MARTIN HERBERT

Tell Them I Said No

Martin Herbert’s timely new collection of essays considers various artists who have withdrawn from the art world or adopted an antagonistic position toward its mechanisms. Today, a large part of the artist’s role in our massively professionalized art world is being present. Herbert provides a counterargument for this proactive concept of self-marketing, examining the consequential nature of retreat, whether in protest, as a deliberate conceptual act or out of necessity. By illuminating the motives of artists including Stanley Brouwn, Charlotte Posenenske, David Hammons, Lutz Bacher and Agnes Martin among others, this book offers a unique perspective on where and how the needs of the artist and the needs of the art world diverge. Martin Herbert is a writer and critic living in Berlin. He is associate editor of ArtReview and writes for international art journals. Previous books include The Uncertainty Principle (2014) by Sternberg Press and Mark Wallinger (2011).

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PIRATES AND FARMERS

Essays on Taste

Dave Hickey

Arguably one of America’s most unconventional art/cultural critics working today, Dave Hickey has, once again, assembled a collection of searing essays that challenge the critics cultural status quo. Hickey recently announced his retirement from the field of criticism due to the new extreme popularity, oversimplification and commoditization of art: “I miss being an elitist and not having to talk to idiots.” Author of popular books such as Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy and The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty, Hickey focuses this new collection of writings on cultural phenomena such as the super collector, the trope of the biennale, the loss of looking and much, much more.

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HIDDEN CURRICULUM

Annette Krauss

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HIDDEN TRUTHS

Bloody Sunday 1972

Trisha Ziff

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Jennifer Higgie

Bedlam

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HIGHER ATLAS / AU-DELÀ DE L’ATLAS

The Marrakech Biennale in Context [4]

Carson Chan & Nadim Samman (Eds.)

The first major trilingual (English, Arabic and French) festival in North Africa to focus on cutting-edge contemporary art, literature and film, the Marrakech Biennale seeks to build cultural bridges through discussions with and among artists in a wide range of disciplines. This copiously illustrated collection of texts accompanying “Higher Atlas,” the visual arts exhibition at the 2012 Biennale, brings together the latest thinking on the history and contemporary reality of exhibition-making in North Africa and in particular, Morocco. Published in English and French, with an online edition in Arabic to follow, the catalog offers a window into North Africa’s vibrant but still little-known contemporary arts community. Texts by Atlas curators, Carson Chan and Nadim Samman, along with twelve additional contributors.

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Nikolaus Hirsch

On Boundaries

Frankfurt-based architect Nikolaus Hirsch presents theoretical essays, dialogues on collaborative projects and reflections on his own work, exploring the critical transformations of contemporary space and its effects on spatial practice. In this thought-provoking offering from the White Pocket Book series, the winner of the 2002 World Architecture Award looks at disciplines such as visual and performative arts and questions the notions of “boundary”: as a phenomenon of social and political discourse; a conflict between collaboration and authorship; a physical limitation that negotiates between stable and unstable conditions. Hirsch’s internationally acclaimed work includes the Dresden Synagogue, the Hinzert Document Center and a research project for the European Kunsthalle in Cologne. His work has been shown in such exhibitions as New German Architecture in Berlin, Utopia Station at the Venice Biennale and Can Buildings Curate? at AA London/Storefront Gallery in New York.

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More from the White Pocketbook Series

HOW TO ACT?

Charlotte van der Werf (Ed.)

The Art Cooperation Transmission (A.C.T.) Democ[k]racy project brings together eight institutional players, over forty artists and twenty researchers. Combining two years of residencies, seminars and exhibitions from 2012 to 2014, A.C.T. completes its goal with this massive publication, which is part documentation, exhibition catalog and theoretical reader. A.C.T was a consortium of Western and Eastern European art centers that joined forces to foster a cross-continental exchange exploring democratic changes facing Europe in the coming future. Multiple exhibitions were created by serially pairing curators from different cities until one exhibition became many. Featured are extensive reproductions, critical and poetic texts, political cartoons and more from collaborators including Anca Simionca, Marko Stamenkovic´ , Dan Perjovschi, Paul de Bruyne and Larys Frogier, among others.

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HOW TO KNOW WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING

Francis McKee

Mai Abu ElDahab, Maha Maamoun & Ala Younis (Eds).

In this post-truth era of “fake news,” how does one navigate the endless information available and choose a viable narrative of reality? In How to Know What’s Really Happening, a petite, hilarious and poignant handbook by Glasgow-based writer and curator Francis McKee, looks at various techniques for determining veracity from those of spy agencies and whistle-blowers to mystics and scientists. McKee’s respected writings include works on artists including, among others, Pipilotti Rist, Douglas Gordon and Simon Starling. How to Know is the third book in the Kayfa ta series, a publishing initiative by artists Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis. Each book features a monographic essay commissioned in the style of a how-to manual that occupies the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, and the factual and the fictional.

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HU FANG

Garden of Mirrored Flowers

Chinese writer Hu Fang offers a unique novel telling the story of a man designing a theme park, called Garden of Mirrored Flowers, which is itself an adaptation of a classical Qing Dynasty novel, Flowers in the Mirror. In an absorbing book which begins as a pictorial journey through mass-media advertisements, Fang depicts parallels between the park’s actual construction and how it has been imagined, or evolved out of history. Yet, is this the author’s vision, or more the result of reality writing itself through this author? Does that make it a documentary of life? “It’s a book written by a ghost writer,” says Fang. “Me? Just a traveler floating within the wave of globalization.”

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