Cover to Cover
Michael Snow
Published by Primary Information, New York & Light Industry, New York, 2020, 316 pages (b/w ill.), 17.7 × 22.6 cm, English
Price: €28 (Out of stock)

For years an out-of-print rarity, Michael Snow’s classic artist book Cover to Cover is available once again, in a facsimile edition.

Flipping through Cover to Cover, which is composed entirely of photographs in narrative sequence, one might describe it as a book made by a filmmaker. Snow himself has called the piece “a quasi-movie,” structured around a precise recto-verso montage.

Cover to Cover was originally released by the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1975. It was part of a now-legendary series of publications, overseen by Kasper König and later Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, that included titles by Michael Asher, Dara Birnbaum, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, Martha Rosler, and Yvonne Rainer, among others.

#2020 #michaelsnow #novascotiacollegeofartanddesign #primaryinformation
Stockhausen Serves Imperialism
Cornelius Cardew
Published by Primary Information, New York, 2020, 126 pages, 14 × 22 cm, English
Price: €17 (Out of stock)

Originally published in 1974, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism is a collection of essays by the English composer Cornelius Cardew that provides a Marxist critique of two of the more revered avant-garde composers of the post-war era: Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. A former assistant to Stockhausen and a champion of Cage in England, Cardew provides a cutting rebuke of the composers’ works and ideological positions, which he saw as reinforcing an imperialist order rather than spotlighting and serving the struggles of the working class.

#2020 #corneliuscardew #johncage #karlheinzstockhausen #primaryinformation
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
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