Sweet Violence
Sanja Iveković
Published by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2011, 192 pages (colour ill.), 30.4 × 20.8 cm, English
Price: €42

Published in conjunction with the first solo museum exhibition of the work of Sanja Iveković in the United States, this volume is the most comprehensive survey on the artist available in English. A feminist, activist and video and performance pioneer, Iveković came of age in the early 1970s during the period known as the Croatian Spring, when artists broke free from mainstream institutional settings. This catalogue presents an overview of the artist’s projects from the early 1970s to 2011 in all mediums, offering a fascinating view of gender roles, the official politics of power and the paradoxes inherent in a society’s collective memory. Featured works include Iveković’s historic single-channel videos, performances and sculptural installations as well as a selection from Double Life (1975–76), her celebrated series of 64 photocollages. Weaving together art-historical analysis and political theory, the publication offers a critical examination of the neo-avant-garde in former Yugoslavia and investigates the theme of violence in art.

#2011 #sanjaivekovic
Solution 196–213 United States of Palestine-Israel
Joshua Simon (Ed.)
Published by Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2011, 128 pages, (b/w ill.), 11.2 x 17.8 cm, softcover, English
Price: €10 (Out of stock)

With contributions by Tal Adler/Osama Zatar, Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka, Maayan Amir/Ruti Sela, Ariella Azoulay, Yael Bartana/Sebastian Cichocki, Raji Bathish, Itzhak Benyamini, Sari Hanafi, Sandi Hilal/Alessandro Petti/Eyal Weizman, Yazan Khalili, Ohad Meromi/Joshua Simon, Norma Musih, Ingo Niermann, Noam Yuran

Solution 196–213: United States of Palestine-Israel is an anthology of texts proposing a doable solution for the region. With contributors based in Ramallah and Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Beirut and Jerusalem, New York and Bethlehem, Nazareth and Warsaw, the book offers solutions that will make life better, and proposes ways to do it.

Unlike previous books in the Solution series, this book invited several writers from the region to suggest specific and doable solutions for today. This is mainly since it seems absurd to present a one-man master plan for Palestine-Israel. In many senses, such master plans (whether they take a colonial, Zionist or other meta-narrative lead) have been the mold of the problem in the region for at least the last 150 years.

The idea is therefore to rethink the different antagonisms that structure our ways of resistance and compliance: to rethink Semitism and 1948, rethink identity and territory, rethink resistance and memory, rethink democracy and state, rethink Zionism and decolonization, rethink refugee and property, rethink religion and solution.

Solution Series edited by Ingo Niermann. Designed by ZAK Group.

#2011 #joshuasimon #solutionseries #sternbergpress #zakgroup
A Well Respected Man, or Book of Echoes
Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Published by Sternberg Press, Berlin & CasCo, Utrecht, 2011, 140 pages (b/w ill.), 21 × 30 cm, English/Dutch/Indonesian Bahasa
Price: €18 (Temporarily out of stock)

The publication unfolds and draws an open-ended connection between individual and collective struggles and (emotional) conflicts intertwined with the colonial and decolonizing histories of Indonesia and the Netherlands by taking two film works by artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh, No False Echoes (2008) and Instruction (2009), as points of departure. Both films take up rarely spoken fragments of the Dutch colonial past, particularly related to Indonesia, that are dormant but still affective in contemporary Dutch society. With the participation of different historical and contemporary stakeholders set against specific built environments, these two films are presented in the form of photo-novels. The film No False Echoes introduces one of the major historical sources cited in full in the publication, that is, a 1913 essay on national freedom by Soewardi Soeryaningrat, an Indonesian nationalist—or “revolutionary”—whose radical position manifested in the essay is widely known in Indonesia. The reprint of this essay is accompanied by two contemporary responses by Lizzy van Leeuwen and Nuraini Juliastuti, which in turn open another text written in 1935 by Soeryaningrat under a different name, Ki Hajar Dewantara, concerning national education in Indonesia. The latter text indicates the shift in political strategies, which, instead of fearless resistance, moves forward toward gradual building of counter-institutions of “upbringing” of new independent subjects. Designed by Julia Born.

#2011 #casco #juliaborn #sternbergpress #wendelienvanoldenborgh
Drawings 1965-1969
Dan Graham
Published by Publication Studio, Rotterdam, 2011, 44 pages (b/w ill.), softcover, 24.5 × 18 cm
Price: €21

This book reproduces a selection of Dan Graham’s grid drawings and typewriter pieces from the 1960s originally published in 1990 by Galerie Bleich-Rossi, in Graz, Austria. Published by Publication Studio with the permission of the artist.

#1990 #2011 #dangraham #publicationstudio
Born in Flames
Lizzie Borden
Published by Occasional Papers, London, 2011, 21 × 30cm, 48 pages (colour ill.), English
Price: €35

Born in Flames—the publication—is the complete authorised graphic translation of Lizzie Borden’s mythical 1983 film ‘Born in Flames’. Kaisa Lassinaro’s post-facto screenplay captures all the political energy and visual brilliance of Borden’s film, which describes a futuristic society (eerily similar to our own) where the achievements of a past revolution are threatened by reactionary sexist forces. The film suggests various modes of female resistance—from armed struggle to intellectual opposition—without endorsing one strategy over another. The published version of Born in Flames allows for a frame-by-frame analysis of the film’s complex plot and soundtrack, with songs by The Bloods and Red Crayola. Included is an interview with Borden conducted by Lassinaro, in which the filmmaker looks back on the making of the film in late 70s/early 80s New York.

#2011 #kaisalassinaro #lizzieborden #occasionalpapers
The Erased Tapes
Marc Nagtzaam
Published by Barbara Seiler Galerie, Zurich, 2011, 4 pages (b/w ill.), 21 × 29.7 cm, English
Price: €5 (Out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of Marc Nagtzaam’s exhibition Erased Tapes at Barbara Seiler Galerie, Zurich, 25 August–1 October, 2011.

Marc Nagtzaam has been producing a body of work that is based on one main subject: the idea of pattern, the repetition. He draws lines, grids, circles, words or sentences as in an endless search for collecting pieces of information.

#2011 #marcnagtzaam