Tomio Miki (1937–1978), who exhibited among a group of avant-garde, politically active artists in Tokyo in the late 1950s and early 1960s, settled in 1963 on the human ear as his primary sculptural subject for the next several years. He often depicted them individually, on a giant scale. Sometimes he combined ears with other elements, such as spoons or colored lights, or made series of them set in rows or in boxes. Miki spoke quixotically about his choice of the ear, saying that it originated in an “experience in a train, when, for no reason, I suddenly felt myself surrounded by hundreds of ears trying to assault me. This personal episode, however, wouldn’t be any precise answer to why I make ears. I can hardly say I chose the ear. More precisely, isn’t it that the ear chose me?”
Dark web gamers, virtual posers, nomadic dreamers, far-out spacers and mystic tracers ~ The Griefers of Bandung transmits the voices of a generation on the cusp of its own rising sign….
Synopsis: Dutch art student Elsemieke Kiekens has just spent the last three months in Bandung, searching for love and fighting alongside a local activist collective. Meanwhile, her virtual avatar Virgo has become a resistance hero involved in weapons-trafficking, corporate-boycotts, rally-organising, illegal-fundraising and cybertheft. It turns out the effects of these operations are not limited to cyberspace. Now, overwhelmed by a series of unexpected encounters, Elsemieke finds herself on a plane back to the Netherlands. She is soon to understand that the worst is yet to come.
The Griefers of Bandung is published in the context of the DAI 2016–17 COOP Academy Publishing Class, I Left my pdf in Arnhem, curated by Sarah Pierce and Tirdad Zolghadr.
Move Along is an instruction manual for open ended games, actions and interventions to untrain the body and recondition space. The manual outlines simple instructions for twelve activities that doesn’t usually require special skills or equipment.
Written and designed by Dutch designer Ilke Gers.
Zolang je niet zo over problemen praat zie je er toch niks van / As long as you don’t talk about problems so much you won’t see them anyway is a photobook about empathy in psychiatry. Portraits of people in conversation and observations in body language are combined with textual dialogues. This project originated during a residency in Het Vijfde Seizoen, the residency on the terrain of a psychiatric institution in Den Dolder, NL. In the book you are made to ponder the (in)ability to place yourself into another’s shoes, the absurdity of mental illness as well as the familiarity and humanity of those who suffer from voices in their head, delusions, psychoses and depression. The title is a quote from one of the portrayed patients and brings to doubt the work itself and the possibility to photograph something that is so complicated.
This volume assesses a wonderful body of work that encompasses installations, films, artist’s books and specimens from the artist’s vast archives of ephemera. Like Marcel Broodthaers and Susan Hiller, Bloom has a creative attraction toward taxonomy and museology: the installation “Greed” (1988), for instance, is comprised of a chair, an empty frame and a photograph of a museum gallery with a seated guard. An example of one of her own collections is a complete set of Vladimir Nabokov’s writings for which Bloom redesigned all of the book covers, referring both to herself and Nabokov as collectors (he obsessively collected editions of his own books) and in the process interposing herself as artist. In some cases, Bloom revisits previous installations to add new elements, resisting and upsetting the orderliness of a conventional artistic chronology. The Collections of Barbara Bloom includes essays by Dave Hickey and Susan Tallman and expands a project developed as part of Bloom’s Wexner Art Center Residency Award in 1998.
Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus (then Soviet Union), and has lived in the USA since 2006. She is the author of FACTORY OF TEARS and COLLECTED BODY (Copper Canyon Press; and for the German language, Surkamp Verlag). Mort is a recipient of Crystal of Vilenica, Burda Poetry Prize for Eastern European authors, Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, and Bess Hokin Prize.
Published by Fivehundred places, founded in 2012 by Jason Dodge. On the cover of each book is a dead scissor by Paul Elliman.