This first work on the Belgian artist Benoit Platéus is a monography as well as an artist’s book. It comprises a selection of works created between 1997 and 2011, as well as a text written by the artist and proposing a direct insight into his universe. Platéus work doesn’t neglect any medium — photography, video, drawing or sculpture — in order to search for ambiguities in the most mundane field of visibility. In this way his art often acts as a ‘psychic apparatus’ that plays on, and questions and reflects the viewer’s perception and consciousness.

The ‘Dislexicon of Slapstick Humor, Funny Cinematography, and Very Special Effects’ is a richly illustrated glossary containing 138 witty words used in the Mack Sennett Comedy Studios between 1912 and 1933. It comprises clever concepts connected to slapstick comedy, gag strategies, funny pratfalls, dangerous stuntwork, and secrets of the filmmaking trade. In a mishmash of slapstick facts and fictions, the Dislexicon fully accepts tall tales, technical reports, jokes, and gossip as historical sources. Hopping from “gag” to “laugh” to “trick,” the dictionary presents a slapstick universe in which everything makes perfect sense — as only a fictional construction can.

The Mexican Suitcase is the result of more than three years of work by the Mexican-based Argentinian artist, Enrique Santos. This artist book could be, amongst other things, a ‘catalogue’ of an apocryphal exhibition that is not meant to be, one that from its very beginning proposes a reverse path to that already established — first the book, and then? Ever since this basic wink (not to mention that the title itself is an appropriation) Enrique Santo’s work addresses the idea of “robbery”. Using diverse languages and tools (photography, collage, video, sculpture, film, installations) the artist reflects upon the contemporary artistic works in a sociocultural and political environment of violence in which we find ourselves immersed. Robbery as a metaphor of appropriation and “postproduction” — in Bourriaud’s definition of the word — as an element specific of an artistic way of producing, that is loaded with intertextuality, reference, discourse and images that roam our daily lives.

Santos’ work is a way of thinking about how contemporary art is produced, and at the same time it talks about the gaze, the interpretation of he/she who observes, the understanding and production that comes with every look. It reflects upon a single active spectator, who builds a discourse, appropriates all meanings and elaborates on them according to his life story, and his social, cultural and emotional capital. That gaze has a filter through which history is interpreted. It talks about and with the viewer without underestimating his capacity for understanding. From the very beginning, the book presents a relationship of shared complicity, discourse, codes and understandings, but demands a lucid and imaginative perspective.

Retaking film, journalistic, documentary and advertising language, Santos quotes and reinterprets the great thieves of the screen and some real criminals, in order to talk about lies, confusions, myths and misunderstandings, as well as an ever more violent and heartbreaking reality that crawls into our lives through trivialized and shallow images.

— Florencia Magaril

Editor-in-Chief Alessio Ascari and art directors OK-RM are pleased to announce that KALEIDOSCOPE’s summer issue is a special edition entirely devoted to art produced in (or related to) the African continent today. In a time when the once-dominant western model is collapsing, the impressive growth of Africa’s economies looks likely to continue and its cultural offer is growing more and more vibrant, exposing the international audience to an incredible offering of art, music, architecture, film, design and fashion. This issue intends to be the most up-to-date and thorough exploration of the African scene of contemporary art and culture, from Egypt to South Africa via Ethiopia and Nigeria, conducted in collaboration with a dream team of both international contributors and influential thinkers and practitioners working in and around Africa today.

HIGHLIGHTS
Santu Mofokeng by Philippe Pirotte; Hassan Khan and Wael Shawky by Shahira Issa; Sci-Fi Narratives by Nav Haq and Al Cameron; Athi-Patra Ruga by Linda Stupart; Cinématèque de Tanger by Omar Berrada.

MAIN THEME — The Future of the Continent, Continent of the Future
Art by Nana Oforyatta-Ayim; Cinema by Olufemi Terry, Frances Bodomo, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Mahen Bonetti; Music by Benjamin Lebrave; and Urban Planning by Antoni Folkers.

MONO — Nicholas Hlobo
Interview by Sean O’Toole; Essay by Tracy Murinik; Focus by Liese van deer Watt.

REGULARS
Futura: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye by Hans Ulrich Obrist; Panorama: Invisible Borders by Emmanuel Iduma; Souvenir d’Italie: Massimo Grimaldi by Luca Cerizza; On Exhibitions: “African Negro Art” by Paola Nicolin; Producers: Elvira Dyangani Ose by Carson Chan.

SPECIAL PORTFOLIOS
Viviane Sassen, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Namsa Leuba.

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.

Adolfo Doring’s Nomenclature is deceptively layered with meaning and contexts absorbent from his work in film. Sublime and poetic, Nomenclature is pictorial prose, a visual soliloquy, an imagistic dialogue of the human figure in a kind of call and response with a plethora of variegated environments including urban space as well as the natural world. Doring’s still photography is analogous to a single frame of a film; where he decides to point his camera, whether indoors or outdoors, is akin to a film’s locale; and the placement of images mapped within Nomenclature is as much a directorial decision as it is of editing.

— Raul Zamudio

Munich — Paris 23
November — 14 December 1974

In the winter of 1974, filmmaker Werner Herzog made a three week solo journey from Munich to Paris on foot. He believed it was the only way his close friend, film historian Lotte Eisner, would survive a horrible sickness that had overtaken her. During this monumental odyssey through a seemingly endless blizzard, Herzog documented everything he saw and felt with intense sincerity. This diary is dotted with a pastiche of rants about the extreme cold and utter loneliness, notes on Herzog’s films and travels, poetic descriptions of the snowy countryside, and personal philosophizing. What is most remarkable is that the reading of the book is in continuity with the experience of watching his films; it’s as if, through this walk, we witness the process in which images are born. Although he received a literary award for it, this introspective masterpiece has lingered out of print since 1979. Beautifully designed and emotionally impressive, Of Walking in Ice is the first in a color-coded series of remarkable yet long-forgotten titles being republished by Free Association.

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.

Spike Jonze’s new half-hour short film titled I’m Here is a robot love story celebrating a life enriched by creativity. The movie is set in contemporary Los Angeles, where life moves at a seemingly regular pace with the exception of a certain amount of robot residents who live among the population. A male robot librarian lives a solitary and methodical life — devoid of creativity, joy and passion — until he meets an adventurous and free spirited female robot.

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.