SVEN LÜTTICKEN

History in Motion: Time in the Age of the Moving Image

The moving image has irrevocably redefined our experience and construction of history. In the contemporary economy of time, history has become an image in motion, a series of events animated and performed through various media. Analyzing a variety of films, video pieces, and performances, Amsterdam-based historian and critic of art and culture Sven Lütticken evaluates the impact that our changing experience of time has had on the actualization of history in the present. In the process, he considers the role of shock and suspense, of play and games, the rise and ubiquity of television, transformed notions of leisure and labor time, and a new “natural history” marked by climate change.

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SVEN LÜTTICKEN

Cultural Revolution
Aesthetic Practice after Autonomy

In Cultural Revolution, Amsterdam-based historian and critic Sven Lütticken (b. 1971) looks at art and other forms of aesthetic practice in the context of our rapidly expanding and transforming cultural sphere. Addressing the renewed relevance of the notion of autonomy in a situation in which “the autonomy of art” is a stale, historical joke, Lütticken examines practices ranging from Black Mask to Subversive Aktion, from 1960s Dutch activist group Provo to Occupy, from Wet Dreams to Metahaven, and from New World Academy to Gulf Labor. Across the pages of this book, Scarlett Johansson meets Paul Chan, and Dr. Zira from Planet of the Apes mingles with Paul Lafargue, Rudi Dutschke and Alexandre Kojève. Lütticken is editor for the Witte Raaf and publishes regularly in art magazines such as Jong Holland, Artforum, New Left Review, Afterimage, Texte für Kunst and Camera Austria. Author of Sternberg titles History in Motion (2013) and Idols of the Market (2009).

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THE MATTERING OF MATTER

Documents from the Archive of the International Necronautical Society

Tom McCarthy & Simon Critchley

On August 7, 1999, Tom McCarthy founded the International Necronautical Society (INS) with a public presentation of the “Founding Manifesto,” a touchstone that would inform the organization’s proceedings for years to come. Composed of official committee members and illicit “agents,” the INS harks back to early 20th-century avant-gardes, producing declarations, reports, public hearings, broadcasts, and research documents. It also orchestrates more covert media infiltrations, all governed by the objective, set out in the manifesto, of mapping, entering, and occupying the space of death through literature, philosophy, culture, and technology. The  Mattering  of  Matter is a collection of INS documents produced between 1999 and 2010.

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Make Everything New – A Project on Communism

Grant Watson, Gerrie van Noord & Gavin Everall

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RAIMUNDAS MALAŠAUSKAS

Paper Exhibition: Selected Writings by Raimundas Malašauskas

“ The what-if runs through Raimundas’s writing like the Woody Allen runs through Woody Allen—effective and contagious,” writes Maxine Kopsa about writer/curator Raimundas Malašauskas’ works. This engaging, unexpected anthology of 16 essays by Malašauskas has been edited by and commented on (in the margins or in the back) by 16 equally illustrious art-world collaborators. And the reader, too, can participate: the even-numbered pages are left blank for that purpose. With contributions by Dexter Sinister, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy and Tirdad Zolghadr, among others.

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A MAN IN A ROOM SPRAY-PAINTING A FLY (OR AT LEAST TRYING TO)

Francesco Pedraglio

Gavin Everall (Ed.)

This first artist publication by Francesco Pedraglio,editor of Book Works’ noted Time Machine series,explores the possibilities and fault lines between written and spoken word. Made up of a series of false starts or scenarios, the narrative relies on interconnected stories about a character, Martha B., who, in a sense, illustrates the process of writing. Like literature itself, Martha B. repeatedly dies only to be continually reborn. At each false start, or each death, a new character is generated only to die with Martha B. again. The stories were conceived during Pedraglio’s research fellowship at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, where he was investigating the mechanics of storytelling in which sculpture or abstract objects generate the narrative impulse.

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MARIA LIND

Selected Writing

Writings by international critic and curator Maria Lind, director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, reflect her prolific career, delving into several of her most ambitious curatorial projects, experimental programs and innovative collaborations. She has worked with artists such as Christine Borland, Liam Gillick, Philippe Parreno, Annika Eriksson, Deimantas Narkevicius, Oda Projesi, Bojan Sarcevic and Marion von Osten. This collection expands on many of her thoughts on institutional critique and curatorial models. Since the early 1990s, Lind has been working with notable institutions throughout Europe and the United States, as director of Iaspis in Stockholm and Kunstverein München, and curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and co-curator of Manifesta 2.

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MARIO PFEIFER

Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974

Using the work of Lewis Baltz, a leading photographer of the 1975 New Topographics movement, as a jumping-off point, this book documents Mario Pfeifer’s multi-faceted work, Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California by Lewis Baltz, 1974. Pfeifer went on the road to track down the buildings photographed by Baltz and their history, and also sought out where the portfolios of photographs can today be found. Included is a film installation, consisting of two synchronized, looped, and parallel-projected films, that takes as its point of departure the first monograph of Baltz’s work, published by Castelli Graphics, New York in 1975. Includes film stills, production stills, an excellent interview with Baltz by Pfeifer, and a critical essay by noted contemporary art historian, Vanessa Joan Müller, essay by Chris Balaschak with introductions by Martin Hochleitner and Julia Moritz.

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MARKUS MIESSEN

The Nightmare of Participation
(Crossbench Praxis as A Mode of Criticality)

Welcome to Harmonistan! Berlin-based architect/writer Markus Miessen tackles the pervasive contemporary overuse of the concept of “participation” in the final part of his paradigm-changing trilogy. Supported by a nostalgic veneer of worthiness, phony solidarity and political correctness, participation has become the default of politicians withdrawing from responsibility. Miessen argues for an urgent inversion of participation, reflecting cogently on the limits and traps of its real motivations. He dreads breeding the next generation of facilitators and mediators, insisting on conflict as an enabling, instead of disabling, force. With refreshing candor, this internationally known architect and professor outlines a format for acting as uninvited irritant, forcing entry into fields of knowledge that arguably benefit from exterior thinking. Sometimes, Miessen writes, democracy has to be avoided at all costs!

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Related titles
Softcover

CHUS MARTÍNEZ

Club Univers

Chus Martínez, the new director of the Institute of Art, Basel, states: “I’ve been writing notes for years but never thought about having them published. These pages gather thoughts on artists who continue to be a source of motivation for me…who also possess a rare sense of humor… . (there is) no foreseeable line of research or sequence of arguments…however, I felt it would be useful to publish this peculiar research so as to motivate students to keep conversations going and to further open possibilities up to others.” The artists and their unique artistic practices selected for this book include Melquiades Herrera (1949–2003), Pedro Pietri (1944–2004), Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos (1939–1992) and Jorge Bonino (1935–1990). Club Univers, a petite pocket-sized book, is the first volume in a series from the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, focused on publishing ongoing research into historical and current artistic practices exploring new paradigms of experience.

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