Desert Interviews or, how to jump off the roof and not hit the ground

Piero Golia, Desert Interviews or, how to jump off the roof and not hit the ground

Piero Golia, Desert Interviews or, how to jump off the roof and not hit the ground
Softcover, 100 pp., offset 4/1, 148 x 210 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-03764-106-4
Published by JRP|Ringier

$28.00 ·

Piero Golia founded in 2005, with his long-time friend Eric Wesley, the Mountain School of Arts, an educational structure that rapidly became a new spot on the cultural map of the city of Los Angeles.

This book, composed of discussions between artists, presents a kind of report on this unique “institution:” teaching methods, academic syllabus, and students’ selection are here explained with metaphors, compared with artistic interaction, and equaled to performances. Not unlike Golia’s work itself, the development of the school and its program follow a poetic of the gesture, of the instant, and of actions recalling Fluxus, Gino de Dominicis’ or Paul McCarthy’s works.

As a career’s start, Piero Golia successfully convinced a woman to have his portrait and the words “Piero My Idol” tattooed on her back (tattoo, 2001); soon after, following an invitation to the Tirana Biennale, he rowed across the Adriatic Sea in the opposite direction to migratory movement to reach Albania (”Going to Tirana,” 2000). And, on January 14, 2005, Golia vanished from New York City leaving no documented proof of his whereabouts; he traveled from a place to another, crossing borders without a trace, for resurfacing only on the morning of February 7 at the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen for a unique lecture about his adventurous trip. He now lives in Los Angeles, a place that blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, making it the perfect setting for his exploration into the process of myth-making and his ironic outlook on contemporary society.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog

Stewart Brand, The Last Whole Earth Catalog

Stewart Brand, The Last Whole Earth Catalog
Softcover, 452 pp., web offset 1/1, 10.75 x 14.25 inches
First edition (1971)
ISBN 0-394-70459-20
Published by Portola Institute

$55.00 · out of stock

condition: good, edge wear, worn cover/spine, interior discolored, very good reference copy.

We can’t put it together. It is together.

The Whole Earth Catalog is an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds — things useful for a creative or self-sustainable lifestyle), the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves did not sell any of the products. Instead the vendors and their prices were listed right alongside with the items.

The title Whole Earth Catalog came from a previous project of Stewart Brand. In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, the first image of the “Whole Earth.” He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford-educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be.

Function
The Whole Earth Catalog functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the Catalog if it is deemed:

1. Useful as a tool
2. Relevant to independent education
3. High quality or low cost
4. Not already common knowledge
5. Easily available by mail

Catalog listings are continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of Catalog users and staff.

Purpose
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory — as via government, big business, formal education, church — has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing — power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by The Whole Earth Catalog.

Rudolf Steiner and Contemporary Art

Markus Brüderlin and Ulrike Groos, Rudolf Steiner and Contemporary Art

Markus Brüderlin and Ulrike Groos, Rudolf Steiner and Contemporary Art
Hardcover, 224 pp., offset 4/4, 240 x 315 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 978-3-8321-9278-5
Published by Dumont Buchverlag

$60.00 · out of stock

At once a philosopher, educational and medical reformist, mystic and artist, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was the founder of a spiritual movement he dubbed Anthroposophy, and of the famous school system that bears his name. Anthroposophy combined elements of German philosophy with Theosophical theory, and also made use of architecture, dance (Eurthymy), painting and sculpture to illustrate his ideas. Steiner’s artworks occupy a fascinatingly ambiguous status as both pedagogical and aesthetic entities, and served as springboards for the early work of Mondrian and Kandinsky among others; they have continued to influence artists down the generations. In 1992, Steiner’s panel drawings were exhibited at the Galerie Monika Sprüth in Cologne, renewing their efficacy for contemporary artists. Published for the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg’s 2010 exhibition, this book is the first assessment of the influence of Anthroposophical thought on contemporary art.

Something To Put Something On

Lawrence Weiner, Something To Put Something On

Lawrence Weiner, Something To Put Something On
Hardcover, 44 pp., offset 4/4, 255 x 215 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9783865214911
Published by Steidl

$35.00 ·

Something to Put Something On poses direct questions about art-making to and for young readers. Generously endowed with its maker’s legendary wit, it is also, appropriately, the first title in the Little Steidl program. Neither storybook nor autobiography, Something to Put Something On is rather a “questioning book” for children, at once moving and intriguing in its candor:

I WAS A CHILD & AS MOST CHILDREN I DID MAKE THINGS
I TRIED TO FIND A PLACE TO PUT THE THINGS I HAD MADE
AGAIN & AGAIN I FOUND THAT THE SUPPORT OR PLINTH OR TABLE
ALL RESTED UPON THE EARTH & I REALIZED THAT ALL PEOPLE OF ALL AGES
WHO HAD MADE SOMETHING HAD TO FIND A PLACE TO PUT
WHAT THEY HAD MADE
THOSE PEOPLE WHO ASK THE QUESTION & THOSE PEOPLE WHO TRY
TO ANSWER THE QUESTION ARE FUNCTIONING AS ARTISTS.
I WAS A CHILD & DECIDED TO BE AN ARTIST.

—Lawrence Weiner