How Do I Make Myself a Body?
Henrik Olesen
Published by Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2011, 212 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21.2 × 29.9 cm, English
Price: €40 (Temporarily out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Henrik Olesen: How Do I Make Myself a Body? Malmö Konsthall, 4 December, 2010–30 January, 2011 and Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, 14 May–11 September, 2011.

Edited by Jacob Fabricius and Nikola Dietrich. Texts by Nikola Dietrich, Jacob Fabricius, Lars Bang Larsen, Judith Hopf, Ariane Müller, Antonin Artaud and contributions by Kurt Schwitters, Antonin Artaud. Designed by Martin Johansson and Henrik Olesen.

#2011 #hatjecantz #henrikolesen #jacobfabricius #judithhopf #larsbanglarsen #nikoladietrich
Imitation of Life
Mathias Poledna
Published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin, 2013, 108 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 23 × 25 cm, German / English
Price: €18 (Temporarily out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of Mathias Poledna’s participation at the 55th International Art Exhibition—Venice Biennale, representing Austria.

A 35mm colour film roughly three minutes in length, Imitation of Life was produced using the historic, labor-intensive technique of handmade animation and is built around a cartoon character performing a musical number. Its buoyant spirit and visual texture evoke the Golden Era of the American animation industry during the late 1930s and early 1940s. In the preceding years, the time of the Great Depression, the medium had evolved from a crude form of mass spectacle into a visual language of enormous richness and complexity that shaped and continues to resonate in our collective imaginary.

Designed by the artist in collaboration with Martha Stutteregger.

A portion of the film can be viewed here.

#2013 #marthastutteregger #mathiaspoledna
Ketty La Rocca
Published by Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, 2003, unpaginated (b/w ill.), 16.5 × 24 cm, German
Price: €12

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Ketty La Rocca, at Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, 6 June–10 August, 2003.

Ketty La Rocca (1938–1976) was an important proponent of Conceptual and Body Art in Italy in the 1960s and 70s. Based on a visual poetry, she dealt radically with the sociopolitical limits of the meaning of language and images in her collages, performances and photographs. A central aspect is the examination of the bodily gesture as an “original means of communication”.

#2003 #concretepoetry #kettylarocca
Ecodeviance
CAConrad
Published by Wave Books, Seattle, 2014, 160 pages, 19.1 × 25.2 cm, English
Price: €19

This series of 23 new (Soma)tic poetry rituals and resulting poems by CAConrad create what we can refer to as an “extreme present” set to reveal the creative viability of everything around us. Poetry rituals such as riding escalators and showing photographs of himself to strangers asking, “Excuse me, have you seen this person?” In another he pollinates flowers for security cameras, exclaiming, “I’M A POLLINATOR, I’M A POLLINATOR!” One was written with a ghost, another by stargazing to build his own constellations. (Soma)tic rituals are a practice of unorthodox steps aimed at breaking us out of the quotidian and into a more political and physical spiritual consciousness of The New Wilderness.

#2014 #caconrad #poetry #wavebooks
While Standing in Line for Death
CAConrad
Published by Wave Books, Seattle, 2017, 208 pages, 17.8 × 24.5 cm, English
Price: €19

Winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Poetry. After his boyfriend Earth’s murder, CAConrad was looking for a (Soma)tic poetry ritual to overcome his depression. This new book of 18 rituals and their resulting poems contains that success, along with other political actions and exercises that testify to poetry’s ability to reconnect us and help put an end to our alienation from the planet.

#2017 #caconrad #poetry #wavebooks
Isa Genzken—Works From 1973 To 1983
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2020, 288 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 22 × 28 cm, English
Price: €40 (Temporarily out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition, Isa Genzken—Works From 1973 To 1983, at the Kunsthalle Basel, 5 September, 2020–24 January 2021, which is dedicated to the artist’s early oeuvre. The publication opens with works from her time as a student at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts (1973-1977) and details the evolution of her art up to 1983. The works shown include sculptures, computer printouts, extensive series of drawings, photographs and films. The artist blends conceptual approaches with personal themes; many works that initially seem to be exercises in geometric abstraction prove upon closer examination to be traces of her own existence, telling stories of personal relationships and the vagaries of desire.

#2020 #isagenzken #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig