Kunstverein is essentially a curatorial office that offers lectures, presentations, screenings, and independent publishing. Because of its unconventional structure, it allows alternative methods to be considered in terms of presentation, hosting, and exhibition-making. This extensive anthology looks back at the past decade of their activity, from 2009 to 2019, and is filled with ephemera, images of performances and shows, bulletins, and much more. With contributions by Yana Foqué, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Anthony Huberman, and Maxine Kopsa.

Designed by Marc Hollenstein.

Edited and designed by Line-Gry Hørup, this long-awaited publication presents the first-ever translations of the fourteen (and only) poems written by the Danish art historian and publisher R. Broby-Johansen in 1922, for which he was sentenced to jail. In vivid and gory details, the poems depict the red-light district of Copenhagen’s underbelly. In them, he defends those subjected to misery and poverty, and comments on the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie responsible for their misery. The appendix of the book gives a unique insight into Broby-Johansen’s methodology, interests and life following the end of his career as a poet, through photographs taken by Johannes Schwartz and translations of the archive by Hørup.

The Joke Book is the first printed edition of the complete jokes & messages file that was found on Seth Siegelaub’s computer by his partner Marja Bloem. It contains jokes, quotes, and pieces of advice, that he collected since 1999 and regularly redistributed via email amongst his friends. With contributions by Alex Alberto, John Baldessari, Marja Bloem, Myrna Bloom, Martin Browne, Alan Kennedy, David Kunzle, Joel Miller, Loren Miller, Kay Robertson, Laurent Sauerwein, Seth Siegelaub, Joan Simon, Kira Simon-Kennedy, Peter Sinclair, Steven Wright, and an introduction by Huan Hsu (written after a long conversation with Marja Bloem). Designed by Marc Hollenstein.

The publication was produced as part of the exhibition High Level Margins With a Catalogue at Kunstverein, Amsterdam by Nedko Solakov, 18 September–21 November 2010 and served as a reading device for the stories displayed on and around the margins of Kunstverein’s 3.5m high ceiling.

Second Thoughts, co-published by Kunstverein, Amsterdam, and Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, follows Kunstverein’s earlier publication, Paper Exhibition: Selected Writings by Raimundas Malašauskas, as the second in a series featuring the work of an author whose writing has never before been collected in a dedicated, single object. This collection of essays spans multiple research disciplines, including Angie Keefer’s own biography, and runs parallel to her artistic practice. All of the texts were commissioned and published previously, but many have been rewritten for this book. Keefer deftly brings together technological inquiry with artistic production and quotidian human experience.

Grace Crowley is a publication by Riet Wijnen, based on letters sent to the Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting Grace Crowley (1890–1979) by friends, family and colleagues. Parts of those letters, which are now housed in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the State Library of New South Wales archives in Sydney, were transcribed and categorized by Wijnen in subsections such as ‘Marital Status’, ‘Teaching’, ‘Hosting’, ‘Eurasia’, ‘X’, ‘Being A Woman’, ‘War’, ‘$’, and ‘Making Work’. The result is an alternative biography constructed solely through a living set of relations.

Designed by Marc Hollenstein.