The Remote* Archivist is a recurring publication from the Archive of de Appel that can also be accessed while the reader is physically distant, or the archive is far away. The distance, and at the same time the fickle proximity of digital platforms is now translated into the tangibility of archivistic messages.

In this first series of three episodes, Arefeh Riahi, Maartje Fliervoet and Martín La Roche Contreras came together as “To See the Inability to See” and created the feuilleton: Outdated Compass.

With archive documents from: Willem de Rooij, Jürgen Klauke and Iman Issa. Designed by Bardhi Haliti. Archivist: Nell Donkers.

*Absent, dreamy, far away, remote control, distant

Produced on the occasion of Robert MacPherson’s exhibitions The rectangle is a container & I see a can of paint as a painting unpainted by at Artspace Sydney, 1987, curated by Ingrid Periz.

In this artist’s book, Piero Gilardi reveals his working methods and explains how to create sculptures like those he has produced since the early 1960s. A pioneer of Arte Povera and a proud advocate of an ecologically concerned undertaking in the visual arts, Gilardi is also a political activist. The technique he developed for his sculptures has often been applied to produce masks, signs, and props for rallies and demonstrations, as this book and an interview with Andrea Bellini explains. For all this and for much more—his design and fashion creations, his social endeavors, etc.—Piero Gilardi is emblematic of the evolution of art and society over the last five decades. He is an artist whose works and theoretical research are still relevant to map what art might achieve and how art might be useful in the “real world.”

The first comprehensive monograph on the pioneer of Arte Povera, inventor of a “relational aesthetics” in the 1960s, political activist, and advocate of an ecologically concerned undertaking in the visual arts.

Piero Gilardi (born 1942 in Torino) is a pioneer of Arte Povera and a proud advocate of an ecological-concerned undertaking in visual arts. He is a peripatetic artist who gathered information about experimental art and creators in the 1960s, promoting the work of Richard Long or Jan Dibbets, and introducing Bruce Nauman or Eva Hesse into Europe. He is also a political activist who marched with FIAT workers in the 1970s, and who founded, in the 2000s the Living Art Park, commissioning earthworks to contemporary artists such as Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster or Lara Almarcegui.

Secret Outlines: Versailles (1996–2020) is the facsimile reproduction of one of the eight variations of the Secret Outlines (1996) series in which Jacqueline Mesmaeker over her way into books through graphic interventions, collages, and cuttings. For this edition, published by Keijiban (Kanazawa) and printed by Cultura (Wetteren) on Gardapat 150g paper, the artist has added five original drawings made with Caran D’Ache sapphire blue pencil to each of the thirty signed and numbered copies.

More images of the associated exhibition can be seen here.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Prozesse: physikalische, biologische, chemische at Haus an der Redoute, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 21 September–22 October, 1978. Including artists: Michael Badura, Monika Baumgartl, George Brecht, Jan Dibbets, Michael Enneper, Hans Haacke, K.H. Hödicke, Peter Hutchinson, Wolf Kahlen, Wolfgang Mally, Nam June Paik, Klaus Rinke, Dieter Roth (Diter Rot), HA Schult, Helmut Schweizer, Timm Ulrichs and Dorothee von Windheim.