Campo Santo
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This brief volume is the latest and reportedly last collection of essays by German novelist and critic Sebald, who has seemed more prolific since his death in 2001 than in life. Despite the masterful translation, these essays fail to cohere, though they contain elements common to most of Sebald's work: an integration of art, politics and memory, framed by the writer's own(...)
Campo Santo
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This brief volume is the latest and reportedly last collection of essays by German novelist and critic Sebald, who has seemed more prolific since his death in 2001 than in life. Despite the masterful translation, these essays fail to cohere, though they contain elements common to most of Sebald's work: an integration of art, politics and memory, framed by the writer's own curmudgeonly presence. The essays, however, feel unfinished, lacking polish and structural integrity. The collection is split into two parts, "Prose" and "Essays," with the first—a series of considerations of the landscape, history and social milieu of the island of Corsica—by far the more successful. The second, longer section contains an assortment of literary critical pieces, some detailed, such as a long essay about novelists writing about the destruction of German cities during WWII; others discursive, such as an apparently unfinished review of a book about Kafka's relationship with film that wanders from films Sebald himself viewed to films Kafka may or may not have seen. Although Sebald was a beautiful and intelligent writer, it's hard to see how these essays will appeal to anyone outside of scholars and already committed Sebald fans eager to read every word he ever set to paper.
sale books
Cabinet 24 : shadows
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The inherently contingent physics of shadows--never things in themselves but instead always "cast" signs of other things; tangible yet insubstantial--has long been a rich source of inspiration for thinkers and artists. From the Biblical valley where humanity is stalked by the "shadow of death" to the purported supernatural phenomenon of the shadow people, the idea has(...)
Cabinet 24 : shadows
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The inherently contingent physics of shadows--never things in themselves but instead always "cast" signs of other things; tangible yet insubstantial--has long been a rich source of inspiration for thinkers and artists. From the Biblical valley where humanity is stalked by the "shadow of death" to the purported supernatural phenomenon of the shadow people, the idea has always suggested forces of the unseen, of the Other, its relational quality evoking a sense a duality that haunts our supposedly integral identities. Cabinet 24 includes interviews with Michael Baxandall on the Enlightenment's attitude toward shadows and with Victor Stoichita on the battle between light and dark, Kris Lee on Comte de Silhouette and the rise of phrenology, Julia Bryan-Wilson on the perpetually shaded Swiss town of Rattenberg, Trevor Paglen on the secret patches from clandestine divisions of the U.S. Armed Forces and George Pendle on Otto Neurath and his Everyman informational figures. Artist projects include a portfolio of shadow drawings and an unwitting contribution by a celebrated artist secretly trailed by a private detective hired by Cabinet. Plus, Jocko Weyland on the AP archive; Tony Wood on Konstantin Melnikov's proposal for a collectivized Soviet dormitory system; Amelie Hastie on eating at the cinema and Daniel Handler on the color violet.
Magazines
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How do we live well? The first sentence of ''Grace and gravity'' raises the fundamental question that constantly occupies our minds-and of all those who lived before us. Paradoxically, the impossibility of answering this question opens up the very room needed to find ways of living well. It is the gap where all disciplines fall short, where architecture does not fit its(...)
Grace and gravity: Architectures of the figure
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How do we live well? The first sentence of ''Grace and gravity'' raises the fundamental question that constantly occupies our minds-and of all those who lived before us. Paradoxically, the impossibility of answering this question opens up the very room needed to find ways of living well. It is the gap where all disciplines fall short, where architecture does not fit its inhabitants, where economy is not based on shortage, where religion cannot be explained by its followers, and where technology works far beyond its own principles. According to Lars Spuybroek, the prize-winning former architect, this marks the point where the “paradoxical machine” of grace reveals its powers, a point where we “cannot say if we are moving or being moved”. Following the trail of grace leads him to a new form of analysis that transcends the age-old opposition between appearances and technology. Linking up a dazzling and often delightful variety of sources-monkeys, paintings, lamp posts, octopuses, tattoos, bleeding fingers, rose windows, robots, smart phones, spirits, saints, and fossils-with profound meditations on living, death, consciousness, and existence, ''Grace and gravity'' offers an eye-opening provocation to a wide range of art historians, architects, theologians, anthropologists, artists, media theorists and philosophers.
Architectural Theory
Inferno: the trash project
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Why do we find ourselves so attracted to the cheap and vulgar, the discarded, the misshapen and the abject? What do we really mean when we say that something is “so bad it's good,” and what finally does it say about us? Part personal confession and part historical roadmap of tales from the underground and exploitation movie scene in America during the 1960s, ''Inferno''(...)
Inferno: the trash project
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Why do we find ourselves so attracted to the cheap and vulgar, the discarded, the misshapen and the abject? What do we really mean when we say that something is “so bad it's good,” and what finally does it say about us? Part personal confession and part historical roadmap of tales from the underground and exploitation movie scene in America during the 1960s, ''Inferno'' takes the reader on a journey deep into the heart of the trash experience. With this publication, Hollings offers a complex and intricate timeline of connections, coincidences, and resonances that have mostly gone unnoticed. He traces the transmission of “the Purple Death,” a deadly and exotic virus first depicted in an old episode of a Flash Gordon movie serial, through the films of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and Kenneth Anger and into the output of such exploitation pioneers as Ray Dennis Steckler, Hershel Gordon Lewis, and Russ Meyer. Hollings also turns his idiosyncratic gaze upon key aspects of teenage culture during the 1960s, including hot rods, “Rat Fink,” surfers, bikers, and beach parties, uncovering a secretive and hidden universe of masks, fake identities, and secret desires. Even Dante would think twice about taking this trip into Hell.
Critical Theory
Elisabeth Wild: Fantasias
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This monograph exhibits Elisabeth Wild’s kaleidoscopic and vibrant collages. Using cutouts of commercial imagery from glossy magazines, Wild composes a dimensionless reality that is witty yet menacing, ancient yet immortal. Imagining figures that are structural and anatomical, her work presents a shimmering dream logic. Wooden totems and stone altars, woven rugs, and(...)
Elisabeth Wild: Fantasias
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This monograph exhibits Elisabeth Wild’s kaleidoscopic and vibrant collages. Using cutouts of commercial imagery from glossy magazines, Wild composes a dimensionless reality that is witty yet menacing, ancient yet immortal. Imagining figures that are structural and anatomical, her work presents a shimmering dream logic. Wooden totems and stone altars, woven rugs, and precious stones are the cosmic architectural inhabitants that unveil the artist’s fantasies. Along with Wild’s collages, this volume includes contributions by poet Negma Coy, curator Adam Szymczyk, art educator and writer Barbara Casavecchia, art historian and critic Noit Banai, and gallerist Karolina Dankow of Karma International, all which frame the importance of this singular artist’s work and life. Born in Austria, Elisabeth Wild (1922-2020) fled to Argentina during WWII with her parents. In 1962 the family escaped the regime of Juan Peron and found a new home in Basel, Switzerland. Wild opened an antique shop at St. Johannstor which became the outlet for her creativity at the time and also supported her and her family financially. Until her death at the age of 98, Wild was carefully crafting her light-hearted, joyous abstract worlds walking the line between construction and deconstruction. Alongside her daughter, Vivian Suter, Wild has exhibited at Kunsthalle Basel, documenta 14, and the Powerplant in Toronto.
Contemporary Art Monographs
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''Ad Astra'' is an artist book created as part of a public art project commissioned for the medical library of the University of Montreal Health Center (CHUM), in Montréal, Quebec. Involving the arts, science, and public participation, ''Ad Astra'' consists of an archive of messages that are poetically sent to the stars and to the future. The messages, collected from the(...)
September 2021
Ad Astra
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''Ad Astra'' is an artist book created as part of a public art project commissioned for the medical library of the University of Montreal Health Center (CHUM), in Montréal, Quebec. Involving the arts, science, and public participation, ''Ad Astra'' consists of an archive of messages that are poetically sent to the stars and to the future. The messages, collected from the hospital community, are transformed by means of a collaboration between art and neuroscience to generate astral images, and ultimately, a collective artwork representing a collection of prayers, hopes and fears. Rooted in deep human experiences,''Ad Astra'' gives voice to the range of emotions and the cycle of life and death that the hospital context is witness to daily. In compliment to the permanent multimedia artwork installed in the library, the book presents a tightly knit set of relationships among the various elements that compose the project, including messages, portraits, neurological diagrams, video-stills, citations, and texts. An introductory essay by Claire Moeder creatively illuminates the core interests of the project while the graphic design by Criterium echoes the installation with material means. The book is a nomadic archive and tactile object that was created to travel beyond the primary site of medical library, and ultimately towards the stars.
The agony of power
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In these previously unpublished manuscripts written just before his death in 2007, Jean Baudrillard takes a last crack at the bewildering situation currently facing us as we exit the system of "domination" (based on alienation, revolt, revolution) and enter a world of generalized "hegemony" in which everyone becomes both hostage and accomplice of the global market. But in(...)
The agony of power
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In these previously unpublished manuscripts written just before his death in 2007, Jean Baudrillard takes a last crack at the bewildering situation currently facing us as we exit the system of "domination" (based on alienation, revolt, revolution) and enter a world of generalized "hegemony" in which everyone becomes both hostage and accomplice of the global market. But in the free-form market of political and sexual liberation, as the possibility of revolution (and our understanding of it) dissipates, Baudrillard sees the hegemonic process as only beginning. Once expelled, negativity returns from within ourselves as an antagonistic force — most vividly in the phenomenon of terrorism, but also as irony, mockery, and the symbolic liquidation of all human values. This is the dimension of hegemony marked by an unbridled circulation — of capital, goods, information, or manufactured history — that is bringing the very concept of exchange to an end and pushing capital beyond its limits : to the point at which it destroys the conditions of its own existence. In the system of hegemony, the alienated, the oppressed, and the colonized find themselves on the side of the system that holds them hostage. In this paradoxical moment in which history has turned to farce, domination itself may appear to have been a lesser evil.
Critical Theory
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"The Unseen Eye" presents a idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: in each image, the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured or the eyes firmly closed. The pictures present a catalog of anti-portraiture, characterized at first glance by what its subjects conceal, not by what the camera reveals. Amassed over(...)
The unseen eye: photographs from the unconscious
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"The Unseen Eye" presents a idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: in each image, the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured or the eyes firmly closed. The pictures present a catalog of anti-portraiture, characterized at first glance by what its subjects conceal, not by what the camera reveals. Amassed over the course of 30 years by New York collector W.M. Hunt, the collection includes works by masters such as Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Imogen Cunningham, William Klein, Robert Mapplethorpe and Robert Frank, as well as works by lesser-known artists and vernacular images. Hunt's instinctive pursuit of striking images has resulted in a collection that manages to evoke a picture of humanity from birth to death, with all the associated nuances of memory, wit, eroticism, fear, grief and horror. More than 350 evocative and frequently surreal images are brilliantly sequenced in this volume; the cumulative effect is unnerving and riveting. Most critically, the images are drawn together by the narrative of the collector himself, in a highly personal monologue that weaves throughout the book, in which Hunt offers his own perceptive responses to the images he has gathered over many years. The result is a series of surprising epiphanies about how and why one collects.
Photography Collections
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Born into a large French-Canadian family in 1926, Mariette Rousseau embraced her passion for creative expression through wool and weaving at an early age. She studied art and weaving at l'École des beaux-arts in Quebec City and then worked at the California studio of ground-breaking American textile designer Dorothy Liebes. Back in Canada after an art-inspired trip to(...)
Weaving modernist art: The life and work of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette
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Born into a large French-Canadian family in 1926, Mariette Rousseau embraced her passion for creative expression through wool and weaving at an early age. She studied art and weaving at l'École des beaux-arts in Quebec City and then worked at the California studio of ground-breaking American textile designer Dorothy Liebes. Back in Canada after an art-inspired trip to Europe, she and her husband, artist and ceramist Claude Vermette, joined the growing movement of young French-Canadian artists in their embrace of abstraction and new forms of art and their rejection of the conservatism of Maurice Duplessis' mid-century Quebec. By the early 1960s, Rousseau-Vermette had forged collaborations with fellow artists, designers and architects with like ideas about public art. Over the next 40 years, she scaled the heights of her profession, weaving hundreds of radiant large-scale tapestries that complemented the cool interiors of modern architecture. She exhibited across Canada and internationally and attracted prestigious commissions from the private and public sectors, including commissions for theater curtains at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Yet three years after Rousseau-Vermette's death in 2006, Newlands discovered there wasn't a single book that told her story as a pioneer of modernist tapestry and one of Canada's most prolific and influential artist-weavers.
Current Exhibitions
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In his new book, critical theorist Mark Neocleous engages in a sustained critique of the theory and practice of pacification. Combining philosophical analysis with historical detail, Neocleous analyses the development of pacification as a key concept through which capitalist modernity has been organised, offering readers the first book that treats pacification as an(...)
Pacification: Social war and the power of police
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In his new book, critical theorist Mark Neocleous engages in a sustained critique of the theory and practice of pacification. Combining philosophical analysis with historical detail, Neocleous analyses the development of pacification as a key concept through which capitalist modernity has been organised, offering readers the first book that treats pacification as an important concept in the history of state power and capitalism. Neocleous’s approach is fourfold, examining pacification as social warfare carried out through the ideology of peace; as a form of social police carried out through mechanisms of security; as law and order exercised through the permanent wars of class society; and as the myriad practices of power designed to counter insurgency. Making use of official documents of state, the writings of counterinsurgency thinkers and the ideas perpetuated by practitioners of counterrevolution, the book unravels the complex ways through which pacification generates new forms of social war and new modes of policing that reproduce capitalist order and fabricate obedient subjects. Through expansive accounts of war and police, and engaging with a range of topics from debt to death, from stasis to civil war, and from the police kettle to the politics of fear, the book offers a provocative analysis of the ways in which state and capital combine to build a pacified social order.
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