Brief, risible, finicky, the limerick is a form whose greatest successes never rise above the mildly embarrassing. Yet despite never having enjoyed unqualified approbation from critics or public, the form has its enthusiasts and eminent aficionados: there is no lack of literary luminaries who have lavished love on the limerick. This title continues this queer minor tradition, presenting seventy-seven limericks about writers and philosophers from St Thomas Aquinas to Simone Weil. Of all the grades of doggerel, the limerick is one of the lowest. Populist and participatory if not precisely popular, the limerick first becomes a hit in Victorian England with Edward Lear’s books of nonsense. It spreads at once across the English-speaking world like a highly contagious linguistic rash. Including a critical essay that delineates the limerick’s salient features, along with a dictionary that collects brief physiognomies of the subjects of the limericks, this book dares to descend into the maelstrom of mediocrity and to return, arms overflowing with mixed metaphors and mouldering microplastics.
Produced the occasion of the screening of Tom Zubrycki’s unfinished documentary film on the history of the Australian labour movement, from the 1850’s up until the bicentenary of 1988. Originally sponsored by the Australian Council for Trade Unions, produced by Film Australia, and funded by the Australian Bicentennial Authority, the film was effectively censored when the ACTU rejected the film’s representation of union history.
With an excerpt from John Hughes’ manuscript for his essay Zubrycki’s Point: Amongst Equals, utilitarian film in the Australian labour movement, on the controversy surrounding the production of Amongst Equals.
Designed by Ziga Testen.
More information on the screenings can be found here.
Produced on the occasion of Lisa Adkins’ talk discussing how we might rethink the maintenance and reproduction of the household today. She preposes that we think of this as a relationship between the household and its necessary, contracted payments to finance capital (for utilities and services, as loan repayments, rent, etc.)
The talk was co-presented with Benison Kilby, as a part of her exhibition “Bodies of Work”. The exhibition looked at how a group of artists respond to the intersections of reproductive, care, and feminised labour that maintain, and increasingly define, our current living conditions.
Designed by Ziga Testen.
More information on the talk can be found here and a recording of the talk can be found here.
In Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that of the other.
Wark explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American. From the Russian revolution, Wark unearths the work of Alexander Bogdanov—Lenin’s rival—as well as the great Proletkult writer and engineer Andrey Platonov.
The Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for the new organizational challenges of our time. From deep within the Californian military-entertainment complex, Wark retrieves Donna Haraway’s cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian utopia as powerful resources for rethinking and remaking the world that climate change has wrought.
Poster/invitation produced on the occasion of KAREL MARTENS OASE/, 6–21 April, 2011, Faculty Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne. Curated by Warren Taylor.
The exhibition focused on Martens contribution to the graphic style of OASE, Journal for Architecture. From 1990 (Issue 28) Martens took over the art direction of the journal, often working with students from the Werkplaats Typografie—an experimental typography school he founded in 1998 with Wigger Bierma. What began as a student magazine, evolved into an international professional journal in which a reflective and critical approach to architecture, urban design and landscape architecture is the mainstay. Recently celebrating its 75th issue, the success of OASE is, in part, due to Martens refined graphic statement, often absorbing his print and typographic experiments and upholding the dialogue between graphic design and architecture.
More information on the exhibition can be found here.
Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Jason Dodge with Ishion Hutchinson: The Broad Church of Night, 25 September–21 December, 2018 at the University of Chicago, Neubauer Collegium for Culture.
The title of this exhibition was suggested to the artist by the Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson, who composed and recited a poem of the same name for the exhibition’s ceremonial dismantling on December 1. An audio recording of the reading replaced the sculptural installation for the final three weeks of the show.
Edition of 200. hand bound with 4 inserts. Each copy is unique.