PUBLISHING AS ARTISTIC PRACTICE

Annette Gilbert (Ed.)

What does it mean to publish today? Concepts of ownership, authorship, work, accessibility and publicity are being renegotiated in the face of a changing media landscape, institutional upheavals and discursive shifts in legal, artistic and political arenas. New publishing concepts and opportunities from the experimental literature and art scene have begun to appear. Drawn from a one-day symposium/workshop at the Lettretage in Berlin, this reader of “19 texts and 69 images” by artists, publishers and scholars demonstrates that the question of publishing has moved from the margin to the center of aesthetic and academic discourse. Essays by media studies/contemporary literature scholar Paul Benzon, Vienna-based artists Michalis Pichler and Bernard Cella, founder of Wendy’s Subway (a library reading room and workshop) Matt Longabucco, graphic designer Ann Richter, curator Rachel Valinsky, Neural magazine founder Alessandro Ludovico, New York–based Armenian Iraqi–American writer K. Antranik Cassem and Moscow-based artist Vadim Zakharov, among others.

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Put About: A Critical Anthology on Independent Publishing

Maria Fusco and Ian Hunt

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PUTTING REHEARSALS TO THE TEST

Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer & Constanze Ruhm (Eds.)

While a number of performing arts use rehearsals as part of their artistic process, the rehearsal is relatively new to contemporary art discourse. Looking at rehearsals as a methodology, this reader from the ongoing Academy of Fine Arts Vienna series offers a timely reappraisal of authorship, teamwork and the aesthetics and politics of the unfinished project. Looking at the work of Yvonne Rainer, Maya Schweitzer and others, Berlin-based art theorist Sabeth Buchmann investigates the rehearsal as both tool and site of artistic process and improvisation. Additional contributors focus on artistic practices as sites of production; rules and power relations within contemporary art; teamwork-based, net-based or systemic forms of collaboration. The reader coincides with a three-part event of the same title in Montreal organized by Buchmann, curator Ilse Lafer, and artist Constanze Ruhm bringing over 30 international artists together to address the rehearsal as medium, and artworks in terms of production, reception and their relationship to institutional power.

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The Question of the Day

Nicolaus Schafhausen and Julia Moritz

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Rabih Mroué

A BAK Critical Reader Series in Artists’ Practice

Cosmin Costinas, Maria Hlavajova, Jil Winder

The fourth publication in the noted series Critical Readers in Contemporary Art from ever-provocative Dutch think tank BAK, this chunky soft-cover presents Rabih Mroue, Beirut-based visual artist, actor, director, playwright and musician. As one of the key artistic voices in Lebanon and beyond, Mroué responds to themes like political/religious martyrdom and the effects of repression on everyday life, thereby offering a window into the interface between art and politics in the Islamic world. His latest works are responses in video and installation to the political upheaval of the still-unresolved “Arab Spring.” The book includes a range of comments on Mroué’s work by artists, art historians and curators both Middle Eastern and European, with some of them appearing in English for the first time.

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TARIQ RAMADAN

On Super-Diversity

One of the greatest challenges for art and culture is to represent ethnic and cultural diversity. But what precisely does this term mean and why does it so rarely produce what it names? Steven Vertovec, Director of the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, puts forward the notion of “super-diversity,” noting “the need to reevaluate … [and move] beyond an ethno-focal understanding,” to adopt a multidimensional approach. The prolific and provocative scholar and activist Tariq Ramadan weighs in on the subject, insisting on universalism as a necessary, if devalued, horizon and offering a critique of the uses and limits of discourse within the practice of super-diversity. A pivotal and essential discussion with regards to issues facing the early twenty-first century instigated by the forward thinking Dutch institute, Witte de With. Part of the Reflections Series.

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RETURN TO THE POSTCOLONY

Specters of Colonialism in Contemporary Art

T.J. Demos

Examining recent projects from Sven Augustijnen, Vincent Meessen, Zarina Bhimji, Renzo Martens, and Pieter Hugo, Return  to  the  Postcolony investigates why and how contemporary artists have revisited former European colonies. This book explores the complex ways these artists’ projects respond to the bio-political crises of the present, especially as the claims of globalization— freedom, justice, inclusivity—have faltered in the wake of failed states, economic and political inequality, and ongoing wars for resources, security, and economic dominance worldwide. In this sense, the historically past and the geographically distant haunt the here-and-now, driving an ethical-political as well as aesthetic set of imperatives: to learn to live with ghosts, and to do so more justly.

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READING SUSANNE KRIEMANN

Hans Dickel and Lisa Puyplat

Susanne Kriemann, winner of the 2010 GASAG Art Prize, layers time and space with historic objects and historical material found in archives, adding her own photos and interventions to create conceptual and photographic installations and artist books. She’s built projects around a 1942 Hassleblad and photos taken by Agatha Christie; one project was inspired by the idea of a monstrously heavy building commissioned by the Third Reich. No wonder critics and theorists are drawn to her work. The nine authors collected in this anthology approach Kriemann’s various manifestations and meanings, and link the themes of her work to the current discourse of art in general. Texts by Hans Dickel, Övül Durmusglu, Matts Leiderstam & Susanne Kriemann, Vanessa Joan Müller, Lisa Puyplat, Dieter Roelstraete, Monika Szewczyk, Mirjam Varadinis, Axel John Wieder.

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REALISM MATERIALISM ART

Christoph Cox, Jenny Jaskey & Suhail Malik (Eds.)

Copublished with Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, Realism Materialism Art (RMA) introduces a diverse selection of new realist and materialist philosophies and examines their ramifications on the arts. Thirty-five essays cutting across thematic interests and modes of investigation offer a snapshot of an emerging and rapidly changing set of ideas and practices in art, philosophy, culture, theory and science, among other fields. RMA serves as a primer on “speculative realism,” neo-materialist theories, object-oriented ontologies and neo-rationalist philosophies. Despite their differences, these philosophical positions propose that thought can and does think outside itself, that reality can be known without its being shaped by and for human comprehension. They explicitly challenge dominant assumptions of cultural practice and theoretical inquiry and open up new domains of research and artistic inquiry. Also included is a collection of images curated by Jenny Jaskey and Alicia Ritson.

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