PAUL DE JONG

Spoken World

Corinn Gerber (Ed.)

Musician and sound artist Paul de Jong is best known as cofounder, cellist and resident “found sound” savant of the beloved, now-defunct collage-pop duo, the Books. This voluminous artist book, conceived as the first in an infinite series of Spoken World(s), presents de Jong’s transcriptions of well over 35,000 sound samples rearranged into “texts resembling poetry.” The artist’s audio collection of sound and spoken word was garnered in countless visits to thrift stores all over North America during the Books’ tours: no rare treasures, but a never-ending cycle of the myriad of self-help, meditation, religious and self-education records, tapes, cassettes and videos that are not yet considered cultural trash and thrown out, yet form the subconscious of North American popular culture. As poetic arrangements, they amplify the serendipitous magic of some of these words, and expose the monstrous madness of others.

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MICHAEL DEAN

Now Leaves

Fast-moving contemporary British artist Michael Dean explores different relationships between the word as idea and the word as material form in his sculptural and, at times, photo-based works. His newest artist book, Now Leaves, scaled to the human hand—about the same size and weight along with a similarly flexible structure—feels alive. The newsprint-light pages fall loosely apart to reveal dense black graphics; the letters, shaped as tongues and twisted to form a barely legible word, “leaves,” are inscribed repeatedly. Dean’s work, which also includes poetry, short plays and performances, has been exhibited recently at Cubitt, London; Kunstverein Freiburg; and Nomas Foundation, Rome. Austrian- British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that in principle there can be no such thing as a private language—an untranslatable lexicon of which only one person can make sense. According to Michael Dean, in practice the opposite would seem to be the case.

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T. J. DEMOS

Decolonizing Nature
Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology

Decolonizing Nature is a timely and original look at contemporary art’s response to the ever-growing environmental crisis. In this significant publication, cultural critic and director of the Center for Creative Ecologies, at University of California, Santa Cruz, T. J. Demos, investigates the new wave of ecological consciousness at the intersection of art history, ecology, visual culture, geography and envi- ronmental politics. Demos looks at a variety of aesthetic and political processes engaging the pressing threats of climate change, global warming and environ- mental destruction by artists such as Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares, whose video and mixed-media installation, Forest Law, investigates the damaged soils in the Ecuadoran Amazon by decades of oil extraction. In his second book from Sternberg, Demos’s focus is on the creative proposals of artists, architects and activists for ecological sustainability and climate justice, as radical democracy is needed now more than ever.

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T.J. DEMOS

Against the Anthropocene
Visual Culture and Environment Today

Against the Anthropocene scrutinizes the proposal that we are in a human-driven epoch regarding climate change. In this slender but dense volume, cultural theorist T.J. Demos analyzes the biases within contemporary visual culture—popular science websites, remote sensing and SatNav imagery, eco-activist mobilizations, and experimental artistic projects—demonstrating that it does not merely describe a geologic period, but actively supports the neoliberal financialization of nature, anthropocentric political economy, and endorsement of geo-engineering as a preferred method of approaching climate change. To develop creative alternatives, Demos argues we need to carefully consider the underlying motives the Anthropocene thesis. T.J. Demos is Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Director of the Center for Creative Ecologies at UC Santa Cruz. Past publications with Sternberg Press include Decolonizing Nature and Return To The Postcolony.

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DEMYSTIFIED

The European Ceramic Workcentre as Centre of Excellence

Nick Renshaw

Amsterdam-based visual artist and art historian Nick Renshaw (b. 1967, UK) presents a comprehensive history of the world-renowned innovative European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) as it approaches its 50th anniversary. Extensive writings and over 200 historical images tell the history of this remarkable institution where the boundaries of ceramic practice are constantly being expanded. Founded by ceramist Jan Oosterman and curator Bernadine de Neeve in 1969 as a simple place for ceramists to share kilns, by 2015 EKWC had become a cutting-edge CAD/CAM studio with a new 54,000-square-foot studio, providing annually 60 resident artists, designers and architects with 3D-design and 3D-printing facilities. EKWC promotes the innovative use of ceramics in all areas of design and the visual arts. Though global in reach, it is an institution rooted deeply in the unique cultural history of the Netherlands and through its theoretical influence, has become a role model for institutions internationally.

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BRIAN DILLON

Sanctuary

This fictional work about the construction and decay of a late modernist building can also be read as an essay on our contemporary unease with modernism in general. Author Brian Dillon, UK editor of Cabinet magazine, based it on research into St. Peter’s Seminary, a college complex commissioned by the Catholic Church in the 1950s, completed in 1968, and abandoned by 1980. On the outskirts of Glasgow-itself a city with a vexed relationship to Le Corbusier-esque modernism – the building is rich with histories: of its architects, its residing student priests, the drug addicts it once housed and treated, and the local teenagers for whom it is a kind of Gothic recreation center. This book takes the material remains of modernism and treats them from a literary point of view.

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Dominic Eichler

Written All Over Us

The whiteness descended from up North But this whiteness is salt not snow Earth laid himself out like an old mattress fucked on and repeatedly left in the rain then dried out—ten years of drought or more— then fucked again

Deeply perceptive and with a succinct melancholic tone, Dominic Eichler’s minimalist poems capture moments of everyday life with humor, anger and nostalgia. Astutely chosen photos and illustrations add depth to this small volume. Eichler is an art critic, artist, musician, curator, and co-founder of the contemporary art space Silberkuppe. He is also a contributing editor of the critical journal Frieze.

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DYSFUNCTIONAL COMEDY

A Reader

Dysfunctional Comedy: A Reader documents a series of events, performances and workshops initiated by German-American artist Olav Westphalen from 2012 to 2015 in Switzerland. Part of Westphalen’s ongoing research on crypto-comedy, this artist’s book /catalog engages students and partners from different traditions and genres in comedic and cartoonist practices to reflect on the rich history of stand-up comedy and political satire. Seven chapters and over 15 artists and writers play with various comedic techniques to subvert the strategies and themes of stand-up comedy, as well as rethink artistic performativity and audience participation. In the process, they address stereotypes, taboos, and power relations with a critical eye toward the conservatism, cultural-political operations, and inflexibility of the art world. Contributions by Olav Westphalen, Roee Rosen, Aron Flam, Anna Kinbom, Lars-Erik Hjertström Lappalainen, Sally O’Reilly and Lívia Páldi. A small but powerful reader!

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E-FLUX JOURNAL: HITO STEYERL

The Wretched of the Screen

In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The  Wretched   of  the  Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image. Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information: on the formal shifts and distortions of accelerated capitalism; the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment;, structural and literal violence; enchantment and fun; and of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses.

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E-FLUX JOURNAL

Jalal Toufic: Forthcoming

New to the renowned e-flux journal series are writings by Jalal Toufic, a thinker, writer and artist whose influence in the Beirut artistic community over the past two decades has been immense. Of Iraqi and Palestinian descent, he writes here about the appearance of the unworldly in art, culture, history and the present. Fiercely committed to the public accessibility of knowledge, Toufic makes most of his work available as PDFs on his website, www.jalaltoufic.com, so that his books “continue to be forthcoming even after their publication…” First published by Atelos Press in 2000, Forthcoming, with its essays on critical theory, Middle Eastern film, Qur’a¯ nic Prophets and the image culture of Christy Turlington, is an intensely thoughtful and wildly entertaining read.

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