Endnote, tooth
Ian Kiaer
Published by Archive Books, Berlin, 2020, 320 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 25 × 30 cm, English
Price: €38

Ian Kiaer’s monograph is based on a project that the artist began several years ago and whose configuration changes with the circumstances. Drawing on the notion of marginal endnotes in books, it references the utopian concepts of the Austrian American architect Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965).

In the late 1940s, Kiesler—an atypical figure whose writings were a significant influence on postwar art, architecture and design—came up with the (unrealised) Tooth House, a residence modelled on the human tooth and integrated into its environment.

Published as part of the the eponymous exhibition at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2017.

#2020 #archivebooks #frederickkiesler #iankiaer
The Delusions of Care
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Published by Archive Books, Berlin, 2021, 144 pages (b/w ill.), 11 × 18.5 cm, English
Price: €14

The misappropriated notion of care and the paths for its rehabilitation.

The Delusions of Care is a culmination of three long essays that ruminate on notions of care in our contemporary and historically. It is concerned with the appropriation of care by the capitalist establishment as much as supremacists of all kinds. What can we consider as care and who gives care for what reasons. Stuck in the cup de sac of a pandemic that has brought most of the world to its knees, these questions seem of some pertinence. The reflections in this book spanning a critique of care from the regimes of birth control through police brutality to the storming of the Reichstag in the summer of 2020, that very much set precedence to the storming of the Capitol Hill by Trumpists and White supremacists. The book does not only point out the pitfalls of a corrupted notion of care, but tries to offer paths for rehabilitation, restoration, restitution through a non-selfish spirit of care.

#2021 #archivebooks #bonaventuresohbejengndikung
Why Call it Labor?:
On Motherhood and Art Work
Published by Archive Books, Berlin, 2021, 178 pages, 12.5 × 21 cm, English / Arabic
Price: €10

Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab. Contributions by Mai Abu ElDahab, Lara Khaldi, Mary Jirmanus Saba, Mirene Arsanios and Nikki Columbus, Basma Alsharif.

Four essays and one conversation with contemporary artists and curators from different backgrounds and origins (Jerusalem, Lebanon, Kuwait, USA, Egypt) discussing their experience of becoming mothers as professionals in the arts, its reality and effects.

While their reflections represent a similar strata of art worker in terms of background, class, and career trajectory, the impact of instruments of patriarchy on rendering maternity invisible that they describe is recognizable and insidious. In a post-partum diary, Lara Khaldi makes audible the everyday exhaustion and disregard that comes with being a new mother; Mirene Arsanios and Nikki Columbus discuss the impact of the absence of legal or social protection for mothers; Basma Alsharif walks us through the difficulties of navigating the demands of different social contexts; Mary Jirmanus Saba pre-occupies at home with a flimsy maternity blog; And Mai Abu ElDahab puts propositions on the table for how to deal with all of this.

#2021 #archivebooks #basmaalsharif #maiabueldahab #mirenearsanios #mophradat #motherhood
Not Working Reader
Maurin Dietrich & Gloria Hasnay (Eds.)
Published by Kunstverein München, München and Archive Books, Berlin, 2020, 184 pages (b/w ill.), 16.2 × 23.4 cm, German / English
Price: €15

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Not Working, Artistic production and matters of class at Kunstverein München, 12 September–22 November, 2020.

Not Working brings together the contributions by artists, theorists and writers who in their work examine the interdependence of artistic production and social class. The complex structures and substantial rise in social inequalities, particularly visible in light of the current pandemic, have given the concept of class a wide range of connotations. Despite the ongoing attempts to view contemporary art in the sense of “class homogeneity”; it remains complicit in the reproduction and masking of existing conditions which it often claims to overcome. The texts in this book form a ground were class can be mediated with respect to artistic practices and other structures in the art world.

With contributions by Annette Wehrmann, Dung Tien Thi Phuong, Josef Kramhöller, Laura Ziegler and Stephan Janitzky, Leander Scholz, Lise Soskolne, Mahan Moalemi, Marina Vishmidt and Melanie Gilligan, and Steven Warwick.

More information on the exhibition can be found here.

#2020 #archivebooks #gloriahasnay #kunstvereinmunchen #lisesoskolne #marinavishmidt #maurindietrich #melaniegilligan #stevenwarwick
Japanese Expanded Cinema and Intermedia: Critical Texts of the 1960s
Published by Archive Books, Berlin, 2020, 222 pages (b/w ill.), 13 × 20 cm, English
Price: €15

Intermedia and Expanded Cinema, both as critical approach and artistic practice, left an indelible mark in a period of Japanese art history that is broadly considered to be one of its most dynamic moments in the wake of its postwar reemergence.

Despite the burgeoning interest in academic and curatorial circles in this segment of Japanese art history, the paucity of readily available material in a language other that Japanese has meant the local context, particularly the ways in which the terms were critically debated, was relatively neglected.

Rather than assuming the interpretations of the terms were the same as their counterparts abroad, translations of a selection of key texts that were instrumental in shaping the specific discourse around these terms have been commissioned.

#2020 #archivebooks #japanesefilm