Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab. Contributions by Mai Abu ElDahab, Lara Khaldi, Mary Jirmanus Saba, Mirene Arsanios and Nikki Columbus, Basma Alsharif.

Four essays and one conversation with contemporary artists and curators from different backgrounds and origins (Jerusalem, Lebanon, Kuwait, USA, Egypt) discussing their experience of becoming mothers as professionals in the arts, its reality and effects.

While their reflections represent a similar strata of art worker in terms of background, class, and career trajectory, the impact of instruments of patriarchy on rendering maternity invisible that they describe is recognizable and insidious. In a post-partum diary, Lara Khaldi makes audible the everyday exhaustion and disregard that comes with being a new mother; Mirene Arsanios and Nikki Columbus discuss the impact of the absence of legal or social protection for mothers; Basma Alsharif walks us through the difficulties of navigating the demands of different social contexts; Mary Jirmanus Saba pre-occupies at home with a flimsy maternity blog; And Mai Abu ElDahab puts propositions on the table for how to deal with all of this.

The carpenter of your neighbourhood is an attempt to draw a socio-psychological portrait of Nea Ionia, a district in north-western Athens.

Extending her research into improvised communication practices within local contexts, Ilke Gers collected makeshift paper flyers and notices in the area and called the numbers provided in the collected material, requiring additional information in English. The resulting encounters ranged from abrupt hang ups to longer talks, testing the limits and potential of this interactive exercise.

This artist book compiles the translated street notices, together with the transcripts of the resulting phone discussions between the artist and anonymous respondents to the respective listed phone numbers.

Peter Shire is an LA-based artist whose subversive humour and playfulness extend throughout his work and made him a natural fit for the controversial and iconic Milan-based Memphis design group, of which he was a founding member.

The ceramic teapots made by Shire straddle the line distinguishing functional objects and pure sculpture. His brightly coloured, imaginatively shaped, and often witty designs are created under the influence of pop culture, the transformations of the landscape of late-twentieth-century Los Angeles, and by the work of important twentieth-century artists and designers.

With texts by Peter Shire, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp and Norman M. Klein.

Fritz Rainer (1925, Basel) became a spiritual leader in his mid-twenties guiding people through the trials of life. In 1951 he began preaching on the streets and soon enough his teachings started to attract bigger and bigger crowds. The movement rapidly developed into a cult-like entity with a large group of supporters and followers. Analysts have speculated that the real driving force behind Rainer’s popularity was his unusual not to say bizarre method of deliverance. The method, now taken on by The Rainer Plate creators, incorporated the employment of the material qualities of a CTP printing plate to give speeches all over the country. This included bizarre movements with the plate, a variety of ear-splitting sounds the plate produced, the reflection of it, not to mention the presence of an odd-sized metal sheet that in itself raised a mass furor, which eventually influenced the minds of the crowds, converting them into full-scale Rainerists.

The publication walks us through Fritz’ life and uncovers some details from his past.

Yetta Bronstein, as a 48-year-old house-wife from the Bronx, ran for President in 1964 and again in 1968 as the candidate for the Best Party. Her slogans were “Vote for Yetta and things will get betta” and “Put a mother in the White House.”

The publication houses an interview with Alan Abel (1930), the man behind all these characters including creator of Yetta. Alan was an American prankster, writer and filmmaker who frequently appeared on television, radio and newspapers with his scandalous and provoking undertakings. During the interview the discussion seamlessly flows from one prank to another, from one juicy detail to the next. Along the way his relationship to theatre and the media are discussed, as well as his approach to work.

The lovely woman going by the name of Edna Welthorpe is known today for her stabbing theatre criticism vocalised through the pages of local newspapers but also in her personal correspondence with playhouses and playwrights from the 1940s to the 1960s in London. Mrs Welthorpe took on the role of the guardian of public morals, protesting against, in her own words, ‘outrageous contemporary creations and the production of indecent thought’ that she believed should be banned from ‘the sight of not only our children but also the common public.’

Edna Welthorpe is one of the pseudonyms of the notorious British playwright Joe Orton (1933–1967), whom Orton used as an outraged critic of his work after he had achieved fame; she was joined later by the imaginary Donald H. Hartley, an Orton booster. Right up to his death, Orton wrote letters under different pseudonyms, which he used to create mischief and argument.

The publication reproduces some of Edna’s correspondence that was first published in the book Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton by John Lahr (1978).