti, Rolando Peña, Franziska Pierwoss & Siska, Carlos Rebolledo, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Viola Shafik, Spotters.

To Become Two: Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice offers a narrative of artist Alex Martinis Roe’s research into a genealogy of feminist political practices in Europe and Australia from the seventies until today.

These practices include those of the Milan Women’s Bookstore co-operative; Psychanalyse et Politique, Paris; Gender Studies (formerly Women’s Studies) at Utrecht University; a network in Sydney including people involved in the Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative, Feminist Film Workers, Working Papers Collective, and the Department of General Philosophy at Sydney University; and Duoda – Women’s Research Centre and Ca la Dona, a women’s documentation centre and encounter space in Barcelona.

Drawing from their practices and experiences, Martinis Roe’s research forms a proposal for a transgenerational approach to feminist politics. This is further developed as a practical handbook of twenty new propositions for feminist collective practice, which were formed in collaboration with a network of contributors through experiments with these historical practices.

Conversations about embodied strategies of knowledge production and knowledge transmission based on the choreographic and curatorial practices of about fifteen international choreographers, performers, dramaturges and curators.

In the context of the numerous ethical-political challenges of the global present, actors from the dance and choreography scene both in Berlin and internationally talk about forms of knowledge production beyond the prevailing conception found in Western modernity. They counter the mind-body separation and the notion of a universality of knowledge with multiplicities of knowledge production that emerge with and from the reality of differently situated bodies.

What potential do embodied practices offer for emancipatory movements? How can community be created through these practices, and what responsibilities does this entail? What role does the body play in the preservation and transmission of knowledge?

In this publication, edited by the choreographers and curators Martha Hincapié Charry, Sandhya Daemgen, Raphael Moussa Hillebrand and Matthias Mohr; Lukas Avendaño, Wagner Carvalho, Sandhya Daemgen, Ismail Fayed, Alex Hennig, Raphael Moussa Hillebrand, Martha Hincapié Charry, Isabel Lewis, Matthias Mohr, Prince Ofori, Mother "Leo" Saint Laurent, Léna Szirmay-Kalos, Thiago Granato and July Weber conduct conversations about embodied strategies of knowledge production and knowledge transmission based on their respective choreographic and curatorial practices.

I went to the field; I became many.

Majnoon is an oil field in the global south. Majnoon is also the violence, and the state of mind that survives the violence. How can this be a field guide in any customary sense? Latitudes have been taken. Words are written in disrupted or troubled syntax. Rather, this book proceeds alongside a search for what many call emancipatory practice; to been acted in the field, where we feel most alive. The volume is divided into five parts, preceded by maps and legends. First in the sequence is a colour-coded soil map,“Majnoon and Hir Environs”, adapted from material originally published in 1960 by the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture. It was the product—relic, really—of a brief era that saw fields and farmlands redistributed among labourers and peasants. Since then, the map has changed with the shifting substance of our earthly constitution; it pivots on the example of Majnoon. Any map is appended by its legends, and I rewrite them from the perspective of dismantling. A longish colour key unfolds with the likeness of a poem pursuing return, inspite of scorch and ruin. It should be mentioned that ‘hir’ recurs multiple times throughout the book as gender-nonconforming pronoun—suggestive, ambiguous, and, in my opinion, sufficiently sound for the moment. It is essential to keep needling the problem of language.

A second, simpler map charts water flow as casualty of upstream accumulation. Dams are borders, after all, and we are lousy with them; downstream is sentenced to the whims of an architecture whose gates are mostly closed. On the map, a symbol resembling a small, numbered page locates Majnoon as point of interest. A subsequent diagram also contains this motif—not for navigation through the field, butt hrough the book itself.

The publication Actors & Extras appears following the exhibition of the same name at Argos. Five authors highlight the theme of characterisation from various angles. Georges Didi-Huberman’s contribution People exposed, People as Extras explores how cinema represents the masses. Sven Lütticken highlights the performance tradition in the visual arts in relation to the producing of subjectivity. On the basis of the classic cinema, in Figures of the Extra, Paul Willemsen composes a typology of the extra and subsequently gives attention to the aberrant status of the extra in modern cinema and contemporary art.

Thomas Trummer’s Volonté Générale. Extras in Film and Democracy questions the responsibility of the anonymous individual. With The Passing Actor: Sketch of a Renaissance Jean-Louis Comolli analyses how the concept of acting in a documentary has a different interpretation than in a fiction film. The last part of the publication describes the selected works in the exhibition.

Texts by: Clemens von Wedemeyer, João Onofre, Mark Lewis, Mike Figgis, Jeremy Deller, Irina Botea, Christian Jankowski, Aernout Mik, Krassimir Terziev, Julika Rudelius

Seventeen interviews conducted with Med Hondo over a period of almost half a century, most of the interviews originally published in French were translated into English.

To read Med Hondo opens us up to many perspectives: to his work and its time-historical contexts, to his interests and obsessions, to his standpoint with regard to the intertwining of politics, economics, and culture. Med Hondo describes the school of pronunciation until such point as the slightest accent is erased; he observes the insults immigrants in France have had to tolerate, and fuses their stories and histories with the present; he builds bridges to the Caribbean and to the Western Sahara, to Algeria and Burkina Faso, to Niger and Senegal, to South Africa and the USA. This publication aims to draw attention to Med Hondo's cinema and legacy.

The book originated in the long-term project Cours, cours, camarade, le vieux monde est derrière toi—Run, comrade, run, the old world is behind you—The Cinema of Med Hondo.

Franco-Mauritanian director, screenwriter, producer and actor, also known for his work in dubbing, Med Hondo (1936-2019) is one of the great figures of African cinema. His militant work denounces neo-colonialism, racism, the rupture between the peoples of Africa, immigration policies and the resulting social violence.

This publication is presented as an object-book-manifesto of a ‘desespiegles’ way of thinking. It “translates” the trains of thought that architect-artists Anne Philippe and Jolien Naeyaert exchanged via videoletters. The videoletters mainly occurred during the covid period. Questioning the scope of the addressed images, these exchanges revealed a play of symmetries. It shows a series of interrogations, linking the intimate with the collective. The move towards a publication was obvious after conversations with Loes, Phyllis, An and Teresa of nadine. The desire to activate reading in a performative way, mirrors the exchange of videoletters. It continues the process-based methodology that inventively gave birth to a publication through the physical manipulation of the work. The riso-technique proved particularly suitable for this project, as the hands, the gaze and the exchange all played a role during the object-making process.

Dannie.n is an art-zine, published by nadine, about the artistic research, themes, and topics of discussion of the artists involved in nadine. nadine invites an artist or collective to create each new edition.

Dannie.p is a limited-edition artist's book by desespiegles (57 copies). nadine is supported by Vlaamse Gemeenschap, VGC, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest.