‘In De vulgare eloquentia, Dante developed a poetics of the vernacular – the collectively accessible speech of the household and the street, distributed unilaterally rather than intentionally acquired via a disciplined pedagogy of grammar, and transformed in open bodily exchange, irrespective of social position, gender or rank. “The vernacular,” Dante says, “[is] the language which children gather from those around them when they first begin to articulate words; or more briefly, that which we learn without any rules at all by imitating our nurses.” A vernacular is not structured according to a valuing hierarchy or an administration of history; it is improvised in tandem with the rhythmic needs and movements of a present-tense yet tradition-informed body among other bodies, each specific.

Lisa Roberston’s reflection of political subject formation, through poetry and vernacular forms, acts as a critical anchor for the ideas and experiments published in this new series, Dialecty.

Dialecty, conceived by Maria Fusco with The Common Guild, considers the uses of vernacular forms of speech and writing, exploring how dialect words, grammar and syntax challenge and improve traditional orthodoxies of critical writing.

Adam Pendleton’s Notes on Just Back From Los Angeles: A Portrait of Yvonne Rainer stems from the transcript of the script prepared by Pendleton for Yvonne Rainer to read during their day spent filming at the Ridgeway Diner in Chelsea. The text mixes citations from Stokely Carmichael, Malcom X, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and excerpts from Rainer’s own published works; the film ends with the gospel song ‘I Am Saved’ by the Silver Harpes over the footage of Rainer’s now canonical Trio A, 1978. Pendleton’s chapbook plays on the duality of meaning in the word ‘movement’, exploring the synchrony of art and politics, and shared potentials of language and the non-verbal.

Dialecty, conceived by Maria Fusco with The Common Guild, considers the uses of vernacular forms of speech and writing, exploring how dialect words, grammar and syntax challenge and improve traditional orthodoxies of critical writing.

With an introduction by Ali Smith and a new Afterword by Nell Dunn.

In 1964, Nell Dunn spoke to nine of her friends over a bottle of wine about sex, work, money, babies, freedom and love. The novelist Ann Quin says she appears to be a ‘singular girl, singular and single’ but questions the use she makes of her freedom. The Pop artist Pauline Boty reveals she married ‘the first man I could talk very freely to’ ten days after meeting him. Kathy Collier, who worked with Dunn in a Battersea sweet factory, talks about what it takes to ‘get out’ of a life that isn’t fulfilling. Edna O’Brien tells us about the time she inadvertently stole a brown georgette scarf and the lesson she took from it: ‘Morality is not the same thing as abstinence.’ After more than fifty years out of print, Talking to Women is still as sparkling, honest, profound, funny and wise as when it was first published.

Produced on the occasion of Ernst Caramelle’s exhibition at Galerie Hubert Winter, Wien, 11 September–5 October, 1984.

Produced on the occasion of Ernst Caramelle’s exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern, 4 August–14 September, 1986.

Ernst Caramelle’s work combines both abstraction and emblematic figuration—up to the point of floral formlessness. Formats vary from miniatures to large-scale wall paintings. Thematically, these works in many different media explore perception, the nature of space, media representation, artistic productivity, and the role of the artist and his embroilment in the market and with the museum.—MUMOK, Vienna press release

“For the past six months we have collected and looked at hundreds of newspapers, from different countries, in different languages. In all these papers the same events were described over and over again from slightly shifted angles. Oil gushing out into the fragile eco system of the Gulf of Mexico, daily fatalities in a war without solution in Afghanistan, the coldest winter, the hottest summer, yet among those sharp voices we stumbled upon some beautifully bland images, silent messengers that reminded us of moments and places somewhere out there, far away from us sitting here, on the floor, surrounded by newspapers.”

Old News is a project about information, media and recycled, reprinted news. It is a non-profit newspaper presenting a selection of articles, images and words clipped from newspapers. The articles have all been chosen by individual artists for the purpose of redistributing the news. Old News is a second-generation, copyright-free newspaper.