Colorado House – Times Vol.1 – The Puzzling Almanac
Colorado House, run by Charlotte Collin and Jana Papenbroock, is an independent publishing house specialised on printed and crafted matter with a particular focus on experiment, anthropology and process.
Times Vol. 1: The Puzzling Almanac is a pictorial atlas about the staging of memory and the disarray of taxonomy. 365 photographs from the early 19th to the early 20th century were assembled to collages, enabling the reader to browse through the unlikely associations between scientific inventions, ancient discoveries, and past current affairs. The juxtaposition of the stylized, historical photos conveys the ongoing mise-en-scène of reality and the poetic fiction of all systems of classification. Like an eternal inkblot test, what the reader makes of history is left to himself. The book can be read as an open puzzle from all directions, literally right to left, back to front, bottom to top, accomodating the reader’s own whim and perspective.
Mindgames & Shame @Motto
Mindgames, by Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjorvar, published in collaboration with Werkplaats Typografie, incoporates metaphorical qualities depicting people and their relationships in an ongoing interchange between space, geometry, history, and meaning. This quadrangled story about shades and variations in co-dependence and sovereignty is inspired by a musician (John Lennon), a theorist (Henri Lefebvre), an author (Halldor Laxness), and a demented ruler of Rome (Caligula) – forming biographies that present portraits of associations rather than particular statements about individual lives. The publication was conceived as a way of enjoying information in the tradition of the autodidacts of the past – but in a style which is contingent to a reverence towards traditional modes of archiving the world.
A slideshow presentation – December 13, 2012, from 7pm, Motto, Berlin – addressing the sovereignty of the sign, and/or the independence of the phenomenon which had hitherto transported it, marks the official release of MINDGAMES – a publication conceived as abstract shapes, shrouded in words, to articulate a cross-dimensional plane of intrigue. The diagrams and images will describe the structures and concepts that occupied the mind of the author when creating the text. The presentation will include more than a hundred originally composed images and will be accompanied by a reading.
Shame is a recurring publication which observes and researches human feelings and the human body. Shame focuses on daily issues that easily pass by our attention and juxtaposes them to politics, design and art in printed form. This makes it look, at times, uncomfortable and embarrasing. Shame One was initiated and produced in the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL by visual artist Wolfgang Fuetterer and graphic designer Neda Firfova.
B.Books
B.Books publishes bilingual art & design books. The first publication, Word.Book 1, Graphic Design Terms is due to be published in 2013. The bilingual English–French glossary is aimed at offering graphic designers and design students working internationally with the translation of specialist terms necessary to carry out their everyday work.
With the increasing international exchange and mobility of creative workers and students, unlike standard dictionaries, B.Books publications respond to the need of translating rapidly evolving vocabulary. The terms are offered in both languages, with definitions, illustrations and references to related terms, where necessary.
Compiled through using a wide variety of sources, both in print and online, Word.Books are working tools that evolve with their sector. Online forums will act as a digital extension of each publication thereby offering users the possibility to suggest and discuss terminology, definitions and also to add illustrations to complement their Word.Book.
OEI
“OEI was started in 1999, as a magazine mostly for experimental poetry. We had been very interested in things like North American Language-writing, Brazilian concrete poetry, the investigative poetry of the ‘pataphysically oriented Toronto Research Group, and small-press adventures such as the French Orange Export Ltd. Since then we have moved closer to the art world, while also including a lot of philosophy, film and speculative sociology. And while also keeping our distances to all of this. Our latest issue is on sleep, withdrawal, attention, distraction, and the complex notion of “the contemporary”.
OEI has never been about “self-representation” through publishing. We have always been more interested in what the French media researcher Emmanuel Souchier has called “l’énoncé éditorial”, “the enunciation of editing and publishing”, an enunciation taking into account the constitutive preconditions of the enunciation: format, paper, montage, layout, typography, the tensions between text and image, proof-reading, binding, printing, etc.
So far we have published 58 issues of the magazine, and approximately 60 books within the publishing structure connected to OEI, OEI editör: mostly poetry and artist’s books, but also theory and poetics, posters, cd:s and dvd:s. Connected to our office in Stockholm is an exhibition space, OEI Colour Project, housing micro-exhibitions, lectures and readings.
But the magazine is the core of the project, and it is not an accidental occurrence if one of our most recent issues, #56–57, is a special issue on the notion of the magazine as an aesthetic medium, investigating many of its transformations and formal innovations since Stéphane Mallarmé’s La Dernière Mode in 1874. And we still believe in the transformative power of the magazine format, even if it has changed much in the thirteen years OEI has existed. (…) ” Jonas (J) Magnusson about Editing OEI
Dieter Roth, larmes et livres
La bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, à Paris, présente, jusqu’au 18 janvier 2013, Dieter Roth, larmes et livres, une sélection des livres d’artiste de Dieter Roth, en collaboration avec les Editions Periferia qui possèdent de nombreux originaux de ces livres publiés dans les années 60. C’est autour de ces publications et particulièrement de « DAS UR-TRÄNENMEER » (Die Box) et des livres utilisant la forme du journal, que cette exposition est organisée.
Au début de l’année 1970, Dieter Roth développe son goût pour l’écriture en publiant des aphorismes deux fois par semaine dans le « ANZEIGER DER STADT LUZERN UND UMGEBUNG », un journal gratuit de petites annonces publié à Lucerne.
Dans une interview il déclarait que ces pages d’encarts publicitaires étaient : “si brutales, (qu’elles) ressemblaient à un dépotoir ; je pensais que je devais y déposer une petite larme”.
Semaines après semaines entre mars 1971 et septembre 1972 des phrases comme : “une larme c’est l’équivalent d’un mot gentil”, “Est ce qu’un être humain peut voir quelque chose sans être ce qu’il voit ?” apparurent dans le journal, simplement signées DR.
Le journal rompt le contrat de publication après la parution de 114 (sur 248) “petites annonces” et ce, suite aux plaintes de lecteurs effrayés par ce qu’ils pensaient être des codes subversifs ou du moins des petites annonces qui n’annonçaient rien.
De ce projet Dieter Roth a conçu cinq volumes intitulés “Tränenmeer”. En 1973, Dieter Roth, utilisant du vrai papier journal , compilera ces encarts dans un livre d’artiste : « Le lac (mer) de larmes » : “Tränensee”.
L’exposition comporte deux volets. D’une part l’exposition de plus de cinquante exemplaires originaux des livres de Dieter roth. D’autre part une intervention à l’intérieur de la collection Maciet – encyclopédie par l’image conservée à la Bibliothèque – mettant en œuvre un dialogue entre les regards de Dieter Roth et Jules Maciet sur le monde.
Jules Maciet s’est attaché à compiler et coller des images, couvrant tous les domaines de la connaissance et des savoirs faire, dans des albums adoptant une classification thématique. Cette collection est le reflet de cette volonté philanthropique de partage et d’éducation de cette époque, mais aussi la conviction d’un homme du pouvoir de l’image…
Watermarking
Guests of Liverpool Biennial, graphic designer David Bennewith and artists William Hsu and Marnie Slater presented Watermarking.
A harbour city and the capital of New Zealand, Wellington is distinctive not only as the site of governance for a bicultural nation state, but also for the geographical location that determines its rich cultural character and enduring relationship to the ocean.
From the geographical and socio-political histories of Wellington, they extended connections to the port city of Liverpool through outsourcing and assemblage. Notions of distance, local matter in global circulation, and the fluidity of ocean waters inform and encapsulate the work that takes form as printed material.
“Today as our primary communication tools are online, publications have the potential to become deliberate sculptural objects, rather than simply a way to distribute information. This turns the making of a book into a building process and the construction of a space. In Watermarking, the book has become a structure that hosts various publishing practices.”
Reflecting the ongoing necessity of the ocean as a physical and geographical expanse in which industrial enterprises connect, printers from Wellington, Melbourne, Taipei, Rotterdam and finally Liverpool were invited to visualise this space within the pages of a publication, each imagining and inscribing the colour of their ocean.
A Circular 2
A Circular 2 – a journal edited by Pedro Cid Proença – features David Antin on Real Estate; a trio of short loops on song and sound by David Morris; Richard Hollis on Flags, Stars and Signs; Pedro Neves Marques on 1972; Dieter Roth’s Trophies Rotated by James Langdon; Patrick Coyle fake fancying, feigning, forging; an extract of Fugue by Roger Laporte; Wayne Daly and Sean Lynch in conversation; Adrian Piper’s To Art (Reg. Intrans. V.) and another instalment of Will Holder’s Middle of Nowhere.
Launches
December 8, 7–9pm, X Marks the Bökship, London
December 21, 7pm, The Barber Shop, Lisboa
No Cash Value
No Cash Value is an exhibition of and about cultural and fiscal Exchange that places the collective work of one American designer and two British designers inside of one Dutch project space. Colophon Foundry (Anthony Sheret & Edd Harrington, UK, and Benjamin Critton, US) will show works created specifically for this geography and exchange-scenario. No Cash Value looks to the Dollar ($), Euro (€), and Pound (£) as placeholders for, and abstract representations of, the United States, Netherlands, and United Kingdom.
Two typefaces—Value Sans and Value Serif—have been drawn for the occasion and will be available to the public starting on the evening of the show’s opening. Additional works will include objects as well as editioned prints and publications. A catalogue for the show will also be produced. Works will be for sale from $/€/£1.
December 14 – January 27, 2013
Oz gallery, Amsterdam
Alternative narratives – Inaudible
Inaudible is a blog exploring a theme of subtitles,
created by graphic designers Olya Troitskaya, Timur Akhmetov,
Asger Behncke Jacobsen, Johannes Breyer.
MONACO MAGAZINE: ISSUE 6
Monaco is a magazine that, instead of reviewing or previewing, is devoted to sharing ideas and information about things that haven’t happened, and maybe never will: artworks that are impossible to realise, projects that haven’t got off the ground, the beginnings of ideas, or research that is still ongoing. The aim is not to catalogue or archive these projects, instead they are considered as starting points—for future projects, or for conversations—as readers become contributors and contributors become readers.
Monaco issue 6 contributors: Zayne Armstrong, Jennifer Bailey, Bianca Baldi, Catherine Borra, Vittorio Brodmann and Elise Lammer, Oscar Carlson, Olivier Castel, Rosie Cooper and Ariella Yedgar, Winnie Cott, Danielle Dean, Arnaud Desjardin, Jenifer Evans, Eva Fàbregas, Babak Ghazi, Emma Hart, Dominique Hurth, Tim Ivison and Julia Tcharfas, Kazimierz Jankowski, Atalya Laufer, Ian Law, Aki Nagasaka, Kathy Noble, Rachel Pimm and Jessica Rose, Paul Simon Richards, Manuel Shvartzberg, Lena Tutunjian, Charles Veyron.
Launch November 29, 2012, 7pm
David Roberts Art Foundation, London
Theophile’s Papers PANORAMA n°15
Theophile’s Papers is a project dedicated to the diffusion of independent editors, fanzines, newspapers and magazines specialized in art, photography, typography, and illustration, with a focus on the promotion of emerging projects and artist books.
With his collection of publications, and displays designed by Valérian Goalec, Theophile travels to apartments, galleries, and book shops, where he helps people to discover new things in different places.
Artisan Social Designer, an Art & design gallery in Paris, welcomes Theophile’s Papers for Panorama n°15, november 30 to january 2.
In:quest of Icarus
In:quest of Icarus is a tragedy; a contemporary work written of and from a contemporary situation and drawing upon Greek myth to illuminate certain aspects of that situation. Norman Potter
Norman Potter (1923–1995) was an English designer and educator. In 1964 Potter co-founded the Construction School, an experimental design course at the West of England College of Art in Bristol, England. His bold programme de-emphasised specialization in design and encouraged practical collaboration between disciplines. The school’s brief history is burdened by resistance to Potter’s ideas at every level of the educational institution. Coloured by this, and his involvement in the student protests of 1968, Potter’s thoughts on the structure of design education became increasingly anti-authoritarian.
In:quest of Icarus is a complex and allegorical reflection on these experiences. Potter describes the work as concerned with ‘walls, barriers, both of languages and hardware; the codes people use to protect their identity and to make random experiences ordered and comprehensible; the occasional wisdom of foolishness; freedoms and imprisonments; and so forth.’ It is Potter’s only play, and has been performed only once, by students at the Construction School on 5 December, 1974.
Restaged by James Langdon, the work is here represented by participants at the Werkplaats Typografie and the Sandberg Institute.
The staging of the performance is integral. The design of the hall and props follows the visual language and apparatus of the typewriter, on which it was composed. The configuration of the hall itself is a representation of the typewriter, with the audience actively implicated in the position of the keys, described by Potter as ‘the alphabetic possibilities of the spoken and written language.’ The staging is prepared by the performers themselves, and the four day process of construction, rehearsal and performance together constitutes the work.
November 29, Kunstverein, Amsterdam
November 30, December 1 & 2, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter
Dom Sylvester Houédard, Figuur, 1964. Courtesy Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry
Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter – The Life and Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard – the first book since the early 1970s devoted to the extraordinary British Benedictine monk, scholar, translator, concrete poet and artist Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924–92) – offers a broad and richly illustrated introduction to this major artistic and theological figure.
Besides many of Houédard’s ‘typestracts’ – the concrete poems produced entirely with his Olivetti typewriter – this book also includes examples of his lesser-known ‘poem-objects’, a selection of key texts, as well as never-before-published performance scores. In both his spiritual views and artistic output, Houédard stands out as a model of insatiable curiosity, building around him a vast network of enlightened poets, visual artists, performers, musicians and thinkers of all faiths and walks of life.
Fernand Baudin Students Publications 2013
Fernand Baudin Students Publications 2013 – a yearly event dedicated to editorial productions by students in Belgium – needs your support.
Initiated by members of Fernand Baudin Prize, this event aims to focus on research and reflexion around editorial practices, and brings together students from different superior art schools everywhere in Belgium. This event corresponds to a current and general regain of interest in editing, also visible in most superior art schools: new classes?and Master specialized in editorial practices. More than another “most beautiful book award”, this event offers a less hierarchical and competitive model, and implies a real participation and reflexion of the students at many levels, from the event’s conception and organization to the exhibition, lectures, discussions and round tables taking place during the event.
Fernand Baudin Students Publications 2013 – The Tools Issue will happen in March 2013, during the international art book fair Paper/View in Brussels – connecting students and professional (common and divergent) problematics and practices.
L’Atlas Mnémosyne (Écrits 2) – Aby Warburg
Aby Warburg (1866-1929) a laissé une oeuvre inachevée et fragmentaire, dont la plus grande partie est encore inédite dans sa langue originale même. Au croisement de l’histoire de l’art, de la philosophie, de l’anthropologie et de la psychologie historique, les recherches d’Aby Warburg ont marqué profondément plusieurs générations d’historiens de l’art (de F. Saxl à E. Wind, en passant par E. Panofsky et E. Gombrich) et contribué à donner à la discipline certains de ses principaux fondements méthodologiques.
La collection – publiée par les éditions de L’écarquillé, dirigée par Maurizio Ghelardi (École Normale de Pise), Susanne Müller (Université de Bâle), Roland Recht (Collège de France) – qui a vu le jour l’année dernière avec Miroirs de faille se poursuit avec la parution de L’Atlas Mnémosyne, l’œuvre majeure et la plus fascinante d’Aby Warburg.
Cette collection se propose de mettre à la disposition du public francophone un certain nombre d’essais et de notes en partie inédits, et d’apporter ainsi un éclairage nouveau sur tout un pan des recherches de Warburg, en apparence fort éloigné du champ de la culture figurative de la Renaissance. Elle entend contribuer à repenser l’oeuvre d’une des figures qui ont le plus profondément marqué notre tradition culturelle et figurative.
Si Aby Warburg a été le premier à définir une méthode d’interprétation iconologique, s’il a créé une bibliothèque des sciences de la culture unique au monde, l’innovation décisive qu’il a introduite dans le champ épistémologique de l’histoire de l’art est bien Mnémosyne : oeuvre absolument originale et unique, dont l’ambition n’est rien moins que de poser les fondements d’une grammaire figurative générale, et qui ouvre des perspectives dont la portée n’a pas encore été totalement mesurée. Par la complexité des problèmes auxquels s’est confronté Warburg face à cet immense corpus d’images, c’est l’attention de l’ensemble des sciences humaines qu’il a attirée sur son oeuvre.
Resté inachevé à la mort de l’auteur, ayant mobilisé l’énergie intellectuelle et physique de ses dernières années, Mnémosyne peut être considéré comme l’aboutissement de toutes ses recherches. Il constitue le plus ambitieux corpus d’images jamais réuni, dont la genèse et l’évolution sont liées à une pratique discursive et à un mode de transmission du savoir que préconisait Warburg, mais qu’il convient aussi d’examiner sous l’angle de ses relations avec le problème de la mémoire et avec sa bibliothèque.
Présentation, 26 novembre 2012, 18h
INHA, Galerie Colbert, Paris
Bookhorse
Bookhorse is a publishing initiative based in Zurich,
run by graphic designer Lex Trüb.
Royal Garden
Royal Garden is an on-line shaggy magazine, a multidisciplinary production environment, a critical, theoretical and artistic exquisite cadaver…
In Playtime (1967) Jacques Tati describes a modern world made of huge empty corridors, offices mazes, large exhibition halls … His alter ego Monsieur Hulot spends at the a Royal Garden an evening punctuated by his own catastrophes. The futuristic world quickly turns into a hellish labyrinth. Wrapped in the loop as an arrow drawn in red neon above the door, one has to turn himself in order to exit and enter again. In this film the Royal Garden is a metaphor of paradise.
Royal Garden is the in-between, the a-side, the towpath, the alternate, the flow, the connection. The ideal squatting base to explore freely the possibilities offered by this new medium, to escape the diktat of the formalism and to highlight key issues of art today: communication and connection.
Born in 2008, Royal Garden is an extension on the virtual mode of the artistic project of Crédac.
Publishers of the Month: Spector books
Spector books are Publishers of the Month at X Marks the Bökship.
The title of their new book – Sounds Like Silence. John Cage – 4’33” – Silence Today – and the exhibition it documents is ambiguous. On the one hand, silence effectively “sounds” — or as Cage put it, “There is no such thing as silence.” On the other hand, sound needs silence in order to be heard. Even if complete silence does not exist, every sound implicitly conveys the notion of silence: there is no presence without absence. The double meaning of Sounds Like Silence therefore touches upon the central issues at stake in this project: what do we hear when there is nothing to hear; to what extent do we long for silence; and how much silence can we cope with — provided it even exists?
John Cage’s 4’33” (four minutes, thirty-three seconds) premiered on August 29, 1952. This book presents new theoretical writings and artistic works referring to this groundbreaking work, together with original scores and the composer’s own variations, derivatives, and sequels of the “silent piece” in the years from 1962 to 1992.
November 22 – December 22, 2012
Launch & Talk, November 22, 6 – 9pm
X Marks the Bökship, London
Dubuffet typographe
Dubuffet typographe s’inscrit à la suite de différents projets de Pierre Leguillon qui, depuis une quinzaine d’années, “réactive” des oeuvres majeures de l’art du XXe siècle qu’il juge paralysées dans les carcans de l’histoire.
A partir de nombreuses photos prises dans différentes archives privées et publiques (notamment la Fondation Dubuffet à Paris, la Bibliothèque Kandinsky du Centre Pompidou, l’IMEC à Caen), Pierre Leguillon propose autant de “recadrages” dans l’ oeuvre de Jean Dubuffet (1901 – 1985) et au sein de ses ephemeras : invitations, affiches, catalogues, livres d’artistes, tracts, logotypes, billets de spectacles, pochettes de disques ou correspondance.
A partir d’un film, Pierre Leguillon dresse un inventaire subjectif de formes typographiques qui semblent avoir échappé au patient travail de catalogage qu’initia Dubuffet dès 1964 avec la publication du Catalogue des Travaux. Il montre aussi comment le procédé de reproduction mécanique de l’écriture manuscrite, faisant de chaque caractère une image, et non plus une empreinte, interroge aujourd’hui le « devenir image » de tout caractère typographique affiché sur nos écrans. Au texte, encore frappé au plomb par la machine à écrire, se substitue sa propre image. Contrairement au plomb, cette image ne doit plus être rangée dans une casse, et Dubuffet déjà, inventait des formes typographiques non-standard.
Exposition
30 novembre – 19 janvier 2013
art3, Valence
Conférences
22 novembre 2012, 18h30, Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris
7 février 2013, 20h, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles
