You Killed the Underground Film or the Real Meaning of Kunst bleibt… bleibt…

Wilhelm Hein, You Killed the Underground Film or the Real Meaning of Kunst bleibt… bleibt…
Softcover, 120 pp., offset 1/1, 150 x 210 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-00-020345-9
Published by Passenger Books

$25.00 · add to cart

The texts in this book relate to Wilhelm Hein’s eponymous film project, which he has been working on since 1989. The film now comprises about 15 hours of 16mm film, in black-and-white and color. “Wilhelm Hein demands that the viewer of his film be free of any preconceived idea of cinema,” writes critic Cecile Chich in the first of two excellent essays on this epic work-in-progress. The book also includes black and white photos, a lengthy interview with the German auteur and a filmography. Includes texts by Cécile Chich and Marc Siegel, an interview with Wilhelm Hein and photographs by Annette Frick.

Annette Frick, Art, Cecile Chich, Film, Marc Siegel, Passenger Books, RAM, Wilhelm Hein

Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte

Bernadette Corporation, Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte
Softcover, 150 pp., offset 4/1, 165 x 240 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN: 978-1-933128-17-7
Published by Sternberg Press

$25.00 · add to cart

Formed in 1994, the Bernadette Corporation is a creative collective based in New York and Europe and organized around revolving memberships and associations. Its artistic output has ranged from fashion to film and literature, training videos, photography, etc., consistently insisting on the idea that the re-imagined format should inform the subject and give shape to its output. Whereas the first book released by BC was reportedly written by 150 people, in an “exquisite corpse” format, the second “novel,” entitled Be Corpse, is described as “a screenplay that cannot be a film” or “a film that can only be on paper.” A drama in three acts, the text seeks to make the gap between our primordial and contemporary selves collapse on itself, revealing an instinctless body and the brain manifest as the over-stimulated observer. Above all, Be Corpse should be received as the continuation of BC’s indirect, fiercely independent critique of our late capitalist/globalized world.

Art, Bernadette Corporation, Book Works, Fashion, Film, RAM, Sternberg Press

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 · add to cart

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.

Art, CK editions, DAP, Design, Dexter Sinister, Film, Graphics, JRP|Ringier, Ryan Gander, Stuart Bailey, Theory

American Minor

Charlie White, American Minor
Hardcover, 144 pp., offset 4/4, 245 x 345 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-03764-003-6
Published by JRP|Ringier/Codax Publishers

$65.00 · add to cart

The photographs of Los Angeles-based artist Charlie White (*1972) explore the complex social and psychological realities of American culture. American Minor delves into an important subtext of White’s work: the American teen. By cataloguing studio archives, film stills, animation stills, scripts, and photographs, the book highlights the artist’s investigations into the representation of the American teen girl. Through images culled from the artist’s two-year study of an ex-urban teenager, archives of magazine covers featuring iconic blonde models, stills from his first 35mm film, and his photographic comparative study of teens and transgenders, American Minor presents White’s ongoing and never-before-seen studies of the American teen subject as image and idea. This book sheds new light on the artist’s oeuvre within the context of his new work in film, animation, and cultural archiving.

Art, Charlie White, Christoph Doswald, Codax Publishers, Culture, DAP, Dorothea Strauss, Film, JRP|Ringier, Jürg Trösch, Markus Bosshard, Photography

OMG BFF LOL

Charlie White, OMG BFF LOL
DVD, 9 min., 6 sec., NTSC, digital 4/4, 5.25 x 7.5 inches
Plays in a loop of the three scenes: A, B, A, C
Includes We Love to Shop *, the theme song from OMG BFF LOL
Published by Charlie White

$12.00 · add to cart

By now, every bona fide Blackberry or iPhone owner probably knows that the abbreviations OMG, BFF, and LOL stand for “oh my God,” “best friends forever,” and “laughing out loud” in the world of Short Message Service (SMS), which has come to be known as texting.

Based on a two-year study of the behavior of an actual American teenage girl, the animation is part of a larger project called The Girl Studies that dissects the desires and social anxieties of our era. The animation is meant to perform as a viable cartoon for young girls, while simultaneously providing a platform from which viewers can critique them. White’s works in photography, film, and more recently animation, often offer fictitious narratives to help us understand and evaluate the underlying realities of contemporary life.

This particular project features Tara and Blakey, two American-girl cartoon characters with pink-glitter accessories, trendy clothing, and commercial desires. These archetypes of the American teen are used to examine their representation from different angles. Set in three looping scenes, OMG BFF LOL contains the cartoon’s capitalist manifesto, “having is so much better than wanting,” discussed by the girls in a crystal shopping mall scene. The second and third scenes, set in a bedroom and bathroom, open the door to the interior loneliness and isolation of the two main characters, as viewers observe them surfing TV channels and radio stations, snacking, posing in front of a full length mirror, and crying, as a digital clock marks the passage of time.

White wrote and directed OMG BFF LOL, working in collaboration with Chuck Gammage studios, a Canadian animation house, to create the intentionally dated quality of the scenes. He explains, “The three segments loop on a now obsolete 4:3 Sony Trinitron monitor, which conjures the television as both box and broadcast mechanism.”

—Mónica Ramírez-Montagut

* A free download (MP3) of the teen-dance remix of We Love to Shop is available here.

Excerpt from Charlie White’s cartoon OMG BFF LOL (Mall) from his project The Girl Studies, 2008. (Run Time: 3 min., 16 sec.)

Aldrich Museum, Animation, Art, Catasonic Studio, Charlie White, Chris Land, Chuck Gammage Animation, Culture, Distribution, Fashion, Film, France Daigle, Greg Weeks, Hammer Museum, Jessica Weeks, Laura Post, Laura Riboli, Mark Wheaton, Michael Heldman, Michelle Ann Dunphy, Mike Helmer, Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Music, Pasquale Lamontagna, Paul Rivoche, Seamus O'Keefe, Suzy Bradshaw, Wyatt Troll

Is It Really So Strange?

William E. Jones, Is It Really So Strange?
Softcover, 108 pp., offset 4/1, 9.5 x 12 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 0-9772347-1-1
Published by David Kordansky Gallery

$30.00 · add to cart

Making the connection between The Smiths’ working-class, Manchester-raised, ethnic Irish experience and that of the sons and daughters of Latino immigrants in Los Angeles, Is It Really So Strange? is the companion book to William Jones’ documentary of the same name.

Art, Bill Horrigan, Brian Roettinger, Culture, David Kordansky Gallery, Distribution, Film, Music, Photography, William Jones

Mono.Kultur 16

Mono.Kultur 16, Miranda July
Softcover, 16 pp. + poster, offset 4/1, 140 x 200 mm
Edition of 5000
ISSN 1861-7085
Published by Mono.Kultur

$8.00 · add to cart

July does not have any art school or professional training — but nor is she wholly self-taught, having learned from and alongside an improvised network of artists, musicians, and writers she has worked with over the last fifteen years. After dropping out of college, July moved to Portland, where she lived for the next decade. She began performing spoken-word pieces at rock clubs; gradually, she transitioned into alternative art spaces, telling ever more complex stories that integrated audience participation and visuals ranging from slide shows to digital video.

During this time, she also founded Joanie 4 Jackie (formerly Big Miss Moviola). Joanie 4 Jackie was a non-commercial distribution system for women video-makers in the pre-YouTube mid-1990s. Any woman could submit a video short and July would put it onto a compilation tape with nine other videos; she then re-circulated these new ‘chain letter’ tapes so each video-maker could see what others were making. Joanie 4 Jackie was an explicitly feminist project, stemming from the anti-consumerist ethos of third wave feminism. Feminist concerns are also evident in July’s early short video works, which explored mother/daughter dynamics, voyeurism, and female spectatorship. In her videos The Amateurist and Nest of Tens, her characters hunt for or establish patterns, imposing their own personal systems of control onto the bewildering world around them. She extended these themes of unexpected longing and loss in Me and You, her short stories, and her recent performances.

Art, Caroline Muntendorf, Culture, Distribution, Film, Kai von Rabenau, Mike Mills, Miranda July, Mono.Kultur, Music, Renko Heuer