Adrian Piper

 Adrian Piper turns 74 today. 

Roula Partheniou & Joy Walker | Full Circle

Roula Partheniou & Joy Walker

Full Circle

Toronto, Canada: The Canadian Art Foundation, 2014

16 pp., 13.5 x 13.5 cm., staple-bound 

Edition of 1000

Produced for the 2014 Canadian Art Foundation's fundraising gala, this work was distributed to every guest at the dinner and was accompanied by an ambient video and gobo light centrepieces. 

The book comes housed in a foil-stamped card stock envelope and each spread presents a different shape, with a mirrored cover endpaper completing the first and last. Additionally, another simple shape sits in between the pages.

 

"A book to be considered in the round and in the folds. Each of the page-spreads feature a hybrid of conventional shapes, designed so that when a page is turned and held perpendicular to the book, the pages on either side collaborate to form a recognizable symmetrical geometric shape. The mirrored cover endpaper completes the first and last shape. The foil-stamped asterisk on the cover illustrates the book as a proposed sculpture."

- Roula Partheniou, Joy Walker

 

Brigham Baker | Only Apples

Brigham Baker

Only Apples

Munich, Germany: Edition Taube, 2019

116 pp., 22.5 × 29 cm., softcover

Edition of 800

As the title suggests, this artist book (Baker's first) consists entirely of images of apples - analogue close up  photographs as they ripen and rot. 

Only Apples is available for 26,00 € from the publisher, here. 

"The long-term study has resulted in an intimate, autobiographically colored work that deals with time, change and transience. In the process, echoes of classic vanitas still lifes are evoked and at the same time constantly undermined. The photographic works are supplemented by a short story written by the artist."

- publisher's blurb

⠀

Walter Abish | How German Is It?

Walter Abish
How German Is It? 
New York City, USA: New Directions, 1980
252 pp., 5.2 x 0.8 x 8.1", softcover 

Edition size unknown

The fifth book and second novel by Walter Abish asks two questions: the standard "How could the German people have committed such atrocities?", and the even more complicated "How uniquely German was the Holocaust?". 

The premise brings to mind a scene in the 1986 film Hannah and her Sisters, in which Max Von Sydow's reclusive artist character describes his afternoon to his increasingly frustrated girlfriend:

"You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question "How could it possibly happen?" is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is "Why doesn't it happen more often?"

And then, "Of course it does, in subtler forms."

Author Dennis Cooper describes Abish's prose style here as "cinematic", and the book opens with a quote from filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard ("What is really at stake is one's image of oneself"). In Abish's autobiography he describes watching movies of Wim Wenders for inspiration.

I've been reading The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art by Henry W. Pickford.The general premise is that Holocaust artworks must fulfill at least two criteria: Artistic (lest they be merely historical documents) and historical (lest they distort the Holocaust, or become merely artworks). The book opens with a scene at the airport and I was reminded of my first visit to Berlin, several years ago. How every tour guide addresses the Holocaust on the first page, such an unfamiliar reckoning. I couldn't fathom any tourist book to the US coming to grips with the genocide of indigenous populations in such a forthcoming way.

Abish explores the dangers of repressing the past but also the more general generation gap. How German Is It? follows two prosperous brothers - an architect and novelist. They are the children of an anti-Nazi martyr, Ulrich von Hargenau, who was executed by firing squad for his role in a plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944. They have abandoned the elitist "von" from their aristocratic last name, much to the disapproval of the residents of Brumholdstein, a modern new community they live in, built over a former concentration camp. A sewage pipe breaks and reveals a mass grave. 

The book also features motorcycle gangs and terrorist groups, lingering fascist mindsets and a generation's attempt to shake off its dark heritage. 

Walter Abish died in May of this year. 

"His most admired work, the novel “How German Is It” (1980), harnesses postmodern verbal foolery to a thriller plot and a passionately distrustful concern with modern Germany. Written before his actual return to the German-speaking lands that his immediate family (but not all his relatives) escaped in the late thirties, the novel imagines an Americanized, prospering, democratic Germany sealed over the Nazi past like a deceptively smooth scab. "

- John Updike, The New Yorker

“All his writings are an assault on the reassuring familiarity of everyday things. Now Mr. Abish seems to be saying that it is the menace lurking beneath the surface that appeals to the new Germans as a way of experiencing, if only deviously, the unassimilated terror of their past.”

- Betty Falkenberg, the New York Times

"As in Abish’s former works, How German Is It is enamoured with verbal tomfoolery, of which the cumulative effect is to constantly wrong-foot the reader, making us as wary of modern German as both Abish and his characters seem to be. Ulrich Hargenau, the novels ‘hero’, is a successful writer, estranged from his wife, Paula, a female terrorist, whom he saved from prison by testifying against the other members of her group. Ulrich, returned to Brumholdstein (named after Ernst Brumhold, a Heidegger-type philosopher), begins to suffer occasional death threats and attempts are made on his life. His brother, Helmuth, a successful architect who designed the police station in Brumholdstein (only to see it blown up by the terrorist group operating in the area), begins to suffer from similar concerns. The Hargenau’s – a very Americanised family – represent modern Germany, in a very old German town. Brumholdstein was the site of a notorious gas chamber and concentration camp, now buried beneath the modern facade.

[...]

For Abish, How German Is It is a novel that questions the very identity of a nation in transition, trying to face up to its troubled past. "

- Dennis Cooper

Jiří Valoch

Jiří Valoch turns 76 today. 

This Way Brouwn

[Stanley Brouwn] Igno Cuypers

This Way Brouwn

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Harry Ruhé, 2020

34 pp., 35 x 30 x 4.5 cm., boxed

Edition of 10 signed and numbered copies

An archival box containing 25 original photos of an artist famous for not wanting to be photographed (or  documented at all) performing his most notorious work. This Way Brouwn involved the artist stopping passersby in the street and asking them for directions, which he had them scrawl on a pad of paper. The results were then rubber-stamped with the title and shown in vitrines as a kind of vernacular drawings. 

The photographs were taken by the Dutch photographer Igno Cuypers - brother to jazz pianist Leo Cuypers. The work is signed and numbered by Cuypers in an edition of ten copies. 

It is published by Harry Ruhé, who had previously produced a binder catalogue raisonne of the artists' editions. This Way Brouwn is available from Ruhé, here. 

Fluxus Anthology 30th Anniversary 1962-1992 Sound Events

[Fluxus]

Fluxus Anthology 30th Anniversary 1962-1992 Sound Events

Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands: SLOWSCAN, 1993

32 x 24.5 x 5 cm.

Edition of 200 [+ 60 AP) numbered copies

Eight audio cassettes housed in a silkscreened wooden box and a 204 page A4 book of material related to the artists on the cassettes, including many illustrations, and an extensive discography of Fluxus recordings, plus scores by Joe Jones, Dick Higgins, Robert Filliou, Henning Christiansen, Wolf Vostell, Ken Friedman, and Eric Andersen. 

A deluxe edition was also released, in a hexagonal box, in an edition  of 38 signed copies. 

Track listing: 

A George Maciunas Seattle Interview 1977 (43:00) 

Interviewer - William Woods 

B Henning Christiansen "Symphony Natura" Op.170 (43:00) 

Featuring - Lorenzo Mammi 

C Robert Filliou Whispered History Of Art (20:00) 

Recorded By - Ondine Fiore 

D Milan Knižák* Bossanova Suite (19:30) 

Performer [2 Record Players Playing Destroyed Music, 2 Taperecorders With Tapes Of Older Pieces], Synthesizer [2], Piano, Voice - Milan Knižák 

E Takehisa Kosugi August 14, 1991 (32:00) 

Tape [Pre-recorded Environmental Sounds (birds) In The City Of Ferrara, Italy], Noises [Live Broadcasting Sound On W-cbs Radio, New York], Performer [A Plastic Bottle In Which A Small Microphone Is Installed For Pick Up Voice & Other Sounds], Electronics [Audio Generator], Effects [Time-delay Machine, Pitch Shifter] - Takehisa Kosugi 

F Joe Jones Solar Music Hot House (31:00) 

G Wolf Vostell Le Cri Part 1 (30:00) 

H Wolf Vostell Le Cri Part 2 (30:00) 

I1 Al Hansen Car Bibbe (5:40) 

I2 Al Hansen Balloni Brothers Balloon Work (9:30) 

I3 Al Hansen Joseph Beauys Stuka Bomber Piece (10:10) 

J1 Al Hansen The Futuristic Chattanooga Choo Choo In The Mongolian Desert (12:30) 

Music By [Music Mix] - Jürgen Turje 

Performer - Al Hansen , Janet Kramer 

J2 Al Hansen I Opened The Top Button Of Her Jeans And Zipped Her Zipper Down (1:49) 

J3 Al Hansen Intermedia L.A. Roadside Streetwise Poetry (3:52) 

J4 Al Hansen Venus Rap (9:50) 

K Paul Sharits The Existential Anguish Symphony (45:00) 

Conductor - Chen Han 

Performer - Paul Sharits 

L1 Larry Miller Accord (Selections From The 2nd And 4th Movement) (22:30) 

Other [Translator] - Josine van Droffelaar 

Performer [Instrumentalist] - Alfred van den Heuvel , Louwrien Wijers , Lárus Grimsson , Michel Waisvisz 

L2 Marcel Alocco Pour Fluxus (1960-1967-1968) (12:37) 

L3 Albrecht/d. Two Lines -Excerpt- (9:00) 

M1 Alison Knowles A Nivea Cream Piece For Oscar (Emmett) Williams (2:50) 

Performer - Alison Knowles , Ingrid Dinter 

M2 Robert Watts String Record Composition (5:45) 

M3 Eric Andersen Untactics Of Music (4:30) 

Brass - Hamonie Des Cascades 

Conductor - Laurent Breton 

Producer - Lucie Brosseau 

M4 Carolee Schneemann Mother Lexicon (6:35) 

Performer - Carolee Schneemann , Larry Miller , Laurence Warshaw , Mark Daniëls 

M5 Jean Dupuy Elle Aimait Bien Les Frites, Marguerite (7:45) 

Performer - Jana Haimsohn , Olga Adofno 

M6 Ben Vautier Telephone Concerto (2:00) 

N1 Ken Friedman Melon Medley (3:00) 

N2 Richard Maxfield Pastoral Symphony (3:40) 

N3 Dick Higgins In Memoriam (8:00) 

N4 Dick Higgins Omnia Gallia (4:50) 

N5 Mieko Shiomi A Celestial Tune By 108 Glass Marbles (5:45) 

N6 Gustav Metzger On The "Festival Of Misfits" (5:45) 

N7 Emmett Williams Meditation No. 1 (8:00) 

Recorded By - Jürgen O. Olbrich 

O Bob Lens Vacuum Cleaners (45:00) 

P Bob Lens Alarm Clocks (45:00)