Empty Room (II)
Daniel Gustav Cramer
Published by GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, 2020, unpaginated, stapled w. post card (colour ill.), 12.5 × 18 cm, English
Price: €5

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Was machen Sie um zwei? Ich schlafe. at GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, 19 September–20 December, 2020, curated by gerlach en koop. For the duration of the exhibition, a room has been emptied out at the Fernberger House, Mochizuki, Nagano, Japan. Includes a conversation between the artist and gerlach en koop.

#2020 #danielgustavcramer #ephemera #gerlachenkoop
For Now
Eileen Myles
Published by Yale University Press, New Haven, 2020, 96 pages, 13 × 18.5 cm, English
Price: €18 (Temporarily out of stock)

Eileen Myles offers an intimate glimpse into creativity’s immediacy. With erudition and wit, Myles recounts their early years as an awakening writer; existential struggles with landlords; storied moments with neighbours, friends, and lovers; and the textures and identities of cities and the country that reveal the nature of writing as presence in time.

#2020 #eileenmyles
In the Shadow of Forward Motion
David Wojnarowicz
Published by Primary Information, New York, 2020, 54 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21.5 × 28 cm, English
Price: €18 (Temporarily out of stock)

David Wojnarowicz’s In the Shadow of Forward Motion was originally published in 1989 as a limited-run zine/catalog to accompany an exhibition by the artist at P.P.O.W gallery.

Despite its meager print run of just 50 copies, the publication has garnered a legendary status. In it we find Wojnarowicz’s writing and visual art—two mediums for which the artist is renowned—sitting side by side for the first time, playing off each other in equal measure. Wojnarowicz uses the fractured experience of his day-to-day life (including dreams, which he recorded fastidiously) to expose these technologies as weapons of class, cultural, and racial oppression.

The artist’s experience living with HIV is a constant subject of the work, used to shed light on the political and social structures perpetuating discrimination against not only himself, but against women and people of colour, who faced additional barriers in their efforts to receive treatment for the illness.

#2020 #davidwojnarowicz #primaryinformation
Work 1961–73
Yvonne Rainer
Published by Primary Information, New York, 2020, 346 pages (b/w ill.), 20 × 27 cm, English
Price: €36 (Out of stock)

Originally published in 1974 by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Yvonne Rainer’s Work 1961–73 documents the artist’s landmark early works at the intersection of dance, performance, and art.

Assembled ostensibly as a survey, Work 1961–73 features a multitude of documentary forms, including scripts, excerpts from the artist’s notebooks, press reviews, correspondence, photographic documentation, literary excerpts, contextualizing texts by the artist, diagrams, film stills, floor plans, scores, and more. As such, the publication resembles an artist book that generously gives the reader access to Rainer’s modes of working, as well as the social and political context around which the work was made. The publication is also a book of writing, with the artist’s frank, witty, and sometimes humorous prose intimately leading the reader through each work.

#2020 #dance #novascotiacollegeofartanddesign #primaryinformation #yvonnerainer
Falce e martello/The Hammer and Sickle
Enzo Mari
Published by Humboldt Books, Milan, 2020, 128 pages (b/w ill.), 14.8 × 21 cm, English / Italian
Price: €18 (Temporarily out of stock)

Falce e martello: tre dei modi con cui un artista può contribuire alla lotta di classe (“Hammer and Sickle: three of the ways an artist can contribute to the class struggle”) by Enzo Mari was the catalogue that accompanied his exhibition at the Galleria Milano in 1973. Today, the exhibition is re-proposed, with the same display and in the same historical Milanese gallery; this anastatic reprint of the catalogue is enriched with photographs and documents from the archives of the Gallery and from the Mari Archive, along with an essay by Bianca Trevisan which retraces the planning itinerary undertaken by the Milanese artist and designer, and an essay by Riccardo Venturi outlining the historical, artistic and political debate that the project was part of, and which was accompanied by a film that sparked a degree of controversy at the time. A snapshot of that tinderbox which was 1970s Italy, and a reflection on the hammer and sickle: the most iconic symbol of the whole of the twentieth century.

#2020 #enzomari #humboldtbooks
Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959–1979
Published by Primary Information, New York, 2020, 480 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 20.3 × 22.7 cm, English
Price: €29 (Out of stock)

Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959–1979 is an expansive anthology focused on concrete poetry written by women in the groundbreaking movement’s early history. It features 50 writers and artists from Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States selected by editors Alex Balgiu and Mónica de la Torre.

The works in this volume evolved from previous manifestations of concrete poetry as defined in foundational manifestos by Öyvind Fahlström, Eugen Gomringer, and the Brazilian Noigandres Group. While some works are easily recognized as concrete poetry, as documented in canonical anthologies edited by Mary Ellen Solt and Emmett Williams in the late ’60s, it also features expansive, serial works that are overtly feminist and often trouble legibility.

Artists and writers include; Ana Bella Geiger, Mira Schendel, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Ilse Garnier, Mirtha Dermisache, Mary Ellen Solt, Susan Howe, Liliane Lijn, Hannah Weiner, Irma Blank, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Chima Sunada, Katalin Ladik amongst others. Designed by Scott Ponik.

#2020 #anabellageiger #concretepoetry #hannahweiner #irmablank #katalinladik #maryellensolt #miraschendel #mirthadermisache #primaryinformation #ruthwolfrehfeldt #scottponik #susanhowe #tomasobinga