Cosey Fanni Tutti | Re-Sisters

Cosey Fanni Tutti

Re-Sisters

London, UK: Faber & Faber Ltd., 2022

372 pp., 

Limited edition of 300 signed and numbered copies

The deluxe edition of Cosey Fanni Tutti’s acclaimed book includes a hardcover copy, an audio cassette, and pewter erotic pilgrim brooch in a red velvet pouched, all housed in a printed clamshell box. The cassette, Music to Read By, is composed and performed by Cosey Fanni Tutti and is housed in a cardboard sleeve. Side A and Side B are both listed with the same title. 

"In 2018, boundary-breaking visual and sonic artist Cosey Fanni Tutti received a commission to write the soundtrack to a film about Delia Derbyshire, the pioneering electronic composer who influenced the likes of Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers. While researching Derbyshire's life, Tutti became immersed in her story and uncovered fascinating parallels with her own life. At the same time, Tutti began reading about Margery Kempe, the fifteenth-century mystic visionary who wrote the first English-language autobiography. The connections between the three women soon shifted into focus.”

- publisher’s statement

Daniel Arsham | Eroded New York Yankees Baseball Cap

Daniel Arsham

Eroded New York Yankees Baseball Cap

Southbank, Australia: National Gallery of Victoria, 2021

13 x 18 x 28 cm

Edition of 500 numbered copies

A cast resin and plaster replica of a NY Yankees baseball visor, produced on the occasion of the National Gallery of Victoria 2020 Triennial, held 19 December 2020 - 18 April 2021. 

The work is produced by Archive Editions and sold with certificate of authenticity from the artist. 

See Arsham’s plaster cast of a camera in an earlier post, here. 

James Lee Byars | TH FI TO IN PH

James Lee Byars

TH FI TO IN PH

Monchengladbach, Germany: Städtisches Museum, 1977

8 x 6.25 x 3"

Edition of 330

A large black tissue with gold printing is crumpled to fit into the (oversized, for the series) cardboard box. The title "TH FI TO IN PH" is an abbreviation of "THe FIrst TOtally INterrogativ Philosophy".

The work was issued to accompany an exhibition at the Städtisches Museum in Mönchengladbach that ran from April 21st to May 22, 1977 (an exhibition invitation, unrelated to the boxed catalogue, is below, bottom). Curator Johannes Cladders’ essay is printed inside the box.

The contents of the exhibition are unclear. Historians are unable to reconstruct precisely what Byars exhibited, given the conflicting documentation from the time. 

Mark Pawson | Mark's little book of Kinder eggs

Mark Pawson

Mark's little book of Kinder eggs

London, UK: Self-published, 1990

32 pp., 8 x 11 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

The artist chronicles the procurement and assembly of eighteen Kinder Surprise toys.

Dave Dyment | My Friend Goo

Dave Dyment

My Friend Goo

Toronto, Canada: Paul + Wendy Projects, 2025

38 pp., 25 x 17 cm. staple bound

Edition of 200 

Today several people wrote to say that they heard Lee Ranaldo mention my Paul+Wendy Projects book My Friend Goo on a couple of recent podcasts. He’s making the rounds promoting a great new LP: a paired down ‘reimagined’ version of the soundtrack for Joris Postema's celebrated 'eco-doc' The System. 

In both interviews Lee is asked about Goo, Sonic Youth’s major label debut. He points out that they signed to Geffen Record in part because they were offered full creative autonomy, but then recounts a story about wanting to use a Raymond Pettibon drawing of Joan Crawford with the word Blowjob and a question mark, and title the record Blowjob. Geffen wrote to say “Ah, we know you have complete creative control, but please don’t do this to us.” 

Ranaldo: "We acquiesced and went with this cover, which is a way better cover and which has spawned a thousand variations. An artist in Canada named Dave Dyment put out a publication last year with about two hundred variations. You know: Luke and Leia, Dre and Eminem, Bernie and, ah, I don’t know who else was in that one, but there’s a million of take-offs. Ren & Stimpy in the car. So it was the right move." 

A few days before the subject comes up on The Broken Record podcast: 

LEE: "As a matter of fact, last year this Canadian artist put out a book - there’s a million spin-offs of the Goo cover: Obama and Hillary, C3PO and R2D2, JayZ and Eminem, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie - there’s hundreds of variations on that cover, they keep coming out all the time. There’s one called Islamic Youth with a woman in a burka, and some artist wrote this long conceptual essay about it and published this zine-like book with two hundred different examples of these spin-offs.” 

Listen to the East Village Radio podcast here, and the Broken Record podcast here. 

The System is released today and can be purchased here. 

My Friend Goo: Memes, Mashups and Remixes can be purchased from the publisher, here. 

George Maciunas | Breath Flux Test

George Maciunas

Breath Flux Test

New York City, USA: Fluxus, [circa late '60s]

9.4 x 7.5 x 2.7 cm

Edition size unknown

A labelled plastic box containing various useless mechanical objects that Maciunas sourced from various Canal Street surplus stores.

Announced in correspondence from Maciunas and in several Fluxus newsletters and price lists dating from 1972 to 1976, the work is thought to date back to the late sixties. The same graphic is used for both rectangle and square boxes (the white square, below, seems to be the same boxes Maciunas used for Yoko Ono's Box of Smile).

Breath Flux Test is one of the rarer Fluxkits - I’ve never seen one for sale - though copies appear in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Harvard Art Museum, The Walker Art Centre, Getty Museum and Museum of Modern Art Collections. 

"A friend of mine who is paid restitution from the German government must go to the Consulate every six months to sign an affidavit that she is still alive. Perhaps the intention of Breath Flux Test is to show that you are still alive."

- Jon Hendricks, Fluxus Codex

Taryn Simon | Contraband

Taryn Simon

Contraband

Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2010

480 pp., 24.5 x 16.5., softcover

Edition size unknown

In 2009, Taryn Simon spent five days living in John F Kennedy International Airport in New York, the airport that processes more international passengers than any other in the United States. Contraband includes photographs taken 24 hours a day of over 1000 items detained or seized from passengers and express mail entering the U.S. from abroad. 

The items include pork, syringes, Botox, Ketamine tranquillizers, Lidocaine, Lorazepam, locust tree seed, ginger root, deer tongues, deer penis, cow urine, cow manure tooth powder, Cohiba cigars, Egyptian cigarettes, counterfeit Disney DVDs, counterfeit Louis Vuitton purses, purses made from endangered species, undeclared jewelry, steroids and an ostrich egg. 

"Compared to her best-known previous project, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2004-07), which presents often moody and atmospheric images of the interiors of little-known or secret sites (including military, medical, energy, zoological) with a full paragraph of explanation, the tone of Contraband is one of studied neutrality. The items are pictured from some distance against a uniform pale background, and the captions are reduced to a category title and grounds for seizure.

[...]

Given their spare presentation, the images in Contraband are neither as theatrical nor as immediately engaging as those of An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, but they too come from a privileged, liminal location where the U.S. defines its tolerances. Thus presented, the rules determining these limits appear to be blunt instruments. Is this invasion of privacy an equitable price to pay for security? Does a distaste arise from knowing that this takes place with our tacit accord?"

- Aoife Rosenmeyer, Art in America