This publication assembles a selection of texts produced between the years 2005 and 2020, starting with The Non- Productive Attitude (2005), his prominent reflections on the anti-productive attitude in the Cologne art scene of the time. The experience of having to write the essay overnight within a few hours, and without any time for revision, triggered his interest in exploring forms of unintentional writing, and consequently the replacement of the intentional author by an unconscious writer / producer. This mode of automatic writing has manifested itself until today, and has become the core of Strau’s artistic practice.

This collection of the correspondence between artist Rosemary Mayer (1943–2014) and poet Bernadette Mayer (born 1945) occurs between the years of 1976 and 1980, a period of rich creativity in New York’s artistic avant-garde, and one which includes the development of major bodies of work by the two women. Rosemary Mayer was creating sculptures, watercolours, books and “temporary monuments” from weather balloons and snow, while Bernadette Mayer was working on some of her best-known publications, including the book-length poem Midwinter Day and the poetry collection The Golden Book of Words. Spanning the worlds of Conceptual art, Postminimalism, feminism, the New York School, Language poetry and more, these letters elucidate the bonds of sisterhood through intimate exchanges about art, relationships and everyday life.

Allan Sekula was one of the most important figures in modern photography of the second half of the twentieth century. His work focused on a critique of the links that photography has always maintained with the economy, work and the politics of representation. From his beginnings in the seventies, Sekula became a reference by incorporating textuality into photography in a way that had been previously denied it by modern art. His book Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973–1983 (1984), a key work of the new photographic discourse of the late twentieth century, enshrined him as one of the least orthodox historians of the medium.

“Containing, restraining, reforming, hurting, compressing, binding, transforming a lumpy shape into a clean smooth line,” is how American artist Christina Ramberg once described the drawings of corsets in her sketchbooks. Ramberg was one of the most intriguing painters to emerge within a generation of Chicago Imagists. She left a significant body of comic, formally elegant, erotically sinister paintings.

Produced on the occasion of The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 14 September, 2019–5 January 2020. Christina Ramberg’s work was shown alongside of other artistic positions such as Alexandra Bircken, Sara Deraedt, Gaylen Gerber, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Konrad Klapheck, Ghislaine Leung, Hans-Christian Lotz, Senga Nengudi, Ana Pellicer, Richard Rezac, Diane Simpson, Terre Thaemlitz, Kathleen White.

With texts from Dodie Bellamy, Kathrin Bentele, Jen George, Larne Abse Gogarty, Anna Gritz, Judith Russi Kirshner & Léon Kruijswijk.

Open the Kimono is a chronological record of remarks from cable TV ads, movies, news radio, novels, airplanes, subways, sidewalks and elevators from 2013–2018.

American artist Lutz Bacher made work spanning an array of media since the 1970s. The game of hide-and-seek she played with her own self by working under a masculine pseudonym since early on in her career can serve as a helpful entry point to Bacher’s artistic practice. It centered around issues of identity, power structures, and violence, all the while remaining ambiguous and enigmatic.

Produced on the occasion of Michael E. Smith’s exhibition at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlungen, München, 2 September–24 October, 2021.

Michael E. Smith makes sculptures out of cast-offs, waste and other residues of our consumer society. He assembles and manipulates this found material in an unusual way. He isolates objects, makes changes to their form and seeks out the limits of their imaginative power. His presentations are characterised by an intense yet sparse choreography of the exhibition space.