semiotext(e)

Staying queer under corporate capitalism (aka Christmas) with the Dirty Looks Holiday Bazaar at LA’s Faultline, Dec 8

7 December 2017

The ‘Dirty Looks Holiday Bazaar’ is on at Los Angeles’ Faultline Bar on December 8.

Hosted by Dirty Looks, the second annual gift bazaar will attempt to to “keep queer your seasonal spending requirements as mandated by corporate capitalism (‘Christmas’).” The night will feature performances by Glen Meadmore’s Kuntry Band, Dynasty Handbag, Brontez Purnell and an afterparty DJ set by Sam Sparro.

There will also be a photo booth run by Ron Athey and Nao Bustamante, wreaths by Peppré Ann, ceramics by  Aimee Goguen and Courtney Cone, and a number of vendors including Bodega VendettaSven Soapright and semiotext(e), to name a few.

Visit the FB event page for details.**

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Books are forever: the evolution of the printed word + 10 good reasons we should cherish its publishers

11 July 2017

There’s much to be said for the benefits of a book. A text’s existence in print-form — with pages bound and covered — belies a level of investment unmatched by a lot of what’s written for the internet. More often than not, a contemporary writer with an online audience must be their own editor, sub-editor and proofer, in a rapid-turnover environment taken from a vast, though shallow pool of information that can go unchecked and unverified, ideas with no room to develop and even fewer resources to develop them. Books have the benefit of time.

Sleep Cures Sleepiness, pub. TLTRPreß, May, 2014.

Costly and all-consuming, there’s a level of care that it takes to produce a book and a measure of multi-sensory experience it takes to absorb one. Smell, touch and movement all play a part in how printed matter is read that influences the way it’s received. Margins, typeface and stock effect the way its transmitted. While there so much potential for the rate at which ideas circulate and the diversity of voices that are heard in the contemporary milieu of networked information, there is also a place for the book.

To celebrate the launch of multilingual artist and writer Hanne Lippard’s This Embodiment at Berlin’s Broken Dimanche Press on July 13, we’ve taken a moment to highlight some worthy publishers and the books that we like below:  

Broken Dimanche

Broken Dimanche Press is a Berlin-based publishing house and exhibition space founded by John Holten and Line Madsen Simenstad with a focus on “wider discourses of contemporary art and politics.” The press also run a Para-Poetics Programme, an exhibition programme, a BDP Self Publishing Archive and preceded this upcoming Hanne Lippard publication with her first comprehensive collection of text-based works, Nuances of No, in 2013.

 

#Hanne Lippard’s ‘This Embodiment’, published March, 2017. Thank you #BrokenDimachePress 😊

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Book Works

Formed in 1984, Book Works is a London-based contemporary arts organization that works to publish books by artists, as well as holding exhibitions, lectures, workshops and seminar programs. Perhaps their most well-known and successful output is their Happy Hypocrite series co-ordinated by Maria Fusco, that invites an artist to edit and curate a given issue. Past editions include Sophia Al-Maria’s ‘Fresh Hell‘ and Hannah Sawtell’s ‘#ACCUMULATOR_PLUS.’

TLTRPreß

Sleep Cures Sleepiness, pub. TLTRPreß, May, 2014.

Established in 2011, the Berlin-based press is run by artist Martin Kohout and various international collaborators and has published over “90kg of printed matter including photo albums, doubtful magazines, exhibition texts and indirect fetish catalogues.” Early interesting collections of artist’s writing include Sleep Cures Sleepiness and Linear Manual, as well as AQNB editor Jean Kay (aka Steph Kretowicz)’s Somewhere I’ve Never Been, co-published with fledgling London publisher Pool.

Montez Press

Montez Press is a publishing house based in Hamburg, New York and London and was formed in 2012. The team publish books, magazines and editorial platforms like SALT, as well as single author works by the likes of Gjergji Shkurti and Huw Lemmey. More recently they published Tomoo Arakawa’s Laugh at eXperience, a book by Julie Béna and a printed collection of online commissions from a number of artists called The Interjection Calendar. 

 

#JulieBéna’s ‘It Needed to be Tender and to be Whipped,’ published Apr, 2017. Thank you #MontezPress 😊

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Sternberg Press 

Founded in 1999 by Caroline Schneider, Sternberg Press focuses on “art criticism, theory, fiction, and artists’ books” and is based between Berlin and New-York. With a focus on both the design and the editorial aspect, the press commissions and translates works within the fields of architecture, design, film, politics, literature, philosophy and contemporary art. Our recommendations include Rare Earth (2016) edited by Nadim Samman and Boris Ondreička, co-published with Vienna’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and designed by AQNB’s own website designer David Rudnick as well as Jan Verwoert’s COOKIE! (2014) co-published with Piet Zwart Institute.

Rare Earth (eds Nadim Samman + Boris Ondreička). Co-published by Sternberg Press, Berlin + TBA21, Vienna.

Semiotext(e)

Co-edited by Sylvère Lotringer, Chris Kraus, and Hedi El Kholti, the press is over three decades old and is considered to be known for introducing French theory to American readers via their Foreign Agents series.  The works published range from theory to fiction, activism and confession to economics and sexuality into a “nuanced and polemical vision of the present. Some notable works include Natasha Stagg’s Surveys, Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick and Where Art Belongsthe latter being of the intervention series which also yielded Gerald Raunig’s Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity.

Banner Repeater

Banner Repeater is a London-based artist run space and publishing house, with notable projects including Erica Scourti’s The Outagefirst published in 2014, as well as the un-publish series which focuses on emergent ideas around new technologies and Yuri Pattison’s short story postface: pretty good privacy. Founded by Ami Clarke in 2010, BR also holds events, talks, performances, as well as exhibitions including the current solo show Nam-Gut by Jenna Sutela, running to July 30.

Verso Books

Verso Books is an international publishing house claiming to be “the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world,” with our recommendations including Franco Bifo Berardi On FuturabilityJuliet Jacques’ Trans: A Memoir, Nick Srnicek  + Alex Williams’ Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, as well as the Jacobin series, featuring “short interrogations of politics, economics, and culture from a socialist perspective.”

Arcadia Missa

William Kherbek, Ultralife (2017), pub. Arcadia Missa Publishing, London.

Arcadia Missa is a London-based exhibition space and publisher, that includes a several different series, including the How to Sleep Faster journals, existing in print and online at howtosleepfaster.net. There are also their Anthology and Artist Books, with some recommendations including Sarah M. Harrison’s All The ThingsWilliam Kherbek’s UltraLife, and Holly Childs’ Danklands. Co-founded by Rózsa Farkas and Tom Clark, the project began “as a self-organised space in austerity Britain.”

Cornerhouse Publications

Cornerhouse Publications Ltd. is a Manchester-based press focused on contemporary visual arts, while is also part of the art center HOME. Some recommendations include The Creative Stance , featuring Grayson Perry, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Sonia Boyce, among others, Sophia Al Maria’s Virgin with a Memory, and You Are Here: Art After the Internet, edited by Omar Kholeif. More recently, Cornerhouse published the unexpectedly controversial collection of short stories, poetry, experimental writing, and flash fiction Dark Habits.

Penny-Ante Editions

Founded in 2006, Penny-Ante is a Los-Angeles-based book publisher and art-based project that works in series-based projects: Anthology Series (2006-2009), Recess Series (2010-2011), Success and Failure Series (2012-2017). Some notable works include Beau Rice’s TEX, Alex Chaves’ Abigail Adams, and Momus’ UnAmerica.

 

now reading #HannahBlack’s ‘Dark Pool Party’ pub by @arcadiamissa + #DominicaPublishing

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Dominica Publishing

Founded in 2011 by Los Angeles-based artist and writer Martine Syms, the press is “dedicated to exploring blackness as a topic, reference, marker and audience in visual culture.” Recommended books include Hannah Black’s Dark Pool Party (co-published with Arcadia Missa), Diamond Stingily’s Love, Diamond and Lauren Anderson’s Matters. **

Hanne Lippard’s This Embodiment is launching at Berlin’s Broken Dimanche Press on July 13, 2017.

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Index Art Book Fair, Feb 4 – 7

2 February 2016

Index Art Book Fair will take place in the Museo Jumex building of Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico running from February 4 to 7. 

The book fair brings together publishers from Mexico, South America and Europe. Over 70 participate over the long weekend, which coincides with the Material Art Fair 2016 also in Mexico City, for which aqnb has made some recommendations. Index works to draw attention to publications relating to contemporary art that lack big distribution and platform or space.

The Museo Jumex will host a large collection of printed matter and editorial projects, which, collaboratively –in relation to this fair –and otherwise look more closely at experimental ways to edit, making public and print. A programme of live events and panel discussions, such as ‘Acts of Publication’ and ‘Print as Matter’ will also take place over the course of the fair.

Publishers presenting their wares at Index Art Book Fair include White Fungus, Sternberg-Press, Semiotexte, Onomatopee, Mousse Magazine, Book Works, Banner Repeater, Afterall, Fuck Zinez and Laca (Los Angeles Contemporary Archive).

See the Index Art Book Fair webpage for details and the full programme**

Navine G. Khan-Dossos (2015) from 'Fresh Hell'. Courtesy Book Works, 2015
Navine G. Khan-Dossos (2015) from ‘Fresh Hell’. Courtesy Book Works, 2015

 

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Chris Kraus, Becket Flannery + Sylvère Lotringer @ REDCAT, Dec 8

8 December 2015

Writer and filmmaker Chris Kraus joins Sylvère Lotringer and Becket Flannery for a discussion on the 90s ‘Chance Event’ on the occasion of Semiotext(e)’s publication of Jean Baudrillard’s lecture for Chance at LA’s Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) on December 8.

Before Kraus’ I Love Dick (a confessional epistolary novel detailing her relationship with Lotringer and her obsession with a man named ‘Dick’), she organized a “three-day philosophy rave in the Nevada desert called Chance Event that became known as “the Burning Man of French theory”.

Kraus joins her former partner and Semiotext(e) general editor Lotringer and artist Flannery (who is currently writing a book on the Chance Event) for a timely discussion on Baudrillard’s lecture for Chance and as part of the Hotel Theory exhibition running October 3 to December 20.

See the FB event for details. **

Becket Flannery, “Seven-oh_six' (2015). Install view. Courtesy The Vanity, Los Angeles.
Becket Flannery, “Seven-oh_six’ (2015). Install view. Courtesy The Vanity, Los Angeles.
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Schizo-Culture + semiotext(e): then and now

21 October 2014

I think “schizo-culture” here is being used rather in a special sense. Not referring to clinical schizophrenia, but to the fact that the culture is divided up into all sorts of classes and groups etc., and that some of the old lines are breaking down. And that this is a healthy sign.

–William Burroughs

In November of 1975 philosopher and founder for the semiotext(e) Sylvere Lotringer organised a conference titled Schizo-Culture which took place at Columbia University, New York. It was a melting pot of radicalism and philosophical workshops that brought together, for the first time, an explosive mixture of French and American theorists whose writings and lectures have since become an integral component of any Western visual art education. Participants included, among others, William S. Burroughs, Michel Foucault, John Cage, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Arthur Danto and Jean-Francois Lyotard. While the colloquium focused on the interrelated topics of prisons and madness, Lotringer was impactful in bringing together thinkers from two different continents; bridging a philosophical gap between French and US thinkers while proving the influence of semiotext(e) publishing.

Schizo-Culture (2014) @ [ space ] exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery.
Schizo-Culture (2014) @ [ space ] exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery.

Schizo-Culture: Cracks in the Street at [ space ] takes mid-70s event as a starting point for a small but indulgent exhibition that skillfully weaves both a rare collection of archival material related to the original conference with related artworks and commissions by contemporary artists. The event is used as a springboard to reflect on affiliated movements such as no-wave and the anti-capitalist attitudinal relationships that existed in the late 1970s in Manhattan and Paris: a DIY creative culture still mostly uncontaminated by the present day co-terminus relationship between art and its marketability. It’s a space set up like a workshop with pencils and factsheets outlining the agenda and backgrounds of panelists from the original event. Although no video footage can be found from the symposium itself, there is audio recorded from Lyotard’s speech played from a nearby stairwell, as well as well as footage from Deleuze’s courses at Vincennes in Paris where he taught for the majority of his career, and an interview conducted by Dutch philosopher Fons Elders with Foucault in 1971.

The vast collection of pamphlets and posters are well-complemented by a series of pared-down and un-elaborate visual specimens, that appear, fittingly, as if they were executed by the psychologically impaired. On entering the main exhibition room, one is confronted by Burroughs’ disturbing, Paul Klee-esque painted portrait Shot Sheriff (black eyes) (1989) is hung alongside his Circle (1988) – a visual representation of Deleuze’s conception of the rhizome which he explains in a video clip beside the painting. The lecture is played through 70s tube televisions, with pillows to relax on and pencils to take notes with across original timetables from the symposium and other printed memorabilia. Throughout the space there is a breadth of letters, flyers, and posters either wall mounted or under vitrines creating a cross between a university classroom and participative exhibition space.

Schizo-Culture (2014) @ [ space ]. Install view. Courtesy the gallery.
Schizo-Culture (2014) @ [ space ]. Install view. Courtesy the gallery.

Guiding the visitors eye away from the video lecture and interview is a ‘wander line’ drawing by the peculiar outsider Fernand Deligny. His experimental cartographic lines were foundational for Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of the rhizome, while being a significant early example of art therapy – Deligny had created an encampment/treatment centre for autistic children in France where making wander lines was encouraged as a means for patients to work through their difficulties. Beneath the line drawing is an oil on wood ‘Head’ painted by artist, writer and schizophrenia sufferer Mary Barnes. There is a welcoming sense of flow from one work to the next and between the archival content and drawings/paintings while breaking down cultural divisions. Terminal Beach’s video contribution ‘and so I’ll make myself believe it that this night will never go’ (2014) is the most recent work in the show. Set in its own room next to the main gallery, the two-channel installation shows a man reading Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia accompanied by a rush of cars and streams of internet news acknowledging the longstanding influence of Schizo-Culture while embodying it (the writing, the conflux of movement, the music) in a contemporary milieu.

Schizo-Culture (2014) @ [ space ] exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery.
Schizo-Culture (2014) @ [ space ] exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery.

Cracks in the Street is a welcome reflection on an event and a testament to the interrelated initiatives of the thinkers and artists involved in semiotext(e) as a movement. The influential publishing house is celebrating its 40th year which has inspired celebrations at institutions such as MoMA PS1. While semiotext(e) and its founding members retain a high level of interest from academics – specifically in cultural studies and contemporary art history – their standing for post ‘net visual artists is waning. Other philosophers (i.e. Slavoj Zizek), technologists (i.e. Jaron Lanier), multidisciplinary academics/curators (i.e. Donatien Grau), not to mention radically different and digitally (re)configured systems of distribution for visual content, have in many ways unseated the longstanding formative post-structuralist thought in the context of contemporary art being produced today. Terminal Beach as a group being a welcome exception along-with practitioners from an older generation of makers including Peter Halley and Gary Indiana.

Cracks in the Street possesses a project-like atmosphere to examine a fading but not forgotten theoretical milieu. It possesses a pedagogic and experimental vibe that coalesces with visual specimens, ones that are not quite schizophrenic in the clinical sense but never stray far from the domain of madness.**

Exhibition photos, top right.

Schizo-Culture: Cracks in the Street is on at London’s [ space ], running October 2 to December 2, 2014.

Header image: Schizo-Culture (2014) @ [ space ] exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery.

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Sylvère Lotringer in conversation @ SLG

Sylvere Lotringer. Photo by Pieternel Vermoortel. Image courtesy of SLG.
29 May 2013

A legendary figure in publishing and theory in the US, the French-born Sylvère Lotringer isn’t only credited with bringing the ideas of French post-structuralism to the US through his Foreign Agents semiotext(e) series in 70s California. He could also be recognised as ambassador of a contemporary art aesthetic; Baudrillard’s ideas of simulacrum infiltrating postmodern design, from the pioneer digital media of April Greiman to the grafitti of Futura 2000, a baroque hyperreality trickling down to the decontextualised retrofuturism of the likes of LA-based Not Not Fun bands like Maria Minerva, Dylan Ettinger and beyond.

April Greiman, Cal Arts poster (1979).
April Greiman, Cal Arts poster (1979).

Lotringer’s influence as a taste-making medium is immeasurable: the Baudrillardian foundation of the Wachowski brother’s The Matrix at the turn of the century, Deleuze and Guattari’s effects on modern Western thought, their rhizomatic ideas pre-empting internet culture. He’s a man who had a friend in Leonard Woolf, learnt English through the writings of the latter’s late-wife, Virginia, and drew parallels between French post-structuralists and downtown New York’s Fluxus writers, leading to the Foreign Agents. It’s this disregard for distinctions and their transgression that makes Lotringer such an influential figure and fascinating character.

Come to South London Gallery to speak in front of an audience with multidisciplinary artist and film maker Katherine Waugh, a funny and profoundly intelligent 75-year-old thinker talks about Antonin Artaud and The Question Itself. A writer and theatre director who “never had a work” and whose letters to the editor of literary magazine La Nouvelle Revue reflects his function within the present, Lotringer proves Artaud as never more relevant than in this current era of immediacy. Accordingly, interest in the French founder of the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ has been reignited, particularly in art circles, and as a long-time admirer whose own life and philosophy intersects is here to discuss him before inevitably turning to semiotext(e) and writing as art, within nearly two hours of discussion.

Sylvere Lotringer and Katherine Waugh @ SLG (2013). Photo by Pieternel Vermoortel.
Sylvere Lotringer and Katherine Waugh. Photo by Pieternel Vermoortel.

Echoing the thoughts of long time collaborator and Native Agents Series founder, Chris Kraus, who spoke at the RCA in March, Lotringer jokes “the problem is that the art world is eating everything up, and I’m not a big eater”. Interesting, considering the limitlessness of his critical engagement. Between organising the infamous “Schizo-Culture” conference in 1978 and screening his 14-minute video collaboration with Kraus, ‘Voyage to Rodez’ (1986), one is tempted to assume otherwise. Especially when reflecting on the transplanted articulations and contexts of the film, set at the French Rodez asylum, where Artaud was controversially administered electric shock treatment by Dr. Gaston Ferdière, shot on North America’s Rhode Island. And that’s not mentioning the combustive cultural and lexical antagonisms of the aforementioned Columbia University symposium that interrogated the prison system and psychiatry among eminent thinkers like Lyotard, Guattari and Burroughs (or as he puts it, “a collection of weirdos, you can’t imagine”).

That self-contradiction and tension is almost a necessary by-product of Lotringer’s philosophy. From the assertion of “all utopias as [being] inevitable dystopias”, to the truism that “to be aware that you’re alive, you have to be aware that you’re dying”, Lotringer shares Artaud’s compulsion of showing his audience the stark truth that his ‘impossible theatre’, in all its ambiguity couldn’t. Hence, Artaud’s resurgent significance as a 20th century thinker, echoing 21st century pseudomodernist ideas. It’s that of emergent meaning in a context continually in flux and always in progress; “the question itself” that underscores all life as always unfinished and forever incomplete: “You don’t embrace a philosopher, you just live with them… let people take what they want”. **

Header image: Photo by Pieternel Vermoortel. Image courtesy of SLG.

 

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