Primary Information Sale

 

The above image is a small selection of the titles I own from Primary Information, my favorite contemporary publisher of Artists’ Books. For the next 48 hours everything in stock is between 50 and 90% off, with virtually everything available between five and ten dollars. 

With excellent sales like this a few times a year it’s tempting to wait for one, if it weren’t for the fact that many (most?) of their titles sell out quickly, despite relatively high edition sizes. 

https://primaryinformation.org

Black Art Notes

[Tom Lloyd, ed.] 

Black Art Notes

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2021

48 pp., 8.5 x 8.5", softcover

Edition of 2000

Primary Information announced earlier this week that their 2021 facsimile publication Black Art Notes is back in print in a new perfect bound volume. 

 

"Originally published in 1971, the book was conceived as a critical response to the Contemporary Black Artists in America exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art but grew into a “concrete affirmation of Black Art philosophy as interpreted by eight Black artists,” as Lloyd notes in the publication’s introduction.

Published on the 50th anniversary of the original printing, Black Art Notes features writings by Lloyd, Amiri Baraka, Bing Davis, Melvin Dixon, Jeff Donaldson, Ray Elkins, Babatunde Folayemi, and Francis and Val Gray Ward. “If there is one lesson the post–civil rights period has taught us, it is that those most likely to shape the destiny of Black Americans in the next decade are activists and artists, who may possess additional skills as organizers,” writes Ward in “The Black Artist—His Role in the Struggle.”

The artists featured in the publication position the Black Arts Movement outside of white, western frameworks, and articulate the movement as one created by and existing for Black people. Their essays condemn the attempts of museums and other white cultural institutions to tokenize, whitewash, and neutralize Black art, and call for immediate political and institutional reform and the self-determination of Black cultural producers. While the publication was created to respond to a particular historicized moment, the systemic problems that it addresses remain pervasive, making the artists’ potent critiques both timely and urgent.

Tom Lloyd (1929–1996) was an artist and organizer whose electronically programmed light works were chosen for the inaugural exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 1968. In 1971, Lloyd founded the Store Front Museum in New York, a cultural center that hosted exhibitions, concerts, classes, and lectures for the predominantly Black community of Jamaica, Queens, for over a decade. The center acted in tandem with his call for the marriage of social action and aesthetics in Black Art Notes, published the same year."

- press release

David Lamelas Publication

David Lamelas

Publication

London, UK:  Nigel Greenwood Inc. Ltd., 1970

48 pp., 21 x 15 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

Publication features contributions from thirteen international artists and critics who the artist chose due to their relationship to language-based practices: Keith Arnatt, Robert Barry, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Michel Claura, Gilbert and George, John Latham, Lucy Lippard, Martin Maloney, Barbara M. Reise, Lawrence Weiner and Ian Wilson. 

The title collects their responses to three statements provided by Lamelas:

1. Use of oral and written language as an Art Form.

2. Language can be considered as an Art Form.

3. Language cannot be considered as an Art Form.

Copies now sell for between one and two hundred dollars, but Primary Information issued a facsimile reprint in 2016, which is currently available for only five dollars, here. 

Avalanche [1970-1976 Facsimile Edition]

[Willoughby Sharp, Liza Béar, eds]

Avalanche [1970-1976 Facsimile Edition]

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2010

1016 pp., 26.7 x 49.5 x 6.35 cm., boxed

Edition of 1000

Avalanche was a New York City-based arts magazine that published thirteen issues between 1970 and 1976. The periodical was co-founded and co-edited by Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar, with the aim to cover conceptual art, minimal art, land art and performance art, from the perspective of the artist. 

Eschewing art criticism as an editorial principle, the magazine featured interviews with artists - sixty-one in total - all but three of which were conducted by either Béar, Sharp, or both together. 

The editors' attention to detail became legendary. To prepare for their interview with sculptor Barry Le Va, they asked the artist to identify his ten favourite books, and then proceeded to read them all. 

Among the featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, General Idea, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Yvonne Rainer, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Jackie Winsor and many others. 

Revealing its precarious financial situation, the final issue of the magazine featured the company’s own financial ledger on the cover [see below]. It declared bankruptcy shortly afterwards. 

In 2010, New York publisher Primary Information (whose name suggests an affinity with Avalanche’s editorial stance of privileging artists’ writings over arts criticism) produced a boxed reprint of the complete set of 13 issues, housed in a glossy black hardcover archival box. 

"While the stated goal of Avalanche was to empower the artist, its format echoed the cult of celebrity then sweeping American popular culture. Interviews and cover shots were, after all, defining features of Playboy, Rolling Stone, and of course, Andy Warhol's Interview. Looking back, we can also see in the magazine, albeit in nascent form, the contemporary art world's infatuation with the image of the artist as star. Yet Avalanche manifests a different kind of glamour: the unmade-up, unshaven faces, and defiant, brooding expressions and demeanor suggest a collective portrait of the artist as counterculture. Though the figure of the artist was increasingly being cast as a middle-class professional (as witnessed by mainstream representations, such as the fashionable photographs of minimalist artists published in Harper's Bazaar in the mid-196os), Avalanche insisted on an alternative definition of artistic identityan identity that would prove central to the politicization of the art world during this period.3 The magazine emphasized the crossover between the antiestablishment lifestyles and politics of the 196os and 1970S and the radical artistic practices of the period. With its ad hoc feel and relatively modest circulation of around five thousand, Avalanche revealed how the quintessential publicity form of the art magazine might foster a radical counterpublic within the alternative art community centered in SoHo in the early 1970s."

- Gwen Allen

Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair Opens Tonight

 

Dara Birnbaum

Dara Birnbaum died today, at the age of 78. 

Three early obits: 

https://hyperallergic.com/1008907/dara-birnbaum-video-arts-wonder-woman-dies-at-78/

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/dara-birnbaum-video-artist-dead-wonder-woman-1234740430/

https://www.frieze.com/article/dara-birnbaum-video-artist-has-died-aged-78

Walter Robinson, RIP

Painter Walter Robinson has died, at the age of 74. In addition to his own art practice, Robinson cofounded Printed Matter (with Sol LeWitt and Lucy Lippard) in 1976, was part of the Collaborative Projects collective (with Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer and others) and edited Art-Rite Magazine (with Edit DeAk, and Joshua Cohn). He also coined the term Zombie Formalism. 

"The wonderful and wry Walter Robinson, painter, writer, and editor, was one of Printed Matter’s founding members. In the decades since he has shared a long history with us as a friend, collaborator and frequent supporter, and many of his projects have remained hugely important to Printed Matter’s own storyline. We are deeply sad to learn of his recent passing.

Walter was one of the founding editors of Art-Rite, an underground arts magazine that served a new generation of arts writing, presenting a platform for lively criticism and off-beat artists’ projects from a community of downtown artists — an incredible publication and archive that was the focus of our 2023 exhibition From the Margins: The Making of Art-Rite. Through that process Walter brought a wealth of knowledge and insight, and helped to paint a richly rendered history of his experience co-editing the publication, sharing anecdotes and remembrances from the time. He was also an active member of Collaborative Projects Inc (Colab), the dynamic gathering of young artists who organized a series of now legendary shows and other art initiatives in the late 1970s – mid 1980s. In 2016 we had the pleasure of publishing a book that collected the varied work of the group, bookended by two pieces of writing by Walter.

Across his many projects in the arts, Walter brought an insuppressible energy to his work and collaborations that was inventive, generous, and often delivered with incisive humor. His lasting impact has been felt profoundly across New York’s arts culture and beyond. We’ll miss him dearly.”

- Printed Matter press release

Primary Information Sale

Primary Information - one of my all time favourite publishers - is currently hosting a 50% off sale. Their titles are always very reasonably priced (I’d guess almost at cost) so this is a great time to stock up on titles by or about Lee Lozano, Dick Higgins, Mary Ellen Solt, Jimmy DeSana, Mel Chin, Tony Conrad, Martin Wong, Constance DeJong, William Wegman, Michael Asher, Dara Birnbaum, and dozens of others. Their books routinely sell out, so don’t miss out. 

The Flue Volume 1, Number 5

[Franklin Furnace]

The Flue Volume 1, Number 5

New York City, USA: Franklin Furnace, 1981

8 pp., 43 x 29 cm., newspaper

Edition size unknown

Martha Wilson founded Franklin Furnace in 1976, to serve artists working in marginalized media such as publishing and performance, which could be vulnerable to "institutional neglect, cultural bias, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content."

Four years in, the Artist Run Centre began publishing a periodical called The Flue. Conceived by artist and printer Conrad Gleber, The Flue published sixteen issues between 1980 and 1989, which varied in format, including tabloids, posters, and newsletters. 

The publication served as a vehicle for promotion, political advocacy1, and helping to fulfill the mandate  of the organization, with articles on Artists’ Books, Performance Art, and Video works. It featured contributions by Jon Hendricks, Barbara Moore, Clive Philpot, Louise Lawler, Pauline Oliveros, and many others. 

A variety of artists were invited to serve as editors and designers, including Barbara Kruger, Linda Montano, Sherrie Levine, Carla Liss, and Buzz Spector. Richard McGuire served as both for this fifth issue2, which featured Laurie Anderson on the cover, promoting a concert she gave in celebration of Franklin Furnace’s fifth anniversary. 

The issue also features Diana Augaitis’ “Eastern European Bookworks,” "Sound Works 2" by Peter Frank (see last week's post, here) and descriptions of installations and performances by Al Aguilar, Sydney Blum & Janet Henry, Ronny H. Cohen, James Coleman, Toby MacLennan, Sandra McKee, Carol Meine, and Sandy Moore.

Copies of the periodical are now extremely rare. This issue can be bought for $175 US, here, or downloaded as a free PDF from Primary Information, here. As part of their ongoing efforts to make rare, archival material available, the publisher has collaborated with Franklin Furnace to digitize and disturb all sixteen issues. 

1. In her editorial, Martha Wilson notes "As I am writing this, President Reagan is dealing a heavy blow to arts funding for organizations which present avant-garde art. Below you will see my letter to the New York Times and a reply from a citizen who doesn’t realize that less than a dollar a year of tax payer’s money is devoted to the arts in America." 

2. Wilson remained as Editor-in-Chief and McGuire shared editorial duties with Lucy Evanicki. 

Primary Information Sale

For the next 24 hours, all titles at the Primary Information site are discounted by 50%. 

The above collection of three Something Else Press works is available for only five dollars, for example. The new Fluxus newspaper reprint is only ten dollars. 

https://primaryinformation.org/

The Fluxus Newspaper

[Fluxus]

The Fluxus Newspaper

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2024

80 pp., 10.5 x 14”, softcover

Edition size unknown

A review in the Village Voice: 

https://www.villagevoice.com/the-fluxus-newspaper-enlivened-an-exuberant-era-with-absurd-reporting-and-ebullient-layouts/

A physical book which compiles conceptual books by various artists

[Various artists]

A physical book which compiles conceptual books by various artists

Madison, USA: Partial Press, 2022

180 pp., 5.83 x 8.27”, softcover

Edition size unknown

A compendium that collects a series of ‘conceptual’ or ‘unrealized’ books and moves them one step closer to realization by bounding them together and getting them into bookstores. 

Edited and published (as Partial Press) by Carley Gomez and Levi Sherman, the book’s full title is 

A Physical Book Which Compiles Conceptual Books by Various Artists: Possibly Undermining Their Conceptual Commitment to Dematerialization, but Also Sparking Unforeseen Juxtapositions and Insinuating the Works into New Situations.

Featuring over ninety contributors from around the world, the volume presents books that previously only existed as "verbal statements, descriptions, or provocations”. Beyond conceptual works, the book features rhetorical, impossible and implausible books.

The title can be purchased from Fungus Books, in Pittsburgh, a small but well-curated store dedicated to "Rare, new, & used books, records, printed matter.” Fungus was founded by writer Ed Steck, alongside partners Seth Glick (Concept Art Gallery) and Michael Seamans (Mind Cure Records). Seamans stocks a small display of vinyl records in the store, where one might find Sun Ra, Sonic Youth, Brian Eno, Moondog, Jandek, and Terry Riley disks. 

The bookstore carries some of my favourite contemporary publishers of artists’ books: Primary Information, Siglio Press, and New Documents. Our visit was brief, but I spotted several gems, such as 

Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine Plans, a rare Ben Vautier pamphlet, Steve McCaffery’s double volume Seven Pages Missing and Marcel Duchamp’s The Blind Man reprint. Other author/artists in stock included Harry Smith, Susan Howe, Luis Bunuel, Bernadette Mayer, William Burroughs, Yvonne Rainer, James Baldwin, Valie Export, Dieter Roth, Destroy All Monsters, and many others. 

The store is located at 700 & 1/2 South Trenton Avenue, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Visit their site here. 

A physical book which compiles conceptual books by various artists is also available as an ebook, for $2.00, here.  

"When Levi first envisioned the anthology, he pictured conceptual books in the vein of 1960s and ‘70s Conceptual art, and we did receive such books. Like many Fluxus publications, these conceptual books build a frame through which to view everyday experiences in a new light. An Index of Beginnings and Endings by Ellen Bruex makes this explicit: “Instructions: Move through your days with awareness of new beginnings and final endings.” Some instruction pieces lend themselves to execution, relying on chance to produce novel outcomes. Random Color Generated Instant Book by Esther K Smith & Susan Happersett exemplifies this approach with detailed, plainspoken instructions and everyday materials. Other instructions are more poignant as mental exercises. In this category, we would place Who Has Seen the Wind by Cathryn Miller of Byopia Press. One could feasibly print her ninety-nine sonograms of the wind, but it is Miller’s Duchampian declaration that these imagined prints are art, specifically asemic poems, that is so striking. Despite their variety, these works all share Conceptual art’s emphasis on the viewer/reader rather than the artist. They remind us that reading is a creative, constitutive act.”

 - Carley Gomez

Mel Chin and Helen Nagge | Primetime Contemporary Art: Art by the GALA Committee as Seen on Melrose Place

Mel Chin and Helen Nagge

Primetime Contemporary Art: Art by the GALA Committee as Seen on Melrose Place

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2023

40 pp., 8.5 x 11”, softcover

Edition size unknown

When first visiting Los Angeles, the thing that struck me most about the city is how many of the street names were already familiar to me. Rodeo Drive, Wilshire Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard, Fairfax Avenue, and countless others I had heard mentioned in cinema or on television. Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland Drive both have films named after them (by Billy Wilder and David Lynch, respectively). 

And of course Melrose Avenue is known for Melrose Place, itself a spin-off from Beverely Hills 90210. I’ve only seen a single episode of the latter (I recall every scene ending with one of the two male leads storming out of the room indignantly) and I’ve never seen the former, but obviously it’s impact on the culture was not insubstantial. 

Mel Chin told Slate magazine a story about flying from L.A. to Georgia and looking down at the landscape below and being unable to shake the place he had just left.  “I started to think, L.A. is in the air,” he said, "It’s through microwave transmission, through the television that’s on down there. Television is the modern cathode ray etching products into our brains.”

Chin formed a group called the GALA Committee in 1995 and began a two-year, covert, viral, public art project using Melrose Place as his medium. 

Like a heist in reverse, "In the Name of the Place” involved members of the GALA Committee  (“GA” for the University of Georgia and “LA” for the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles) infiltrating the series with artworks they created specifically for it, a kind of ‘anti-product placement’. 

They tracked down Deborah Siegel, the Set Decorator for the series, and proposed to her that GALA would produce artworks for Melrose Place, at no cost. The show agreed. 

The group produced over a hundred pieces across two seasons of the series. These works covertly addressed subjects such as reproductive rights, AIDS, the Gulf War, domestic terrorism, drug and alcohol abuse, and corporate malfeasance. 

In one scene (involving unprotected sex) GALA dressed the character’s room with bedsheets adorned with images of hundreds of unrolled condoms. In another, an Absolute Vodka ad features an image of the Oklahoma city bombing. A bag of Chinese take-out is emblazoned the Chinese characters for  "Human Rights" and "Turmoil"; terms used by the Chinese government to justify the Tiananmen Square massacre.

I’ve read about other instances of covert props, but none to this extant, or with this wide reach. A queer production designer for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 smuggled in some objects that played up the (not so discreet) homoeroticism of the script, including the main character having a "No Chicks Allowed" sign on his bedroom door, and a board game in his closet called Probe. 

The bank robbery scene in Baby Driver was supposed to include Michael Myers masks from the Halloween series, but the studio was unable to obtain the rights. So director Edgar Wright reached out to Toronto comic Mike Myers and asked him to grant permission to use his likeness for the masks. He found the joke funny, and agreed. 

James Franco smuggled himself into a soap opera, ostensibly as some kind of art project. The film star appeared on General Hospital in 2009 and reprised the role in 2011. It later came out that the ‘intervention’ was for a forthcoming documentary, which has yet to see release. 

Similar to the General Idea AIDs “Image Virus” project, Chin characterizes the project as like a virus, symbiotic and invisible. The work was exhibited at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, in Los Angeles, in 1997, as part of "Uncommon Sense”, alongside The Cornerstone Theater, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Ann Carlson & Mary Ellen Strom, Rick Lowe and Karen Finley. 

In an otherwise negative review of the show, Christopher Knight in the LA Times singled out the work as "a conceptually elastic, wonderfully loopy exercise in post-Pop art.” He goes on to say that Chin "scrupulously avoids placing art on a pedestal above TV; he’s not holier-than-thou. It’s great fun to see the art turn up casually and without fanfare on TV, a place notably inhospitable to the genre. It’s also disorienting. The cartoonish unreality of the show suddenly becomes tangible, while the material presence of art assumes emphatically fictional proportions. The oddly refreshing result is a subtle feeling of critical participation in the usually passive act of TV viewing."

Following the exhibition, the props were sold at an auction at Sotheby’s to support several charities. The auction catalogue served double duty as an artists’ book, documenting the works and articulating the framework of the GALA Committee. It quickly become scarce.

Primetime Contemporary Art is a facsimile reproduction released by Primary Information, the Brooklyn publisher rightly heralded for their commitment to making rare and significant publications available and affordable. Following the re-publication of this project, the Wikipedia page for Melrose Place now features a section (after "Nielsen ratings", "Spin-offs”, and “Lawsuit”) about the GALA Committee and their intervention almost thirty years ago. 

Primetime Contemporary Art is available from Primary Information, for $15.00 US, here. 

James Hoff | Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands

James Hoff is a Brooklyn based artist and musician, and the co-founder and director of Primary Information. Today he announced a new project on Instagram: 

"Out today! My new record “Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands,” published by @shelter_press is now available on LP and on all streaming platforms. Many who know me, know I’ve been working on this record for the last several years (and that I began the foundations of it many many years ago at @issueprojectroom).

While many think of my music as overly conceptual, this record was very personal and autobiographical. It was created from snippets of a few pop songs (by Blondie, Madonna, Lou Reed, David Bowie) that got disturbingly stuck in my head in the last few years as well as the tinnitus frequencies I’ve experienced for many decades—both of which have been exacerbated by long-term mental health issues, which were particularly acute in the last few years. While the tracks underscore and illuminate the relationship between the larger social, political, and economic conditions we live in and the sounds we experience between our ears, this album is largely a self portrait that aims to work inside the sonic conditions of our times to create something new that is personal, emotional, and yes, critical. I hope you all enjoy!

Pick it up via bandcamp (link in bio). If in Brooklyn grab it at @recordgrouch and if in Manhattan grab it at @ergotrecords If in Europe, order a copy from @shelter_press or via @boomkatonline Shops should be carrying it everywhere in a 1-2 weeks.

Special thanks to Bartolomé and Felicia at Shelter, @joshbonati for the expert mastering, @marisollimonmartinez for her piano work on “Half-After Life”, and the Jack Whitten Estate (@hauserwirth) for allowing me to use one of my favorite paintings for the cover.

Special thanks to the friends who gave me ears and critical support through the process: @glennligon, @ryandais , @matthew_w_walker__ , @dennysellson , @mashinkahakopian, and Børre Sæthre.

Lastly, thanks to the venues and curators that have given me the space and stage to play this music live over the last few years: @kamran_sadeghi_official, @pioneerworks, @29speedway, @____page_not_found____ , and @publicsfi

More shows coming in the fall. European bookers, get in touch!”

George Brecht | V TRE

George Brecht

V TRE

Metuchen, USA: Self-published, 1963

2 pp., 32.2 x 24.8 cm., single sheet

Edition size unknown

The origin of the Fluxus newspapers (see previous post) can be traced back to publications that George Brecht produced to accompany his infamous Yam Festival. 

Brecht and Robert Watts met weekly for lunch at the Howard Johnson's in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where they conceived of the year-long performance art festival. It was intended to take place in Princeton, but ended up happening at George Segal's farm, on the campus of Rutgers, in New York City, and through the postal service - an early example of mail art. 

The project began in May of 1962 (Yam being May spelled backwards) and included events, Happenings and performances by Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, La Monte Young, Wolf Vostell, Watts and Brecht. These included "Yam Lecture", "Yam Hat Sale", "Water Day", "Clock Day", "Box Day" and "Yam Day". Examples of some of the printed materials that accompanied the festival are below. 

V TRE is the best known of the ephemera surrounding the event, as it became a proto-Fluxus publication, similar to Young and MacLow’s An Anthology. When Maciunas decided to produce a Fluxus newspaper, he appropriated the name, which Brecht had taken from a faulty neon sign in New Jersey. 

The two page broadsheet features announcements and works, interspersed with appropriated newspaper headlines and ad parodies. It features contributions by Ruth Kraus, Claes Oldenburg, Bob Morris, Dieter Roth, Angus Maclise, Jackson MacLow, Robert Morris, and Hans Gappmayr.