The Arts Books, bestsellers and new releases

Book SynopsisStephanie Oursler's 5 Cuts, an artist book originally self-published in 1975 in Rome, comprises a series of black and white images accompanied by a handwritten text. The artist had found the displayed images stills from unidentified silent films and combined them with her autobiographical writing, creating both an intimate recollection and a literary construction of her own life. Stephanie Oursler's artistic vocabulary tells of her active participation in women's groups and networks in Rome, in which political issues were addressed via a distinctive articulation between memory, history and fiction. 5 Cuts weaves together the personal and the political to speak about something that lays beyond language and image. Stephanie Oursler (*1938, Baltimore, USA, 2018, Milan, Italy) arrived in Rome in the early 1970s from New York, where she had been an activist in the civil rights and in the women's liberation movements. In 1976, together with Carla Arcadi, Suzanne Santoro and others, she co-founded the Cooperativa del Beato Angelico, an all-women exhibition space in Rome. 5 Cuts is here reprinted in its original form and expanded by a text by the art historian Giovanna Zapperi. 5 Cuts is the first title from Re:Re. This series of reprints aims to make available historical material that we consider relevant today in both political and artistic terms. Re:Re is co-edited by Verena Buttmann, Johanna Klingler, Jonas von Lenthe and Max Stocklosa.

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£16.00

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Wirklichkeit Books The Decolonization of America

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Book SynopsisIn the not too distant future, having completed the genetic decoding of its population, the government of the United States of America decides to send those from elsewhere back out into the world. This is a remarkable attempt to re-establish society as it was before the devastating conquest of the American continent by European immigrants. Soon, convoys of Euro-Americans are migrating back to Europe, even though it has been decades since they had any contact with the cranky landmass beyond the Atlantic. Because Europe has long since cut itself off, wanting nothing more to do with the rest of the world. And then, all of a sudden, American refugee boats appear off the French coast. In The Decolonization of America, Steffen Zillig creates a fictional future by collaging fragments of popular culture, combining excerpts from old and new adventure comics with washed-out photographs from the Internet. The result is a social fantasy whose bizarre fault lines and conflicts bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the present day. Steffen Zillig makes art. He is part of Briefing Room, an artist-run space in Brussels, and he edits the underground magazine Intercity. He works in Hamburg and is a member of a union.

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£10.00

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Slanted Publishers UG Questions to Europe

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£11.00

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Slanted Publishers UG Fragen an Europa

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£11.00

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Slanted Publishers UG fortytwomagazine #5: space

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£10.00

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Slanted Publishers UG Be Water My Friend—B.W.M.F.

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£30.60

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Slanted Publishers UG American Bauhaus

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£24.00

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Slanted Publishers UG COLLISION

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£30.00

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5b A Kind of Ship

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Book SynopsisBefore every beginning, many other beginnings will lie. The word ark', as in Noah's Ark, derives from the Latin word for box, arca. And this box was also some kind of archive structure. A heritage backup. The concept of reproduction is crucial for Noah's Ark. Two of every kind shall ensure survival. The significance of reproduction pertains to archives as well. Archives were an axiom of heritage. For everything eventually falls into ruin and my archive, such as the work related to it collecting and assembling material, for instance in a book all this I also understand as a kind of ship, a container for the future of our present. It helps me to think of our present as of the past of the future. A Kind of Ship is a bilingual reader that presents an introduction to Jurotschkin's wider practice, encompassing collage, writing, photography and sculpture. Including ten text pieces and a multitude of illustrations, the volume provides an insight into the artist's creative processes, and can be read as an oblique appendix to the artist's debut monograph Nothing But Clouds (MACK, London, 2017). Writing on her work in 2018, Loring Knoblauch observed that it's not that Jurotschkin's photographs are abstract, because they're not; they show us actual visual snippets of our collective modern world. But the images have been roughly stripped of context, and composed in such a manner so as to highlight their formal qualities rather than their subject matter. There is a detached aloofness to her point of view that keeps us at arm's length, as though she was looking at the world with a searching scientific eye, almost as a foreigner might. Each picture feels intentionally reduced, not in the sense of being made physically smaller, but in terms of removing most of the informational (and emotional) content normally captured the pictures show us things we can name, but what they might mean or represent has been made altogether mysterious and obscure. The artist's approach to writing could be described as similarly detached, drawing inspiration from and even physically dissecting science fiction books of the recent past. I call it phenomenological reading, writes Jurotschkin. I underline what jumps at me on a page, cut it out and then combine it, until a text originates. Through this formal process, the artist builds a critique of society's relationship with technology, and offers premonitions of the not-so-distant future. Somewhere between a status report and an act of artistic expression, this timely publication, and Jurotschkin's broader oeuvre, serve as a cryptic reminder of our responsibilities to one another, and to future generations. Kristina Jurotschkin is a visual artist based in Münster. She studied under the direction of Peter Piller at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. Jurotschkin received a Master of Arts in Russian Literature and Sociology and, in 2015, she studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. In 2017, Nothing but Clouds was shortlisted for the MACK First Book Award and in 2020, Jurotschkin received an Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation grant, awarded in cooperation with the Photographic Collection of the Museum Folkwang, Essen. Recent exhibitions include: Rückstoßantrieb, Kunstraum Ortloff, Leipzig; Lab One: F(r)iction in Between, Werkschauhalle, Spinnerei Leipzig; Young Photo Book presented by The Photobook Museum, Museum für Photographie, Braunschweig.

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£11.40

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Rabenau, Kai von. Mono Kultur mono.kultur 49 Summer 2021 Santiago Sierra

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Book SynopsisDear Friends,within the general feeling of unease, we are thrilled to present our new issue mono. kultur #49 with Spanish artist and activist Santiago Sierra, widely acclaimed and frequently despised for his controversial performances that aim straight for the point where it hurts the most. Santiago Sierra is perhaps best known for his infamous remunerated actions', in which he hires the poor and desperate at minimum wage to undertake pointless and degrading tasks. They include prostitutes having a line tattooed across their backs for the price of a shot of heroin; war veterans paid to face a corner of a gallery like scolded school kids; a young boy hired to polish the shoes of visitors during an exhibition opening; and workers tasked with shifting concrete blocks from one end of a space to another, or sitting inside cardboard boxes at a gallery for hours. Sierra's remunerated actions are intentionally humiliating, offensive, and arguably immoral, pushing the worlds of art and privilege face first into a nightmarish and desperate reality of the less fortunate. They pose daunting questions about our society from the vantage point of the disadvantaged, where these questions are not merely theoretical, but fundamentally existential. Exploitation is their mortar, despair is their bottom line. Not surprisingly, Sierra's works have frequently generated not only consternation and discussion, but public outrage. Again and again, pieces have been removed or cancelled, banned from YouTube, and publicly condemned by politicians and the press. But if anything, the debates around his actions bear testimony to their relentless effectiveness. Condensing complex and charged issues of capitalism, injustice, power, racism, migration, poverty, and greed into minimal and brutal gestures, Sierra's work maintains that rare and unpredictable capacity to shock. With mono. kultur, Santiago Sierra talked about the mechanics of exploitation, the price of controversy, and the joy in vandalism. Visually, the issue was treated with Sierra's remedy of a quick poison and a slow balm: offering spread after spread of the artist's works on the surface, each page needs to be unfolded to reveal context and conversation. mono. kultur #49 comes entirely in black and white: a magazine as a dirty marvel. In short, a highly entertaining and provocative read for darkening days. Available as ever through our online store mono. konsum, or at the trusted book dealer of your choice very soon indeed. Enjoy and all our best,mono. kultur

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£7.40

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Distanz Publishing bauhaus

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£20.70

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DISTANZ Verlag GmbH Bastard Sun

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Book SynopsisWhat Is the Use of Fire if It Does Not Warm? Sophio Medoidze's (b. Tbilisi, then USSR, 1978; lives and works in London) practice encompasses film, photography, writing, and sculpture and explores the poetic potential of uncertainty. Her work has been shown at Tate Modern, the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, the Serpentine Gallery, the Close Up Film Centre, Kunstmuseum Luzern, and the Whitechapel Gallery, amongst others. For a time she worked anonymously as part of the Clara Emigrand collective, disseminating her work outside the gallery context. Medoidze explores the relationship between rural and urban, languages and translations, as well as gender politics and dynamics. Her works often emerge from writing and unfold as installations incorporating moving image, sculpture, and text. The publication Bastard Sun brings together a collection of photographs taken after the civil unrest in Georgia in the 1990s with short texts written over the subsequent visits to Georgia, together with a collection of twelve short stories. Medoidze's writing provides nuanced and at times humorous reflections on personal and political change. Bastard Sun is co-published with KONA BOOKS, a Tbilisi-based publishing house that focuses on contemporary visual and interdisciplinary projects.

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£30.60

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DISTANZ Verlag TRANSFERS

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£27.00

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DISTANZ Verlag HOSPITAL

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Book SynopsisI believe art re-ritualizes the everyday to reveal something fresh about our lives. This revelation is a vitality and it is a power to change the world.Pope.LPope.L (b. Newark, US, 1955; d. Chicago, US, 2023) was one of the foremost creators of political conceptual art in the United States. Among his best-known works rank his Crawl performances, for which the artistvariously wearing business attire, a dandelion in hand, or a Superman costumegot on his hands and knees to crawl through New York's streets for miles. Challenging bystanders to look down and actually see him, he used his body to expose inequalities and power differentials in society. His oeuvre also spanned the media of painting, sculpture, installation art, and photography. Devising a practice with deep roots in philosophy and the theater, Pope.L from the 1970s onward produced seminal works exploring questions of language, gender, racism, and community. Hospital documents Pope.L's 2023 exhibition at the South London Gallery, which tragically turned out to be the last in his lifetime. With an essay by Legacy Russell, an introduction by Margot Heller, and an interview with the artist.

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£28.80

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