Textfield, Inc. » Mike Mills

Mono.Kultur 16

Textfield — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:55:40 +0000

Mono.Kultur 16, Miranda July
Softcover, 16 pp. + poster, offset 4/1, 140 x 200 mm
Edition of 5000
ISSN 1861-7085
Published by Mono.Kultur

out of print

July does not have any art school or professional training — but nor is she wholly self-taught, having learned from and alongside an improvised network of artists, musicians, and writers she has worked with over the last fifteen years. After dropping out of college, July moved to Portland, where she lived for the next decade. She began performing spoken-word pieces at rock clubs; gradually, she transitioned into alternative art spaces, telling ever more complex stories that integrated audience participation and visuals ranging from slide shows to digital video.

During this time, she also founded Joanie 4 Jackie (formerly Big Miss Moviola). Joanie 4 Jackie was a non-commercial distribution system for women video-makers in the pre-YouTube mid-1990s. Any woman could submit a video short and July would put it onto a compilation tape with nine other videos; she then re-circulated these new ‘chain letter’ tapes so each video-maker could see what others were making. Joanie 4 Jackie was an explicitly feminist project, stemming from the anti-consumerist ethos of third wave feminism. Feminist concerns are also evident in July’s early short video works, which explored mother/daughter dynamics, voyeurism, and female spectatorship. In her videos The Amateurist and Nest of Tens, her characters hunt for or establish patterns, imposing their own personal systems of control onto the bewildering world around them. She extended these themes of unexpected longing and loss in Me and You, her short stories, and her recent performances.

032c 17

Textfield — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:27:28 +0000

032c 17, Mike Mills
Softcover, 256 pp. + Slavs and Tatars booklet, offset 4/1, 20 x 27 cm
Edition of 2000
Published by 032c

$20.00 ·

“All we ever wanted was everything,” MIKE MILLS reveals ways of getting through the recession/depression in a 40-page cover special; Ronnie Cooke Newhouse narrates a day in the life of her best friend PHARRELL WILLIAMS; publisher GERHARD STEIDL races jet lag across the Atlantic from Karl Lagerfeld’s haute couture show in Paris to Robert Frank’s Canadian solitude; distinguished historian ERIC HOBSBAWM discusses his views on the future of globalization with Hans Ulrich Obrist; SLAVS & TATARS revisits the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Tehran with the first installment of its project 79/89/09 for 032c; AGYNESS DEYN nude story by Alasdair McLellan; gallerist MAUREEN PALEY bares her perseverance: “It’s something where you’ve been given a path that you must follow, where you don’t know what else you would do. Once you see this, many things appear that indicate the way forward for you.”

Here and There 7

Textfield — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:28:16 +0000

Nakako Hayashi, Here and There 7
Softcover, 64 pp., offset 1/1, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 1000
Published by Nieves

$20.00 ·

Here and There Vol.7 is dedicated to the cities of Paris and Tokyo, looking at them through the eyes of its wide contributors’ family spread around the world. We are taken into a whirlwind of overlapping stories and emotions, through the words and images of Takashi Homma, Elein Fleiss, Susan Cianciolo, Julian Gatto, Kim Gordon, Mike Mills, Benjamin Sommerhalder and most importantly Nakako Hayashi, the mind behind it all.

Here and There 1

Textfield — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:07:48 +0000

Nakako Hayashi, Here and There 1
Softcover, 48 pp., offset 4/1, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 1000
Published by Nieves

out of print

Elein Fleiss, Purple Journal’s editor-in-chief, speaks of Nakako Hayashi and her magazine Here and There: When I met Nakako Hayashi, she was still working for Hanatsubaki magazine. Then, in 2001 she decided to go on her own and started Here and There in the spring of 2002. The first issue came out in March of that year, and the moment I first saw it remains in my memory as an important event in the world of independent magazines.

Here and There is the magazine of one person. The fact that Nakako’s name is credited as the author on the cover is not an egocentric statement but reveals the spirit in which she makes it. Some people make films, others write books or make artworks, and Nakako makes a magazine. It is her personal work and in that sense she makes it in her own way, unlike most magazines on the planet. It also means she is free from capitalistic rules, from imposed trends, from the industry of fashion. Instead, she is free to follow her desire and to link the magazine with her personal life.

Fireworks

Textfield — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:12:24 +0000

Mike Mills, Fireworks
Softcover, 32 pp., offset 4/4, 19.5 x 25.5 cm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-3-905714-34-0
Published by Nieves

out of print

“Some things that may or may not relate to these drawings: A professional suggested I take anti-depressants. I declined. About the same time I started drawing fireworks. I didn’t know what they meant or why I was drawing them. I was confused and embarrassed by this lack of meaning, but they kept coming. I could draw them no matter how I felt. I read that fireworks were first used in China in the 12th century to scare away negative spirits. I envied a world that not only recognized spirits, but scared the negative ones away with small man made explosions. About the same time, I read in a magazine that antidepressants have a hard time performing better than the placebo pills they are tested against. Scientist cannot explain it, but almost as many people who take the fake pills say they feel relief from their depression. The blood flow in their brains actually changes in the same positive way that it does for the people who take the real pills. I felt a connection between the Chinese fireworks and the placebo effect, and some relief in all the things we don’t understand. At some point the fireworks grew more and more abstract, and messy, and complicated, and I became if not content then at least willing to make things that didn’t have any apparent meaning.”

—Mike Mills

Humans

Textfield — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:51:18 +0000

Mike Mills, Humans
Softcover, 32 pp., offset 4/1, 16 x 22.5 cm
Edition of 1000
Published by Nieves

out of print

Humans Manifesto.
No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Sometimes being dumb is the only smart alternative.
Shy people are secretly egoists. Nothing is real.
Everything you see is a dream you project onto the
world. Children live out their parents unconscious.
The only animals that suffer from anxiety are the
ones that associate with humans. I don’t trust
people who are very articulate. The only way to be
sane is to embrace your insanity. When you feel
guilty about being sad, remember Walt Disney
was a manic depressive. Everything I said
could be totally wrong.