Published on the occasion of Rossella Biscotti, L’avvenire non può che appartenere ai fantasmi at the Museion Bolzano, Bozen, 31 January–25 May 2015. The solo show, the artist’s first in an Italian museum, traced some of the key stages in her career, without being a retrospective. Biscotti responded to Museion’s invitation by creating new works and presenting traces of existing pieces – the exhibition includes casts of the 2009 project Le Teste in Oggetto, five bronze heads of King Vittorio Emanuele III and Benito Mussolini produced in 1942 for the Universal Expo in Rome, subsequently cancelled, and The Prison of Santo Stefano (2011–13), tracings of parts of the floor and cells of the prison in Italy’s Pontine Island.

The project Il Processo (The Trial, 2010–12) focused on the “April 7 trial” (1983–84), against the members of the leftist revolutionary movement Autonomia Operaia, which was held in the Aula Bunker in Rome—the high-security courthouse in Foro Italico. Biscotti’s research started in 2006—shortly before the building underwent a major transformation from a court to a sports museum. The installation consists of concrete sculptures made from casts of the architectural features of the courtroom, taken before their demolition. These are accompanied by a six-hour audio edited recording of the “April 7 trial”. Defendants in the court case included the philosophers Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno, and other intellectuals accused of being ideologically and morally responsible for Italian terrorism developed in the late 1970s.

Between 2010 and 2012, there were a series of performances, in different countries, where the audio is simultaneously live-interpreted by a professional translator, so that the historical testimony becomes reactivated through a contemporary voice and body. During the presentation at dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012 the installation and the performance were simultaneously shown. This publication is an English transcript of the audio translation.

Rossella Biscotti’s 10 × 10 interrelates three histories- the use of punch cards to program both early data processing machines and automated looms (jacquard) respectively, how demographic records have been modeled through census taking, and the legacy of the Haus Esters (1927–1930), a single family villa built by a textile baron- so as to question how statistics and quantitative analysis not only represent a given reality, but how such illustrations may also hide cognitive basis hidden in contemporary profiling methods and other displays.

Produced on the occasion of the travelling exhibition of visual and sound poetry organized by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1971. Including artists such as; Öyvind Fahlström, Eugen Gomringer, Emmett Williams, Ferdinand Kriwet, Henri Chopin, Kitasono Katue, Bob Cobbing, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Ugo Carrega, Maurizio Nannucci, Jiří Kolář, Herman de Vries, Aram Saroyan, Mary Ellen Solt.

Designed by Wim Crouwel and Jolijn van der Wouw.

SM Cat. No 492.

SSS: How to imitate the sound of the shore using two hands and a carpet is, at first glance, exactly what it claims to be: an in-depth manual for staging a private (or public) performance, in which one uses both hands and a carpet to imitate the sounds of water making contact with land. Istanbul-based artist Cevdet Erek’s book includes diagrams and photographs, which illustrate possible methods for producing this effect, while also addressing theoretical and methodological issues related to the representation of nature.

SSS is the second book in the Kayfa ta series, a publishing initiative of Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis. Each book in the series is a monographic essay commissioned in the style of how-to manuals that situation themselves in the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, and the factual and the fictional. Design by Julie Peeters

Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien on the occasion of Isa Genzken’s exhibition I’m Isa Genzken, the Only Female Fool, 28 May–7 September, 2014.

“The Only Female Fool” is how Isa Genzken describes herself in the self-chosen title of her exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien. This statement is typical of the fluid boundaries between deep seriousness and the exuberant, eccentric spirit that pervades her work. Genzken’s artistic practice is characterized by a wide spectrum of media and forms, although her roots in sculpture always remain visible. The exhibition and catalogue focus on specific aspects of her oeuvre, including the mirror motif, the examination of architecture, and space as a social sphere; where early works are juxtaposed with series from later creative periods. Genzken’s collaboration with other artists and her admiration for certain artistic positions is also brought into focus, and selected works by Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, Jasper Johns, Gerhard Richter, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Lawrence Weiner are presented in dialogue with Genzken’s multilayered work.

Design by Kummer & Herrman.