Libraries are generally perceived as storehouses, spaces of stable accumulation and containment. While the architecture may attempt to operate in this stable tone, the material contained within them is often far wilder. Histories, biographies, loose thoughts, detailed notations, bodies, and objects are all temporarily suspended, cataloged, and organized, creating relationships where perhaps previously there was none. An example of where the tension between what is contained in libraries and how it is contained emerges in a highly palpable way in the trajectory of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin. This new artist book by Ruth Buchanan charts three narratives associated with the life of this particular library. The anecdotes become both concrete examples and metaphors through which to interrogate the production, situating, and sharing of meaning.

With texts by Ruth Buchanan and Ian White. Designed by David Bennewith.

An artist publication produced by gerlach en koop, “Two seconds from the film ‘Close-up’ by Abbas Kiarostami (1990), starting from the moment the aerosol can is being absentmindedly pushed with the tip of the shoe. Because the street slopes down the empty can rolls on for about half a minute, further and further away from the camera, until it is stopped by the curb…”

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition ‘The Autumn of Modernism’ at De Vleeshal, Middleburg.

With a foreword by Franco ”Bifo” Berardi.

In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image. Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.

e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle. Design by Jeff Ramsey, cover artwork by Liam Gillick

The project Il Processo (The Trial, 2010–12) focused on the “April 7 trial” (1983–84), against the members of the leftist revolutionary movement Autonomia Operaia, which was held in the Aula Bunker in Rome—the high-security courthouse in Foro Italico. Biscotti’s research started in 2006—shortly before the building underwent a major transformation from a court to a sports museum. The installation consists of concrete sculptures made from casts of the architectural features of the courtroom, taken before their demolition. These are accompanied by a six-hour audio edited recording of the “April 7 trial”. Defendants in the court case included the philosophers Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno, and other intellectuals accused of being ideologically and morally responsible for Italian terrorism developed in the late 1970s.

Between 2010 and 2012, there were a series of performances, in different countries, where the audio is simultaneously live-interpreted by a professional translator, so that the historical testimony becomes reactivated through a contemporary voice and body. During the presentation at dOCUMENTA 13 in 2012 the installation and the performance were simultaneously shown. This publication is an English transcript of the audio translation.

This bibliography catalogues and illustrates, with a wide selection of images, Allan Kaprow’s entire body of published work: from his first artist’s book in 1962, to his last anthological projects in the 1990s. This lesser-known side of his oeuvre unfolds through 32 books, booklets, and pamphlets produced over a period of 40 years. Kaprow’s work moved along two parallel tracks: Happenings—of which he was an unchallenged pioneer, starting in the 1950s—and “Activity Booklets,” which functioned as a tool to help people understand and experience these performances.

The layout of his books, the originality of their structure, the literary stature of their texts, and their aesthetic quality as objects shifted his exploration of print into a higher realm, where the book became a fully-fledged work of art.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Jef Geys: KOME, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België and Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in 2012. Design by Luc Derycke.