SOLUTION 263

Double Agent

Alhena Katsof & Dana Yahalomi

This humorous series hasn’t lost its edge! Solution 263: Double Agent is a methodology, manual and performance. The training manual written by New York–based curator/writers Alhena Katsof and Dana Yahalomi of Public Movement contains two scripts, strategy guides and procedures. Readers learn how to study and perform Debriefing Sessions, a series of one-to-one exchanges about the performative relationship between the state and its cultural institutions. Public Movement, a performative research body formed in 2006 by Omer Krieger and Yahalomi presents the debriefing format as a methodology for the transmission of information, turning research into action. At its root is the possibility that to activate art in the political field, an agent may be a double agent. Other contributors include art critic/curator Karen Archey, New York–based artist Jill Magid, performance artist / costume designer / researcher Hagar Ophir and Berlin-based historian Janto Schwitters.

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SOLUTION 264-274

DRILL NATION

Ingo Niermann (Ed.)

“What is luxury? Anything that is not essential to life and that, once everyone has it, is rather annoying.” ~ Solution 264, “Public Poverty” In the 12th volume of the tongue-in-cheek Solutions series, Berlin- and Basel-based writer Ingo Niermann takes a new look at what nationhood can mean and accomplish today now that the promise of global prosperity and abundance technically has been fulfilled. He finds his inspiration in—of all places—North Korea, and 11 solutions build from insights Niermann culled while traveling there. Presented in the author’s photographs and diaristic travel entries, Niermann suggests that by relying on drills and the principle of reduction, an individual can be granted the freedom to enjoy a different relationship to experiences and ideas not heretofore possible, declaring that the time has come for a minimalist rethink of society: the more we simplify, the lighter the ballast.

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SOLUTION 264–274

Drill Nation

Ingo Niermann

Having furnished Solutions for Germany and Dubai, Ingo Niermann takes a new look at what nationhood can mean and accomplish today, finding inspiration, of all places, in North Korea. Now that the promise of global prosperity and abundance can technically be fulfilled, the time has come for a minimalist rethink of society. By relying on drills and a principle of reduction, the individual can be granted a freedom for experiences and ideas that are not possible otherwise. The more we simplify, the lighter the ballast we’ll have to carry.

The twelfth volume in the Solution series includes an account of Niermann’s travels through North and South Korea, accompanied by the author’s photographs. The eleven solutions in Solution 264–274: Drill Nation build from insights culled while on the trip.

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Solutions 9: The Great Pyramid

Ingo Niermann and Jens Thiel

The first publication in the Solution series of books that will present visionary projects in different countries goes to Germany. The Great Pyramid is the brainchild of writer Ingo Niermann, who envisioned using a derelict site in eastern German to build a democratic tomb for people from all ethnic, ethical, and religious backgrounds – which would function as a tourist attraction and spark an economic revitalization for the financially struggling region. Includes contributions by Rem Koolhaas, Christian Kracht, and Chus Martinez and projects by Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo), Fake/ Ai Weiwei (Beijing), Nikolaus Hirsch/Wolfgang Lorch/Markus Miessen (Frankfurt am Main), and MADA s.p.a.m. (Shanghai).

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SOLUTIONS 247–261: LOVE

Ingo Niermann (Ed.)

In its ninth volume, the Solution series departs from its previous geopolitical focus on regions and countries. The issue offers the infinite prospect of connection as well as transformation: this book explores the biopolitical and psychosexual topic of love. With contributions ranging from manifesto to (science) fiction, it realizes that the past, present and future of love is a demanding mix of charity, sex, trust, lust, economics, genetics and even cybernetics. This volume explores varying ideas of the body, the self, as a spirited micro-region with borders that will not hold. With contributions by Etel Adnan, Douglas Coupland, Ben Marcus, Chus Martínez, Momus, Eva Munz, Ingo Niermann, David Pearce, Beatriz Preciado, Emily Segal and Alexander Tarakhovsky, among others. Design by Zak Group.

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SOMEBODY’S GOT TO DO IT

Selected Writings by Pavel Büchler since 1987

Nick Thurston (Ed.)

The first comprehensive collection of writings by expatriate Czech artist, teacher, critic and occasional curator Pavel Büchler (b. 1952), Somebody’s Got to Do It spans three decades of Buchler’s writings on the history of photography, theories of media, the paradoxes of art education and artistic research, the peculiarities of art as a form of work and the politics and poetics of “making nothing happen.” Organized into three sections, the dense softcover publication covers Büchler’s exhibitions, book reviews, his writings on analog media and their afterlives in our digital age; articles and lecture scripts on the topic of teaching art and design and interventions into cultural theory; and a selection of his discursive, formally playful contributions to catalogs; and an extensive new interview (2014–15). Between each section are editor’s notes focusing on the poetic status of language foregrounded in Büchler’s gallery works, and the interplay between his writings about art and his writings in his art. Rounding out the collection is an extensive introductory essay and complete bibliography.

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THE SOVEREIGN FOREST

Amar Kanwar

Daniela Zyman (Ed.)

Internationally recognized artist Amar Kanwar’s work presents poetic and complex contemporary narratives in which intimate personal experience is linked to farreaching social and political developments in India. The exhibition and ongoing research project The Sovereign Forest consists of film, seeds and ephemera and was a collaboration between Indian artists, institutions and activists exploring the social and environmental impact of mining on the local community of Odisha. The ambitious catalog attempts to reopen and deepen discussions posed in the exhibition by bringing together a variety of voices from academic and activist backgrounds, factual and intimate narratives and interviews, images and documents. Equally, these complex and varied narratives help to unfold a multiplicity of testimonies on an obscured and intricate conflict. This project was represented at Documenta 13 and is in the collection of numerous museums such as the Guggenheim and the Art Institute Chicago.

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SPACES OF COMMONING

Artistic Research and the Utopia of the Everyday

Anette Baldauf, Stefan Gruber, Moira Hille, Annette Krauss, Vladimir Miller, Mara Verlic, Hong-Kai Wang & Julia Wieger (Eds.)

The 18th volume in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna series, Spaces of Commoning raises unsettling questions about research ethos, accountability, and the entanglement of power and knowledge embedded in Western sciences, arts and architecture. The well-designed, illustrated softcover book gathers over 20 case studies by an international collective of artists, architects and social theorists to investigate the question of “commoning” practices in Austria, Ethiopia, Greece and across the world. Organized into six sections—”No Beginnings,” “Call to Order,” “Wage Labor and Reproductive Labor,” “Noise as Border,” Bodies and Other Ghosts” and “Commoning as Horizon”— the essays explore how social movements are often caught between competing agendas and the gap between agendas and everyday life. It is the sites of these struggles that constitute the Spaces of Commoning. With contributions by artists Moira Hill and CASCO Office, scholar Lisa Lowe, spatial and urban theorists Stavros Stavrides and Stefan Grub, sociologist and art historian Pelin Tan, and architect Julia Wieger, among others.

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SPECULATIVE DRAWING: 2011–2014

Armen Avanessian & Andreas Töpfer

Speculative Drawing presents from 15 books—from monographs and translations to essay collections that emerged from the research platform Speculative Poetics, formulated by Armen Avanessian in 2011. This book experiments with visual thinking and the possibilities inherent in translating words into images. It investigates how thinking works, particularly how it occurs in relationship to drawings and illustrations, putting a somewhat different spin on contemporary speculative philosophy. Töpfer’s drawings are used not in the traditional style of supporting the writing but rather the drawings need to be read for the texts to be clarified. In this sense this book does not provide a shortcut to the theories presented. Instead, the drawings provide an occasion to think about thinking as an act in which the relationship between writing and images is dynamic and speculative. In short, how do you draw what you have never seen before?

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SYSTEMICS

Index of Exhibitions and Related Materials, 2013–14 or Exhibition as a Series

Joasia Krysa (Ed.)

Systemics brings together critical writing and curatorial projects that evolved over a two-year period as part of the artistic program of Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark. The book, edited by theorist and curator Joasia Krysa, explores the concept of “systemics” developed by Austrian cybernetician Heinz von Foerster to describe all things as connected and part of a complex system. His conceptual framework is expanded to consider the idea of an “exhibition as a series” unfolding over a period of time, like chapters of a book, episodes of a film, words that develop into a sentence or data that is arranged by algorithms, eventually becoming a collective body of curatorial and artistic research. Reflecting the notion of systemics, the book takes the form of an index, cataloging its constitutive parts and allowing the reader to make connections and interrelations. Texts by Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Boris Groys, Joasia Krysa, Lars Bang Larsen, Jussi Parikka, et al.

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