Temporary Storages

Joo Hwang, Temporary Storages

Joo Hwang, Temporary Storages
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 4/4, 180 x 240 mm
English and Korean
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-89-94027-17-3
Published by mediabus

$25.00 ·

Temporary Storage (2009-2010) is a record of buildings that appear in and disappear from our landscape. The project Temporary Storage asks “what do buildings mean to us?” Buildings are never merely tools; they themselves become the environment we live in having significant influences on the way we form relationships with our surroundings. The temporary storage has become a part of landscape and acts as more than the functions they serve. Often perceived as hostile intruders to the surrounding environment, through them we see perversion and severance of the relation between men and the structures. Such phenomena are caused by the intensification of the separation of man and nature, man and civilization, and man and his fellows that began with the industrial contest.

— Joo Hwang

In her latest work, Joo Hwang examines the prefabricated temporary storage facilities that cluster alongside fields or in the shadow of newly erected residential towers on the urban edges. As presented here, these are some of the most mysterious albeit unremarkable structures on the road of commodity circulation. Her methodology appears simple: a simple cataloging of structures and site. She uses photography’s capacity for sustained description and accumulation, however, to build, over time, a document with considerable analytic force.

— Robert Sember

MS Sans

MacGregor Harp and Victor Hu, MS Sans

MacGregor Harp and Victor Hu, MS Sans
Softcover, 84 pp., offset 1/1, 6 x 8 inches
Edition of 500
Published by Cheap Art America

$5.00 ·

A celebration of the mundane. MS Sans invites thirteen contributors to explore the potential of the typeface Microsoft Sans.

“Each glyph feels as if constructed from rigid individual bits expressing no empathy for the bows and straights of the other. Compare these letterforms to the negative spaces of its progenitor Helvetica; whence MS Sans borrowed its original file name, helv.tff. Inspect closely how the stems of the lowercase b, d, g, p, and q bend not to their respective bowls. O, daughters and sons of the New House what brother of Arial is this? What absent father’s nose is present in this numeral 1? And to whose crooked grandmother do we blame thine unspinely 8? Yet take no offense. Similar results manifest when a gaze is exercised on your humble narrator.”

— Stewart Smith

Born in Flames

Lizzie Borden, Born in Flames

Lizzie Borden, Born in Flames
Softcover, 32 pp., offset 4/4, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9562605-9-8
Published by Occasional Papers

$18.00 · out of stock

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.

The Artist as an Instigator of Changes in Social Cognition and Behaviour

Stephen Willats, The Artist as an Instigator of Changes in Social Cognition and Behaviour

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

$18.00 · out of stock

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.

The Form of the Book Book

Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, The Form of the Book Book

Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, The Form of the Book Book
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 2/1, 140 x 230 mm
Second edition
ISBN 978-0-9562605-7-4
Published by Occasional Papers

$22.00 · out of stock

A collection of essays on book design by Catherine de Smet, James Goggin, Jenni Eneqvist, Roland Früh, Corina Neuenschwander, Sarah Gottlieb, Richard Hollis, Chrissie Charlton, Armand Mevis.

The Master Builder

Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, The Master Builder

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

$8.00 · out of stock

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.

Research Notes

Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich, Research Notes

Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich, Research Notes
Softcover, 20 pp., offset 1/1, 195 x 255 mm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-3-905714-95-1
Published by Nieves

$14.00 ·

In an attempt to celebrate how we find ourselves doodling while on the phone, testing pens in stationery shops, our belief in folklore, the need to misuse technology or whose idea it was to fly aero planes in formation to write messages across our skies.

The research notes selected from the archive A Recent History of Writing & Drawing hopefully provide references to things old, new and maybe forgotten which together can offer an alternative understanding of our habit to document thoughts and ideas. Upending assumptions that any one kind of communication is more authentic, more direct or more valid that any other, A Recent History of Writing & Drawing finds meaning, texture and poetry in the most unlikely places.

Empty Words

Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich, Empty Words

Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich, Empty Words
Softcover, 24 pp., cut paper, 195 x 255 mm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-3-905714-93-7
Published by Nieves

$24.00 ·

News

Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich, News

Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich, News
Softcover, 24 pp., offset 1/1, 195 x 255 mm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-3-905714-94-4
Published by Nieves

$14.00 ·

The Speed-i-Jet, a mobile pen-printer manufactured by Reiner (Germany), is a device built around an industrial inkjet cartridge / printing head. With its clumsy user interface and 30 character maximum capacity, this charming parasitical product prompted the discussion of possible uses for such a device. Together with the curatorial staff of the institution, daily news headlines were selected and transferred onto the devices. Holding and moving the device like a pen, visitors could experience the writing of texts to which the author is ambiguous.

The headlines were collected during Things to Say at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, 14 February — 12 April, 2009.

Ein Magazin über Orte 8

Ein Magazin über Orte 8, Paradise

Ein Magazin über Orte 8, Paradise
Softcover, 84 pp., offset 4/4, 210 x 270 mm
Edition of 1000
ISSN 1866-2331
Published by Ein Magazin über Orte

$18.00 ·

Ein Magazin über Orte (A magazine about places) is published twice a year. It deals with a different location in every issue. The magazine collects works of various authors in the form of photographs, drawings and texts.

General Idea: A Retrospective 1969-1994

Frédéric Bonnet, General Idea: A Retrospective 1969-1994

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

$40.00 · out of stock

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.

Theater Objects

William Leavitt, Theater Objects

William Leavitt, Theater Objects
Softcover, 148 pp., offset 4/4, 230 x 300 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 978-1-933751-18-4
Published by MOCA

$40.00 · out of stock

A pioneer of Conceptual art in Los Angeles during the late 1960s and 1970s, the painter, installation artist and theater director William Leavitt (born 1941) is above all an artist of narrative devices. Since 1969, his works in all the above media have employed abrupt fragments of popular and vernacular culture and depictions of modernist architecture to construct elusive narratives of cityscapes and environments. The culture and atmosphere of Los Angeles has played a significant role in Leavitt’s handling of these themes; classic southern Californian motifs of ever-present artifice and almost washed-out brightness recur throughout his work. Surveying the artist’s 40-year career, this volume includes sculptural tableaux, paintings, works on paper, photographs and performances from the late 1960s to the present. Leavitt has created a remarkable oeuvre that has influenced generations of artists, and this volume is both long overdue and highly anticipated.

No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America 1960-1980

Betty Bright, No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America 1960-1980

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

$40.00 ·

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.