Die 70er Jahre
Bruce Conner
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nürnberg, 2010, 216 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 19.3 × 25 cm, German
Price: €19

Few artists have contributed seminal works to as many genres as Bruce Conner (1933–2008). An assemblage artist famed for his use of nylon stockings, he also pioneered the use of found footage and the high-speed film editing now familiar to us from MTV, and was one of the earliest filmmakers to use pop and soul music on his soundtracks. In the 1960s, Conner collaborated with Toni Basil (of “Mickey” fame) on his dance film Breakaway, and in the 1970s with Devo, David Byrne and Brian Eno on music videos. This publication examines the formal parallels between Conner’s works as an artist and filmmaker, and looks at drawings, oil and acrylic paintings, lithographs, prints, photograms and photographs alongside three of Conner’s best-known films: Breakaway (1966), Crossroads (1976), and Marilyn Times Five (1968–1973).

#2010 #bruceconner #experimentalfilm
Cologne Art Fair, 1977
Jack Smith
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2010, fold out poster (colour & b/w ill.), 19.7 × 21 cm (folded) 119.2 × 84 cm (unfolded), English
Price: €15

Jack Smith presented his performance Irrational Landlordism of Bagdad as part of the Cologne Art Fair fringe in the summer of 1977. Many other events were documented photographically and can now be found in the Cologne Art Fair archives—not so Smith’s performance. This poster publication, edited by Michael Krebber, shows him in his fair stall and during his performance for the first time. The pictures are perfect documents of a completely eccentric transaction by this pioneering director and performance artist.

#2010 #jacksmith #michaelkrebber #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig
4 Frogs
Jochen Lempert
Published by Editions P, Marseille, 2010, 28 pages (b/w ill.), 20 × 27 cm, English
Price: €35 (Out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition ONYCHOPHORA, held at Valence, Art 3 in November 2010. One day old frogs were placed on photographic paper, to which the artist explains that as on jumps and the image is created, it produces the illusion of a fifth frog as the movement is being recorded.

#2010 #jochenlempert #photography
Program. For Example: Dix-Huit Lecons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 10)
Christopher Williams
Published by Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, 2010, 80 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 20.5 × 25.5 cm, English / Norwegian
Price: €35 (Out of stock)

Program was produced by Bergen Kunsthall on the occasion of the exhibition For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 10), curated by Solveig Ovstebo. With texts by Solveig Øvstebø, Diedrich Diederichsen, John Kelsey, and Christopher Williams, and design by Christopher Williams and Petra Hollenbach.

Christopher Williams’ work operates within the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and, ultimately the history of Modernism. In photography, film, performance, sculpture, graphic design, and video, the process of reproduction is the artist’s point of entry; from there he exposes the flaws in a near-perfect, carefully constructed reality. Each image, whether architectural or figurative, natural or manufactured, is subject to the conditions of production and the inevitable boundaries of the pictorial surface.

#2010 #christopherwilliams #petrahollenbach
Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives
Brian Dillon
Published by Penguin Books, London, 2010, 320 pages, 12.8 × 19.7 cm, English
Price: €8

Tormented Hope is a book about mind and body, fear and hope, illness and imagination. It explores, in the stories of nine individuals, the relationship between mind and body as it is mediated by the experience, or simply the terror, of being ill. And in an intimate investigation of those nine lives, it shows how the mind can make a prison of the body, by distorting our sense of ourselves as physical beings. Brian Dillon, whose brilliant debut In the Dark Room established him as an uncommonly intelligent and fluent explorer of the realm where ideas and emotions overlap, looks at nine prominent hypochondriacs—James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Daniel Paul Schreber, Alice James, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol—and what their lives tell us about the way the mind works with, and against, the body. His findings are stimulating and surprising, and the stories he tells are often moving, sometimes hilarious, and always gripping.

You can read a review of the book here.

#2010 #andywarhol #briandillon
L'innocence
Jacqueline Mesmaeker
Published by (SIC), Brussels, 2010, hardcover, cloth binding, 88 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21.5 × 35 cm, English / French
Price: €45 (Temporarily out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Until it Fitted! at Établissement d’en face, Brussels, 24 March–28 April, 2007.

Jacqueline Mesmaeker (born 1929 in Brussels) started her career as a fashion designer from 1962 till 1972, before she turned to visual and artistic issues. Drawing, an art form she taught in several art schools (ERG, La Cambre…), runs throughout her rich work that includes installation, video, photography, writing and design. She won the Norwich East Award, in 1996.

#2010 #artistbook #etablissementdenface #jacquelinemesmaeker