The Form of the Book Book
Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, The Form of the Book Book
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 2/1, 140 x 230 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9562605-1-2
Published by Occasional Papers
out of print
Stadium X — A Place That Never Was
Joanna Warsza, Stadium X — A Place That Never Was
Softcover, 128 pp., offset 4/1, 135 x 195 mm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-83-925107-6-5
Published by Laura Palmer Foundation
$20.00 ·
The Stadium was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-devastated, and was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years. In the early 1990s it fell into ruin, being at the same time ‘revived’ by Vietnamese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russian traders, pioneers of capitalism. Jarmark Europa suddenly became the only multicultural site in the city, a storehouse of biographies and urban legends, as well as a major tourist attraction. The heterotopic logic of the place and its long-standing (non)presence in the middle of Warsaw brought about the series of art projects, and later this reader.
Over the course of time, the 10-th Anniversary Stadium which is now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.
—Daniel Miller, Frieze
Why People Photograph
Robert Adams, Why People Photograph
Softcover, 189 pp., offset 1/1, 5.5 x 8.25 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9780893816032
Published by Aperture
$15.00 ·
Complexity And Contradiction In Architecture
Robert Venturi, Complexity And Contradiction In Architecture
Softcover, 136 pp., offset 1/1, 11 x 8.5 inches
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9780870702822
Published by MoMa
$20.00 ·
Pages 7
Pages 7, In Translation
Softcover, 88 pp., offset 1/1, 200 x 260 mm
English and Farsi
Edition of 2000
ISSN 1583-3165
ISBN 978-90-5973-099-1
Published by Pages
$20.00 ·
God’s amateur: the writing of E.C. Large
Stuart Bailey and Robin Kinross, God’s amateur: the writing of E.C. Large
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 3/1, 170 x 240 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-907259-38-1
Published by Hyphen Press
$20.00 ·
Paul Renner: the art of typography
Christopher Burke, Paul Renner: the art of typography
Softcover, 224 pp., offset 4/1, 170 x 240 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-907259-12-1
Published by Hyphen Press
$35.00 ·
Beginning his career in the thick of the Munich cultural renaissance, Paul Renner worked as a ‘book artist’, applying values he had learnt as a painter to this everyday item of multiple production. An early and prominent member of the Deutscher Werkbund, he was committed to the values of quality in design, always tempered by a certain sobriety of attitude and style. In the 1920s Renner engaged with the radical modernism of that time, briefly in Frankfurt, and then in a more extended phase at the printing school at Munich. Under Renner’s leadership, and with teachers such as Georg Trump and Jan Tschichold, the school produced work of quiet significance. In those years Renner undertook the design of the now ubiquitous typeface Futura. Christopher Burke’s analysis of the design process reveals the characteristic Renner approach: he took up with current tendencies, but through an extended process of finely judged development, helped to deliver a product that has long-lasting quality. In the Nazi seizure of power of 1933, Renner was dismissed from his teaching post — in days recounted here in dramatic detail — and entered a state of ‘inner emigration’. Burke’s account of the Nazi years shows Renner negotiating events with dignity. After 1945, Renner lived in retirement, but entered public discussion of design issues as a voice of experience and sanity.
Paul Renner is a work of discovery. As part of its fresh narrative and analysis, it includes much new illustrative material and the first full bibliography of Renner’s writings.
Modern typography: an essay in critical history
Robin Kinross, Modern typography: an essay in critical history
Softcover, 272 pp., offset 4/2, 125 x 210 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-907259-18-3
Published by Hyphen Press
$27.00 · out of stock
This history of typography starts with the early years of the Enlightenment in Europe, around 1700. It was then that typography began to be distinct from printing. Instructional manuals were published, a record of the history of printing began to be constructed, and the direction of the printing processes was taken up by a new figure: the typographer. This starting point gives the discussion a special focus, missing from existing printing and design history. Modern typography is seen as more than just a modernism of style. Rather it is the attempt to work in the spirit of rationality, for clear and open communication. This idea is argued out in the introductory chapter.
The chapters that follow trace the history of typography up to the present moment. Different cultures and countries become the focus for the discussion, as they become significant. In the nineteenth century, Britain provides the main context for modern typography. In the twentieth century, the USA and certain continental European countries are prominent. Kinross provides concise accounts of modernist typography in Central Europe between the wars and in Switzerland in the 1950s and 1960s. Traditionalist typography in the USA, Britain, Germany and the Low Countries is also discussed sympathetically. A concluding chapter considers ‘modern typography’ in the light of the social, political and technical changes of the recent period.
The Occasion of Fracture
Keith Bormuth, The Occasion of Fracture
Softcover, 28 pp., offset 1/1, 160 x 240 mm
Edition of 500
Published by Keith Bormuth
$10.00 ·
Having Been Said: Writings & Interviews Of Lawrence Weiner 1968-2003
Lawrence Weiner, Having Been Said: Writings & Interviews Of Lawrence Weiner 1968-2003
Softcover, 488 pp., offset 1/1, 170 x 240 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9783775791946
Published by Hatje Cantz
out of print
The Coming Insurrection
The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection
Softcover, 136 pp., offset 1/1, 4.5 x 7 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-58435-080-4
Published by Semiotext(e)
$13.00 ·
—from The Coming Insurrection
The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord — and with comparable elegance — it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors). One of its members more adequately described the group as “the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality.” The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine to “spread anarchy and live communism.”
Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.”
Hot-wired to the movement of ‘77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized forms-of-life. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those — in France, in the United States, and elsewhere — who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.
Reviews
“…without a doubt the most thought-provoking radical text to be published in the past ten years. It deserves to be read and discussed.”
—Daniel Miller, New Statesman
“Any book indirectly responsible for massive raids involving helicopters and anti-terrorist police, a splenetic Fox News broadcast and an impromptu book-reading at a Barnes & Noble bookshop in New York (also attended by the police) must have something going for it. And so it is with The Coming Insurrection, the kind of political pamphlet last fashionable in the 17th century (and perhaps for a period in the 1960s and ‘70s).”
—Nina Power, Frieze Magazine
“I am not calling for a ban on this book. It’s important that you read this book. [...] And let me tell you something: Don’t dismiss these people. Don’t dismiss them.”
—Glenn Beck, Fox News/Glenn Beck Program
The Conversation Series 15
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Enzo Mari, The Conversation Series 15
Softcover, 88 pp., offset 4/1, 135 x 210 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9783865604019
Published by Walther König
$25.00 ·
Enzo Mari was born in 1932 in Novara, Italy. He has most recently completed a series of tubular aluminum chairs for Vienna’s Gebrüder Thonet and a collection for the Japanese home store Muji.
Celebration at Persepolis
Michael Stevenson, Celebration at Persepolis
Hardcover, 64 pp., offset 4/1, 125 x 160 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 978-3-905829-48-8
Published by JRP|Ringier/Arnolfini
$19.00 ·
Stevenson revisits the site of an infamous week-long party held in 1971 by the Shah of Iran among the ruins of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis. Reconstructing part of the temporary architecture built for the celebrations (itself now a ruin), Stevenson looks at this pivotal moment in Iranian history which led toward the subsequent cultural revolution.
This publication is part of the series of artists projects edited by Christoph Keller. Personally selected by Keller, for Textfield, as one of his top five from the series.