Produced on the occasion of Josef Strau’s exhibition A Turtle Dreaming (… Echoes from an Encapsulated Space Exiled Sounds of Letters Requiring Symphonic Treatment) at Secession, Vienna, 24 April – 21 June, 2015.

Josef Strau’s experimental artistic practice developed out of the written word. In his installations he relates texts and objects to each other in manifold ways. On the surface, the texts are characterized by the typographic interplay of printed word and blank space. At another level their distinctive feature is Strau’s idiosyncratic style of writing, which nimbly and playfully tracks his stream of consciousness. Oscillating between the meaningful and the meaningless, he interweaves everyday stories and urban scenes with personal revelations and literary motifs. Both in his exhibition at the Secession and in the accompanying publication, Josef Strau references an old-established motif of literature and film—the artist as dreamer, resembling a turtle, an encapsulated observer and recorder of his urban surroundings.

With her “notebook of dreams” Dineo Seshee Bopape transports you into the world of African scents. The book has been left mostly unprinted, but each right-hand page is coated with a scented print varnish manufactured using a traditional hydro-distillation technique out of the material of earthenware clay vessels to simulate the fragrance of parched soil and withered plants after a rainstorm. Reinforcing this sense perception associated with powerful emotions and memories, a QR code opens an audio file recorded by Bopape that enhances the experience of rain with an acoustic dimension.

Conceived by artist and filmmaker Margaret Salmon, this publication pairs an enquiry into women’s filmmaking practice with a comprehensive survey of experimental analogue technique across generations. Nine filmmakers—Peggy Ahwesh, Betzy Bromberg, Rose Lowder, Babette Mangolte, Rhea Storr, Deborah Stratman, Alia Syed, Malena Szlam and Salmon herself, speak about the ways they use and think about their cameras, sharing technical knowledge and reflections on camera work to reveal their creative philosophies and intentions. Included with the book is a separate manual: An Artists’ Guide to Analogue Cinematography. This learning pamphlet was written and photographed by Salmon, and includes step by step instructions to the loading and basic use of three cine cameras.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Tishan Hsu: recent work 2023 at Secession, Vienna, 1 December, 2023 – 11 February, 2024.

Hsu’s preoccupation with the body in a world of technology dates back to the 1980s. How bodies and consciousness change in the interaction with digital technology is a question he has insistently probed. Hsu’s insights into the interpenetration of human and technology have proven visionary; science fiction anticipated its culmination in the hybrid existence of the cyborg, but it left few traces in the art of the 1980s.

You can see Tishan Hsu in conversation about the exhibition with Patrizia Dander here.

Designed by Sabo Day.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Marc Camille Chaimowicz at Secession, Vienna, 20 November, 2009–24, January, 2010. Includes a folio of five looseleaf pattern sheets, a letter in facsimile and a catalogue with an essay by Silvia Eiblmayr.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Anna Daučíková at Secession, Vienna, 16 September–6 November 2022. Anna Daučíková is a pioneer of feminist-queer art in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Teaching for many years at art academies in Bratislava and Prague, and in recent years at the Salzburg Summer Academy, she counts to the most influential forward thinkers in the area of queer theory and practice.