Vostok

This publication acts as a postscriptum to the exhibition project Through The Valley of The Nest of Spiders by Simon Asencio for SB34—The Pool in Brussels. Dedicated to Samuel R. Delany's sci-fi and sexutopia novel, the exhibition was conceived as a process of annotating the book, expanding on the ethics discussed by the characters of the novel through installation, performative readings and with the complicity of other artists and their works. This devious object pursues such an intertextual process, extending and disseminating the writings forged by the exhibition. 

Cette publication se présente comme le post-scriptum de l'exposition de Simon Asencio Through The Valley of The Nest of Spiders pour SB34—The Pool à Bruxelles. Dédiée au roman de science-fiction et de sexutopie de Samuel R. Delany dont elle porte le titre, l'exposition a été pensée comme un processus d'annotation de ce livre, développant les formes éthiques mises en pratique par les personnages du récit, à travers des installations, des lectures et situations performatives, avec la complicité d'autres artistes. Cet objet interlope poursuit ce processus intertextuel, en prolongeant et disséminant les écritures forgées par l'exposition.

With contributions by / avec les contributions de: Reinhold Aman, Henry Andersen, Simon Asencio, Jen Brodie, Chloe Chignell, Jack Cox, Samuel R. Delany, Diana Duta, Loucka Fiagan, gladys, Stefa Govaart, Sean Gurd, Pauline Hatzigeorgiou, Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Bernard-Marie Koltès, David J. Melnick, Matthieu Michaut, Margaret Miller, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Anouchka Oler Nussbaum, Grisélidis Réal, Páola Revenióti, Sabrina Seifried, Raphaëlle Serres, Valerie Solanas, sabrina soyer, Megan Susman.

Produced in conjunction with the exhibition that took place at Maison Pelgrims (10/9-23/10/2021), the book presents original interventions by the artists of the rosa rosae rosae project : Alicia Jeannin, Alicja Melzacka, Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain, Annaïk Lou Pitteloud, Audrey Cottin, buren, Charlie Usher, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Eva Giolo, Henry Andersen, Jan Vercruysse, Maíra Dietrich, Marc Buchy, Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Niels Poiz, Oriol Vilanova, Sabir (Lucie Guien, Amélie Derlon Cordina, Sophie Sénécaut / Perrine Estienne,  Kevin Senant, Maud Marique, Pauline Allié, Carole Louis), Slow Reading Club, Sofia Caesar, Surya Ibrahim, Yiannis Papadopoulos, Yoann Van Parys

Edited by Pauline Hatzigeorgiou / SB34
Graphic design by Tipode Office
The book was produced with the support of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (aide à l'édition) and Région Bruxelles-Capitale (Image de Bruxelles)

In The Slicks, Maggie Nelson positions culture-dominating pop superstar Taylor Swift and feminist cult icon Sylvia Plath as twin hosts of the female urge toward wanting hard, working hard, and pouring forth—and as twinned targets of patriarchy’s ancient urge to disparage, trivialize, and discipline creative work by women rooted in autobiography and abundance. 

A buoyant melding of popular culture and literary criticism, The Slicks is a captivating and unexpected assessment of two iconic female artists by one of the most revered and influential critics of her generation.

'My aim for Mother Reader has been to bring together examples of the best writing on motherhood of the last sixty years, writing that tells firsthand of the mother's experience.

Many of the writings in Mother Reader comment on and interpolate one another, in citations, in footnotes, in direct homage. As I was assembling this collection one text would lead to one another, treasure-hunt fashion, the clue provided by an acknowledgement or bibliography. And just as often the writing circles back.

In Mother Reader chapters are excerpted from autobiographies, memoirs, and novels; entries are lifted from diaries; essays and stories are culled from collections, anthologies, and periodicals. My project has been to assemble a compendium or sampler of these ''kindred spirit'' works on motherhood, so that readers, and especially mothers with limited time on their hands, can access in one volume the best literature on the subject and know where turn to continue reading." [Moyra Davey in the introduction]

Writings by Margaret Atwood, Susan Bee, Rosellen Brown, Myrel Chernick, Lydia Davis, Buchi Emeta, Annie Ernaux, Mary Gaitskill, Susan Griffin, Nancy Hutson, Mary Kelly, Jane Lazarre, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing, Ellen McMahon, Margaret Mead, Vivian Montgomery, Toni Morrison, Tillie Olsen, Alicia Ostrker, Grace Paley, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Sara Ruddick, Lynda Schor, Mira Schor, Dena Schottenkirk, Mona Simpson, Elizabeth Smart, Joan Snyder, Elke Solomon, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Alice Walker, Joy Williams, Martha Wilson, Barbara Zucker.

Great is the Power of the Name considers the works of authors Elena Ferrante, Pauline Reáge, Karl Ove Knausgård, Colette and artist Lee Lozano. 

In 2016, when Anne-Mette had invited Signe to take on the role as editor of her text The Institute of Applied Speech, they both began reading Elena Ferrante's The Neapolitan Novels. They were specifically fascinated by the author’s use of pseudonym. Anne-Mette's Institute of Applied Speech was a tale of a fictive place, a pseudo-topos, and Elena Ferrante’s ideas about the pseudonym as a space for the writing itself was useful in thinking about fictive authorship. In a number of written interviews, Elena Ferrante unfolds the feminist perspective of her use of pseudonym. They were attracted by the idea that the author could avoid the biographical question; that she could disappear behind her own writing. 

To them, the artist Lee Lozano is the ghostly presence of hard-core moralist and humorous fuck-off art from another decade. During the course of her life, Lozano continuously reconfigured and gradually dissolved her own name, starting from Leonore Knaster ending up with E. Her work Boycott Women, in which she decides not to have any contact with women, expands the notion of feminist critique. 

Great is the Power of the Name publishes a readership interested in the position of the artist, and how it conditions the way we make art.

The ultimate ambition of this book-tool is to “disappear on the street”. Its pages collect words and stories of people whose right to exist and be visible in public spaces was forced to confront the concepts of “legality” and “justice”.

Considering the assumption that the law is a fluid parameter, which changes depending on where we are in the world, the historical period in which we live and the sort of privileges we enjoy, the law defines what is considered moral, licit, in other words, what is right. It distributes power and the perception of power in society, defining, categorizing, dividing and controlling.

WILL YOU MARRY ME? is a public lecture and an artist’s book by Sara Leghissa and Marzia Dalfini, investigating a specific portion of the spectrum of illegality, namely the relationship between illegal acts and public space. It explores how we can act disobedience before everyone’s eyes, suggesting possible forms of complicity and public resistance.

All the content was collected by the artist during meetings and conversations that took place in Prato, Milan, Ramallah, Marseille, Madrid, Nyon and Lausanne and with this book-tool their words become manifestos that the reader is invited to detach and relocate into the public space.

Designed by Marzia Dalfini. Published by NERO with the support of L’Altra.

Format: 42 x 29,7 cm
Pages: 28
Language: IT / EN
Year: 2021

Elizabeth in the Woolds is the product of two superimposed compositional strategies; a thematic aggregate based on notes dating back to 2008 and an epic prose narrative. Elizabeth is the device through which this simultaneous register moves. Screen writing provides a model for multiple voices. In a film script, the narrator can be the camera; there’s a machine at the centre of the story structure which figures a demand for resolution of plot; a contrario, the thematic approach (S, U, N, as electric light) obliterates chronology, and enumerates an atemporal topological figure, or the way the world is built.

(730pp., self-published first edition of 50, Kortrijk, 2021) 

A collection of portraits by original riot grrrl, filmmaker, and zine queen, G.B. Jones. All of them witches – from the silverscreen, woodlands, and the streets.

Featuring provocative essays by Caroline Azar, Paul P., Leafshimmer, Jenna Danchuk, Blake Baron Ray, and Scott Treleaven – each exploring how witches have been perceived, presented, and portrayed in popular culture. “Realer than real, stranger than fiction.” 

PRAISE FOR G.B. JONES WITCHES

Witches by G.B. Jones is a summoning spell posing as a book, a paper potion like the potion Nicky gives Gillian in Bell, Book and Candle. It draws me to it and to what’s in it, Jones’ divine drawings of the witches we both worship, the witches of TV and film and true life. I go to it gladly. I go to it gayly. I pore over it and prize it and purr like Pyewacket.

— Derek McCormack, author of Castle Faggot

G.B. Jones is the original Foxy Genius. Her zines, drawings, music, and Super 8 films inspired both the Queer zine explosion and the Riot Grrrl movement of the 90s. Witches sees G.B. once again crafting her magic.

— Kathleen Hanna, singer, writer, artist, and front-woman of the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre

With her illustrated procession of witches, post-punk icon G.B. Jones acts as medium to a dazzling diversity of disrupters from across screen history, as well as a pantheon of real-life hellraisers, from Sybil Leek and Rosaleen Norton to Vali Myers and beyond – all woven through with astute commentary by a host of countercultural collaborators. A captivating book; I was certainly under its spell.

— Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women