William Rauscher and John Moeller, On Acid
A Field Guide to Altered States
Softcover, 100 pp., offset 4/3, 200 x 265 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-615-53398-8
Published by CCC
On Acid presents a radically subjective re-edit of the history of drug experience, following the emergence of drugs as a technology and modernity’s conflicted obsessions with altered states. Tracing a path beginning with philosopher Benjamin Blood’s 1874 pamphlet ‘The Anesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy’ which declares the existence of a ‘majesty and supremacy unspeakable’ observable only after being dosed by nitrous oxide, On Acid assembles texts and images that draw a line connecting archival works by William James, Antonin Artaud, Timothy Leary, and various modernist explorers, to the practice of contemporary artists such as Rodney Graham, Francis Alÿs, Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe. Removed from the familiar cultural contexts of Haight-Ashbury and Grateful Dead psychedelia, On Acid is in itself an experimental program, a recursive acidic process that mirrors the deconstructive relations to counterculture cultivated in contemporary art. The book concludes with a series of new conversations with Freeman and Lowe, Hamilton Morris and Arik Roper.
Ken Seeno and Jeremy Sigler, Live
12-inch vinyl record, silkscreened 1/1, 12 x 12 inches [12.75 x 12.75 in poly sleeve]
Edition of 150, numbered
Published by The Kingsboro Press
A side: Ken Seeno, A Breezy Memory/Cool Hand, Shadow; Jeremy Sigler, excerpt from Plankticus Erectus
B side: Jeremy Sigler, excerpt from Plankticus Erectus; Ken Seeno, Spirit of 77
Recorded in Baltimore in May 2011, Live marks not only the first ever vinyl release from The Kingsboro Press, but also the first officially released project from longtime friends, colleagues, and schemers Seeno and Sigler. 3 tracks from Seeno (ex-Ponytail) highlight his uniquely ambient and immersive new age-tingled solo work, alongside 2 poems read from New York-based poet Sigler. L.L. Being, an accompanying text (a dialogue between Sigler and Seeno that covers everything from 2 Fat Ladies and Being There, to Windham Hill and khakis) is available here .
Stefan Marx, The Dead Sea
Hardboard/gatefold record sleeve, 3 posters, offset 1/1, 600 x 900 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-3-905999-01-3
Published by Nieves
With his debut release on co-owned Smallville record label Stefan Marx presents an exclusive three-part poster collection coated inside a gatefold 12-inch cover sleeve. Giving the Smallville shop and label a visual face since the very beginning Stefan Marx created hundreds of posters and flyers, painted the shop windows regularly and conceived every record cover.
Now is the time for himself to release an extraordinary Smallville/Nieves issue in 12-inch format. Three folded posters (each has the size of 90 x 60 cm) including a first appearance of his Band project The Dead Sea (aka Stefan Marx, RVDS, Lawrence and Birte Löschenkohl).
The Book Trust Prospectus
Edited by Benjamin Critton, Harry Gassel, Brendan Griffiths, Zak Klauck and Mylinh Nguyen
Softcover, 160 pp., offset 1/1, 4.25 x 7 inches
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-1-928570-15-8
Published by IFS, Ltd.
The Book Trust, a site-specific publication and installation, was originally presented at the NY Art Book Fair, 5–7 November, 2010. During those days, the semi-fictional Investment Futures Strategy, Ltd., comprised of five graduate students from the Department of Graphic Design at the Yale University School of Art, offered an original publication for trade in a series of barters executed by its authors.
The Trust and the accompanying Book Trust Prospectus address matters of micro-economy and distribution, as well as prescribed versus perceived value. The project suggests a new currency specific to the setting of the Book Fair, a context in which a distinct set of commodities is exchanged by like-minded vendors in a finite space and time. It is only in this setting that a book could be posited as capital — a literal stand-in for the money that commonly exchanges hands at the Fair. Perceived worth is thus no longer dictated by edition or price, but instead by a trader’s subjective notion of the values they assign each book.
Over the three days of the Fair, the book, produced in a fixed quantity of 500, varied in value as each negotiation determined and redetermined its worth in the marketplace. With each transaction, the Prospectus assumed the value of the book for which it was exchanged. The traded commodities now comprise The Book Trust — a value-appreciating book bank. By trading with IFS, Ltd., participants acquired a single theoretical share of the bank, the Prospectus acting as a document of that transaction. In framing the project in a format similar to that of a stock exchange, IFS, Ltd. hopes that the Trust emphasizes the tenuous, abstract value of the book: as a designed object, as a medium for content, as a traded commodity, and as a symbol of participation in the project itself.
Prospectus
The Book Trust Prospectus is, in non-equal parts: a local currency, a stock prospectus for The Book Trust, an exploration into the nature of small-scale publishing and its presence at the NY Art Book Fair (R. Giampietro), a survey of precedented alternative currencies (B. Critton), a platform for hyperbolic re-representations of anonymous fiat money (R. Rozendaal), a foray into corporate branding and rebranding (Metahaven et al.), a proposal for a time-based repurposing of existing banknotes (N. Hirsch & Z. Kyes), an analysis of the current state of [art] book-publishing and -design (L. v. Deursen et al.), a venue for research into non-essential commodity futures like tulips and Beanie Babies™ (H. Gassel), a profile of independent art book vendors (Golden Age), and a podium for experimentation with anti-counterfeiting guilloché renderings (B. Griffiths & Z. Klauck). It is the story of its own making and financing as well as an evaluation of the context in which it was made and financed. The Prospectus is a 160-page, perfect-bound, one-colour book, offset-printed in an edition of five hundred by GHP printing in West Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Cancellation for me is this dynamic act: it is at once violent, an attack, an endgame to a struggle, but at the same time the mega opener. In the place of something cancelled there is only opportunity, only potential… For example, an event is cancelled, you have the night free; tour is cancelled, you have two weks to stay at home and work in your studio and sleep in your own bed and not lose money; exhibition is cancelled, now look at all of this time and material you have floating around… The bottom line is canceling as negating, as a way to remove to create potential, to create space. So after working for a while with the graphice of a literal “CANCELLED” stencil image, it was like, how do you cancel that? How does that get further negated?
Born in Flames, the publication, is an illustrated transcript of Lizzie Borden’s 1983 film ‘Born in Flames’, edited and designed by Kaisa Lassinaro. It includes an interview with Borden conducted in Los Angeles by Lassinaro, as well as the lyrics of Undercover Nation by The Bloods and Born in Flames by Red Crayola, kindly supplied by Adele Bertei and Mayo Thompson.
‘Born in Flames poses the question of whether oppression against women will be eliminated under any kind of social system. […] It is a fantasy presenting a group of women who, confronted with the very “ordinary” oppression women have been experiencing for decades, refuse to take it any longer and become armed fighters against the government. Their position is that oppression against women is not eliminated automatically with “socialism” — not only do political values have to change, cultural values must change and become embedded in practice.’
— Lizzie Borden in Heresies #16, 1983
In the spirit of Borden’s film, the publication was collectively funded by the following individuals and institutions:
Stuart Bailey, Heather Bradley, Eleanor Brown, Geoffrey Brusatto, Culturgest, Wayne Daly, Chris Evans, Beatrice Gibson, Nick Gordon, The Hawthorne Archive, Erna Hecey, Onno Hesselink, Will Holder, Jeff Khonsary, Koenig Books, Uriel Orlow, Falke Pisano, Philomene Pirecki, PrintRoom: Karin de Jong, Ewoud van Rijn, Pro QM, David Reinfurt, Jane Rolo, Catherine de Smet, Benjamin Thorel, Giulia Vallicelli, and Julia Zay.
Stephen Willats, The Artist as an Instigator of Changes in Social Cognition and Behaviour
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 2/1, 130 x 210 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9562605-6-7
Published by Occasional Papers
Stephen Willats’ major essay The Artist as an Instigator of Changes in Social Cognition and Behaviour is re-issued for the first time by Occasional Papers. Published in 1973 by Gallery House, London — where Willats was Director of the Centre for Behavioural Art — and long out of print, the paper includes rigorous analyses of social forms of artistic production and descriptions of a number of projects by the artist.
Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, The Master Builder
Softcover, 28 pp., offset 4/4, 130 x 230 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9562605-0-5
Published by Occasional Papers
The Master Builder: Talking with Ken Briggs by Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, is a slim (28 pp. plus covers) volume, the size (and look and feel, with coated and uncoated stocks) of a typical Briggs NT programme. It comprises an interview with Briggs, a short biography and portrait, plenty of pictures (24 in colour) of his pioneering posters and programmes for the theatre in the 1960s and 70s, and a detail of Briggs’ slide archive, carefully labelled with Dymo tape.
When asked about his structured, asymmetrical booking forms for the theatre, Briggs claims ‘I didn’t care about beauty or the lack of it. They are purely typographic,’ then goes on to explain his colour system: ‘from warm colours in winter to cool colours in summer: red, ochre, purple, bright blue and so on.’ Which is why he was known as the colourist.
P & Co. is committed to the form of the community broadsheet as a site for aesthetic discourse and informed cultural analysis.
Published on a biannual basis, each issue is loosely organized around a personality of historical significance and provides the occasion for a network of affiliates from diverse critical and artistic backgrounds to explore innovative modes of study.
With an emphasis on the free and uninhibited circulation of images, information and ideas, P & Co. reconsiders the material conditions of newsprint in a cultural sphere characterized by aggregate forms of social media.
Chemical Process: “It takes 1 cup wine 1/2 hr to reduce by 1/2 at 400 degs.”
Digestion started in 2009 as a set of experiments about metabolizing information. Eaders Digest currently takes the form of a publication.
In each issue, a six-stage metabolic reaction is begun. A previously published text is selected and sent to the first participant, who is asked to digest the text into another piece that must be a fixed number of words fewer than the original. The response can take any form within the word count constraint, borrowing from or transforming the source material. The digested text is sent to the next contributor with the same instructions. The word count shrinks weekly, until the final reduction phase is performed by the writer of the first seminal text.
Founded in 2007 in Brooklyn, Kingsboro is a critical and engaged look at young art, design, literature, and approach every new issue as an artists print or unique edition, an entirely self-produced object with its own inherent visual language.
Frédéric Bonnet, General Idea: A Retrospective 1969-1994
Hardcover, 224 pp., offset 4/4, 174 x 238 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-03764-162-0
Published by JRP|Ringier
This volume presents an overview of the Canadian collective oeuvre — an oeuvre still haunted by Miss General Idea, a fictive character who was at once muse and object, image and concept. Founded in Toronto in 1969 by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal — both disappeared in 1994 — and AA Bronson, the trio adopted a generic identity that “freed it from the tyranny of individual genius.” Their complex intermingling of reality and fiction took the form of a transgressive and often parodic take on art and society. Treating the image as a virus infiltrating every aspect of the real world, General Idea set out to colonize it, modify its content and so come up with an alternative version of reality.
Paintings, installations, sculptures, photographs, videos, magazines, and TV programs: General Idea’s is an authentically multimedia oeuvre, that has lost nothing of its freshness and can now be seen as anticipating certain aspects of a current art scene undergoing radical transformation. The book covers the collective’s main areas of concern and themes, such as the artist and the creative process, glamour as a creative tool, art’s links with the media and mass culture, architecture and archaeology, sexuality and AIDS, etc. Including newly commissioned essays and republished texts, it is richly illustrated with documents and reproductions of the most important projects realized by General Idea from 1969 to 1994.
Betty Bright, No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America 1960-1980
Softcover, 320 pp., offset 4/1, 7 x 10 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-887123-71-6
Published by Granary Books
This important history of the artist’s book, a flourishing form which over the years has often been greeted with confusion by critics, collectors, historians and artists, aims to spell out its role in contemporary art and to claim for it a vital and heretofore unacknowledged status since the blossoming of the artform in the 1970s. Renowned scholar and curator Betty Bright takes an inclusive view of the varied field in order to redress its marginalization, identifying three distinct types: the fine press book, the deluxe book, and the bookwork. She covers crucial supporters of the form, like New York’s Center for Book Arts, Franklin Furnace, and the Visual Studies Workshop Press in Rochester, New York, as well as key organizations and figures in Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Bright examines how artist’s books have responded to specific movements, such as Pop, Fluxus and Conceptualism, and how the book arts’ own mini-art world of the 1970s was shaped by seminal exhibitions, fledgling nonprofit organizations and collectors.
