Book Affair

Book Affair

Book Affair
Saturday, February 11, 2012
10am-4pm
Organized by Fiona Connor & Co.

Various Small Fires
1212-B Abbot Kinney Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291
www.vsf.la

Book Affair will function as both a fair and a temporary library and will take place within the current installation, ‘Murals and Print’ by Fiona Connor.

While books will be offered for sale, the event will also be an opportunity for local publishers and artists to share titles and editions that are not always available to the Los Angeles community.

Along these lines, each participant will bring five books for either selling and/or sharing. A comprehensive bibliography with all participants and their titles will also be compiled and distributed. There will also be a xerox machine located on the premises for visitors to use.

Textfield, Inc. will display 5 books less than 10 inches, on a shelf provided by the organizers, and an Eduardo Sarabia vase/sculpture, placed on the seat of a chair/pedestal.

Book Affair will also display furniture made specifically for the event by Tahi Moore, Joshua Nathanson, Michael Ned Holte, and Fiona Connor among others.

Participants include: 2nd Cannons, A-Z video, Chinatown: the sequel, Dexter Sinister, Harsh Patel, Henry Glover, Kaleidoscope, Ooga Booga, Prism of Reality, Semiotexte, Textfield, Inc., Works Sited, and WorldFood Books.

C Magazine 111

C Magazine 111, Libraries

C Magazine 111, Libraries
Softcover, 60 pp., offset 4/1, 210 x 295 mm
Edition of 2200
ISSN 1480-5472
Published by C Magazine

$7.50 ·

Issue 111 Libraries includes features by Adam Lauder on Performing the Library; Jen Hutton on Dexter Sinister; David Senior on the Whole Earth Catalogue; Randy Lee Cutler on Reading; Pandora Syperek on ILLUMINnations: the 54th Venice Biennale; Jenifer Papararo on Frances Stark: I’ve Had it and a Half at The Hammer Museum, and an artist project by Read-in. Issue 111 also includes reviews of: Rabih Mroué: The Inhabitants of Images at Prefix ICA; Song Dong: Waste Not at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Gina Badger: Mongrels at Issue Project Room; Adel Abdessemed: The Future of Décor at OCAD Professional Gallery; Chris Curreri: Something Something at University of Toronto Art Centre; The Birds and the Bees at Oakville Galleries; The Domestic Queens Project at FOFA Gallery, Concordia, and Wim Botha: All Around at Galerie Jette Rudolf. Also included is a review by the 2011 C New Critics Competition winner Kari Cwynar on Models for Taking Part at Presentation House Gallery.

The Serving Library

Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt, The Serving Library

The Serving Library is a collectively-built archive. It consists of three parts: 1. an ambitious public website; 2. a small physical library space; 3. a publishing program which runs both through the website (#1) and through the space (#2). This is a long-term project being developed by Stuart Bailey, Angie Keefer and David Reinfurt. Together we are just beginning so we need your help to build our library and construct a new model for this old institution.

The first libraries were built on an Archiving model. In the Archiving Library, information and artifacts were collected, concentrated and protected in one central place. On July 1, 1731, Benjamin Franklin established the first Circulating Library in Philadelphia. Books were quite expensive, so by pooling resources many volumes could be shared among contributing members, and, the books moved around. Now, we propose a new model that joins the Archiving Library to the Circulating Library — The Serving Library.

The Serving Library is an archive assembled by publishing. Publishing and archiving have always been either end of a continuous loop, but now on an electronic network like the Internet, the two activities are both simultaneous and indistinguishable. This makes particularly small public libraries increasingly redundant. It’s time to reconsider what kind of library makes sense right now, and suggest one possible way forward.

The Serving Library follows directly from ten years of independently publishing Dot Dot Dot (www.dot-dot-dot.us), a biannual arts journal printed in a run of 3000 copies, with broad international distribution co-founded by Stuart Bailey in 2000. Dot Dot Dot then led to establishing Dexter Sinister (www.dextersinister.org) in 2006, a self-described “Just-in-Time Workshop and Occasional Bookstore” run from a modest basement on the Lower East Side of New York City. Evolving from a publication to a bookstore, we now want to expand from these relatively private activities to a more properly public sphere by developing a new library where materials are collectively produced, assembled and pooled to maintain a body of shared information that serves the committed community who helped make it.

We will build our library by publishing. Bulletins of the Serving Library will be a hybrid electronic / printed publication offered first as PDF files freely available, released in serial form on www.servinglibrary.org. Twice a year, these concise booklets will be collected, printed, bound and distributed. We’re ready to publish the first collection of Bulletins now. This first set directly addresses libraries, archives and collections and includes “An Octopus in Plan View” by Angie Keefer, an 8-part text on communication organized around the anatomy of an octopus; “From O-1: Information on Libraries & From 1-0: Information on Recording” by Rob Giampietro & David Reinfurt, on the paradox of contemporary archiving in the face of the Internet; and “The Life and Death of Media” by Bruce Sterling, an out-of-time plea for compiling an exhaustive list of outdated media formats.

We are asking for your support to help us develop the website, publish the PDFs, print, bind and distribute the first hard-copy issue of the Bulletins and to begin assembling The Serving Library.

www.servinglibrary.org

Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice

Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice, The Reader

Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice — The Reader
Softcover, 445 pp., offset 4/1, 125 x 210 mm
English and Swedish
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-933128-63-4
Published by Sternberg Press and Iaspis

$25.00 · out of stock

What happens when you look at design as something more than a service-based relationship between client and designer? What new strategies and models help to question and challenge the limits of design? The second publication from the Swedish design think-tank Iaspis, this idea-packed reader focuses on investigative, speculative, and critically oriented design, especially how design relates to architecture. Inspired by an exhibition produced by the Architectural Association in London, the reader is based on four conversations between graphic designers about various aspects of design relating to their practices. It also contains a number of interviews and other texts linked to these conversations, and a broader discussion about design and transboundary practice.

Double Page

Christoph Keller and Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié, Double Page

Christoph Keller and Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié, Double Page
Softcover, 256 pp., offset 4/3, 115 x 160 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-2917855-06-5
Published by Editions B42

$15.00 · out of stock

45 graphic designers, 90 photographs, 10 years of books on contemporary art.

This book is based on an invitation to graphic designers to choose two books on contemporary art from the past decade whose design they think is particularly pertinent to the content, to photograph one double-page spread from each book and, if they wish, to comment on their choices.

Double Page provides a selection of recent art publications as viewed by graphic designers who are internationally known for their contribution to that field, and offers a glimpse at the role of book design today in our knowledge and understanding of contemporary art.

Shedding light on this prevalent relationship between art and graphic design by means of photography, Double Page constitutes an unprecedented document of how graphic designers see the work of their peers and their own practices as an essential part of the editorial process.

Wouldn’t it be nice

Katya Garcia-Anton and Emily King, Wouldn't it be nice

Katya Garcia-Anton and Emily King, Wouldn’t it be nice
Softcover, 300 pp., offset 4/1, 232 x 297 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-905829-24-2
Published by JRP|Ringier

$42.00 ·

Contemporary culture is witnessing one of the most significant shifts of recent times. The old dividing lines between artists and designers appear to be dissolving into one another. Indeed the breadth and range of investigation and inspiration they share is possibly the widest to date. This publication Wouldn’t it be nice hopes to present a series of projects emerging from these lines of dissolution, which reflect the current spirit of cultural production internationally.

The publication includes interviews with Jurgen Bey, Bless, Dexter Sinister, Dunne & Raby and Michael Anastassiades, Alicia Framis, Martino Gamper, Ryan Gander, Martí Guixé, Tobias Rehberger, and Superflex. Fully illustrated, the book presents a number of projects that have been specially commissioned for the exhibition. Quoting the aesthetic of the glossy magazine, the publication is designed by London-based group Graphic Thought Facility, and has attached to each cover a Bless N°14–2000, Shopping Supports Stickerbags self-adhesive purse/multiple.

Words Without Pictures

Alex Klein, Words Without Pictures

Alex Klein, Words Without Pictures
Softcover, 510 pp., offset 1/1, 5.75 x 8.25 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-5971114-2-3
Published by Aperture/LACMA

$25.00 ·

Words Without Pictures was originally conceived by curator Charlotte Cotton and artist Alex Klein as a means of creating spaces for discourse around current issues in photography. Every month for a year, beginning in November 2007, an artist, educator, critic or curator was invited to contribute a short unillustrated essay about an aspect of emerging photography. Each piece was available on the Words Without Pictures website for one month and was accompanied by a discussion forum focused on its specific topic. Over the course of its month-long “life,” each essay received both invited and unsolicited responses from a wide range of interested parties. All of these essays, responses and other provocations are gathered together here. Previously issued as a print-on-demand title, we are pleased to present Words Without Pictures to the trade for the first time as part of the Aperture Ideas series.

Portable Document Format

Dexter Sinister, Portable Document Format

Dexter Sinister, Portable Document Format
Hardcover, 200 pp., offset 4/1, 4.25 x 6.75 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-933128-85-6
Published by Sternberg Press

$20.00 · out of stock

Over the past few years, Dexter Sinister has been interested in exploring contemporary publishing in its broadest, most exploded sense. The first part of this book consists of pieces of writings written since the conception of their New York basement workshop and bookstore in the summer of 2006. These writings were previously published online as PDFs in the Library at www.dextersinister.org. They were primarily written by Dexter Sinister or by one of a circle of regular collaborators, often for their house journal Dot Dot Dot, or as supplements to other books or exhibitions.

The second part consists of reproductions of a series of lithographic proof prints. Accompanying these prints are extended captions individually produced for different exhibitions in 2008. Each caption was composed in line with the manner of its accompanying image. Although never intended as a set, a number of generic themes emerged, such as abstraction, mathematics, logic, and cooperation. The book intends to demonstrate how ideas from the first part have been rechannelled in the second.

Appendix Appendix

Stuart Bailey and Ryan Gander, Appendix Appendix

Stuart Bailey and Ryan Gander, Appendix Appendix
Softcover, 192 pp., offset 4/1, 215 x 280 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 978-3-905770-19-3
Published by JRP|Ringier, CK editions

$29.00 ·

Appendix Appendix is conceived as the sequel to Ryan Gander and Stuart Bailey’s 2003 book “Appendix.” Like its predecessor, it attempts “a translation of practice” based on Ryan Gander’s recent body of work. Neither straight
documentation, nor an “artist’s book,” it pushes for a third way, editing and presenting each individual piece of work in a manner appropriate to its specific nature. In the years since “Appendix,” Gander’s work has increasingly encompassed sound and the moving image in addition to the earlier objects and installations. This shift will directly affect the form of Appendix Appendix.

Born in 1976, Ryan Gander lives and works in London and Amsterdam. His photographs, films, installations and sculptures draw on multiple layers of facts and fiction. He has exhibited in the USA and throughout England and Europe.

The English-born Stuart Bailey (*1973) has forged a formidible creative base for himself in Amsterdam where he has benefited greatly from Dutch design tradition. Since his arrival in the Netherlands, he has become a steady contributor to the art and design culture as a writer, critic, editor, and graphic designer.

This publication is part of the series of artists projects edited by Christoph Keller. Personally selected by Keller, for Textfield, as one of his top five from the series.

The Sun As Error

Shannon Ebner, The Sun As Error

Shannon Ebner, The Sun As Error
Hardcover, 64 pp., offset 4/1, 11 x 14.5 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-87587-200-1
Published by LACMA

$65.00 · out of stock

The Los Angeles based artist Shannon Ebner extends her exploration of photography, sculpture and language in this remarkable book, The Sun as Error. In collaboration with Dexter Sinister (design duo David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey), The Sun as Error re-investigates the meaning and language of photographs, creating both an open-ended reading of her practice and also rethinking the idea of an artist’s monograph. Far from straightforward, the book interweaves her bodies of work, previously unseen one-off pieces, with the language of technical diagrams, optical illusions, and graphic design. One of the persistent motifs through the book’s sequence is an asterisk and, specifically, one imbued with the legacy of the graphic designer Muriel Cooper. As the first design director for MIT Press and the cofounder of the Visible Language Workshop, Cooper’s legacy for reorienting and repositioning the direction of an artist’s monograph is imaginatively explored in the creative partnership of Dexter Sinister and Shannon Ebner.

Shannon Ebner’s work has been shown in exhibitions including Trace at The Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria (2006), The 2006 California Biennial at The Orange County Museum of Art, Uncertain States of America, at The Serpentine Gallery, London (2006), Learn to Read, at the Tate Modern, London (2007), and the 2008 Whitney Biennial at The Whitney Museum of American Art.

fillip 10

fillip 10

fillip 10
Softcover, 124 pp., offset 2/2, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 1000
Published by Fillip

$15.00 ·

Fillip is a publication of art, culture and ideas released three times a year by the Projectile Publishing Society from Vancouver, British Columbia.