Distributed in North America by Distributed Art Publishers

Municipal de Fútbol is a collaborative edition about amateur soccer in Los Angeles—the everyday experience of playing in pick-up games, weekend and night park leagues. Jennifer Doyle, a contributor to frieze and author of Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire, has contributed two essays to the books, both with Spanish translation. Housed in an embossed green clothbound box with black ribbon pulls, the edition includes two clothbound books (one of which studies the game as it is played throughout Los Angeles, on hijacked baseball fields, back lots and public squares, and the other of which focuses on one field in particular, the ultra-scrappy and always animated Lafayette Park); one poster; artist lithographs by As-Found, Roderick Buchanan, Mari Eastman, General Idea, Jakob Kolding, Jonathan Monk, Arthur Ou, Peter Piller and Michael Wells; and a European National team adidas fútbol jersey with a “Municipal de Fútbol/Los Angeles Recreation and Parks” embroidered patch and a reflective silk-screened number. The edition is designed by Jonathan Maghen and photography is by Michael Wells.

“Fútbol bubbles up from the ground. It rains down on parks and leaks through walls. It rises like an irrepressible tide, and recedes only when everybody has to go earn some money for themselves and their families. Nobody playing here thinks it’s going to make them rich. Or famoso. It is what happens instead of work.” — Jennifer Doyle

Print Review of small-circulation publications, distributed by Textfield, Inc., on 1.618, a blog on interesting objects in the field of design and contemporary art by Журнал Esquire Art Director, Maxim Nikanorov. Project curated by Textfield, Inc.

Publications: Ort (Bücher & Hefte); I Still See Communism Everywhere (Slavs and Tatars); Temporary Storages (The Book Society); A Book About Some People And Time (Myung Feyen); Four Over One (LACMA); Footnote to a Project* (Abraaj Capital Art Prize)

Collaboration with Charlie White and design of poster/take away for the exhibition Spilling Hot Gossip a selection from The Girl Studies at Oslo Kunstforening.

“Portraiture has always been motivated by two competing and overlapping desires: the desire to record, and the desire to be recorded. Artists Katy Grannan and Charlie White have examined this tension, exploring concepts of identity and subjectivity in a world increasingly dominated by media representations of the ideal self. The Sun and Other Stars presents two bodies of work that map the fragility and resilience of individuality in contemporary Western culture.

Grannan’s unflinching portraits capture adult subjects along the sun-struck boulevards of the American West, transforming them from obscurity to individuality with pathos and candor. White’s series of blonde teenage girls frames the popular and tyrannical appetite for celebrity with a deadpan lack of sentimentality. These two photographic series, accompanied by Grannan’s first film project and White’s new animation and personal collections of mass-culture ephemera, provide a visual vocabulary for an examination of the human subject and the encumbering effect of desire and aspiration.”

— Britt Salvesen, The Sun and Other Stars: Katy Grannan and Charlie White

The poster/print, No More Reality (the poster), was produced for the temporary bookshop and exhibition No More Reality, July 21 — August 25, 2011, which featured the works of Phil Chang, Arthur Ou, Eduardo Sarabia, and Anna Sew Hoy.

The bookshop and exhibition (and poster) title have been appropriated from the Philippe Parreno work, No More Reality (the demonstration), 1991, which is a four-minute video of children demonstrating, and chanting the slogan and title (“No More Reality”). The poster, illustrated by Darius Maghen, is based on a sign held by one of the children in the original Parreno work.

Creatures of Comfort New York is pleased to present No More Reality, a temporary bookshop and exhibition organized by Textfield, Inc. The bookshop and exhibition will take place in Creatures of Comfort’s adjacent project space at 205 Mulberry St.

In conjunction with the bookshop, which will feature current and archived titles from Textfield Distribution, there will be an exhibition of work by artists that Jonathan Maghen has collaborated with through Textfield to realize various publishing projects. The exhibition will feature the works of Phil Chang, Arthur Ou, Eduardo Sarabia, and Anna Sew Hoy.

The bookshop and exhibition title have been appropriated from the Philippe Parreno work, No More Reality (the demonstration), 1991, which is a four-minute video of children demonstrating, and chanting the slogan and title (“No More Reality”).

New York Times Tmagazine.

IFS, Ltd. Futures Newsletter is, in non-equal parts: a corporate bulletin, a speculative trading instrument, an experiment in memetic and symbiotic publishing, an internal-external analysis of company performance (B. Critton, H. Gassel, B. Griffiths, Z. Klauck, M. Nguyen), a proposal for an allegorical Escape Act (S. Dockray), a bid for a series of six activities (D. Horvitz), an abridged catalogue of semi-fictional gemstones (L. Francescone), a profile of independent art book distributor (Textfield, Inc.), and a self-reflexive / -reflective cartoon caption contest (R. Rozendaal).

Investment Futures Strategy, Ltd. (United States) in partnership with GRAPHIC magazine (Korea) is pleased to introduce Futures, a semi-official newsletter published as a stand-alone supplement to GRAPHIC #17 (”When Design Becomes Attitude”). In lieu of a traditional contribution, IFS, Ltd. has chosen to use the GRAPHIC platform to continue its experiments in trade and publishing.

The Book Trust Prospectus examined new possibilities for funding, trade value, and distribution by attaching a different kind of significance to the object, thus short-circuiting the expected monetary transaction. Production of the Prospectus, however, relied on labor-intensive methods that required hours of input for a relatively small output. With the Futures newsletter, IFS, Ltd. has hybridized the positive aspects of large-scale corporate publishing — economies of scale or large print-runs, distribution of labor, and maximum efficiency — with the dictatorial authorship afforded by self-publishing. This new model maximizes potential as authors and designers while minimizing the opportunity cost of production and distribution.

Within the logic of IFS, Ltd. Futures will also act as a form of currency: readers can use their copy of the newsletter to trade for a copy of the Book Trust Prospectus. These recirculated copies of Futures will then be re-made available as a way to generate revenue for a future, freely distributed, as-yet-undefined project thus continuing the self-sustaining eco-system of publishing and distribution, one in which readers and producers collaborate to generate and circulate content outside of the cost-prohibitive channels of traditional publishing.

Investment Futures Strategy, Ltd. (United States) in partnership with GRAPHIC magazine (Korea) is pleased to introduce Futures, a semi-official newsletter published as a stand-alone supplement to GRAPHIC #17 (”When Design Becomes Attitude”). In lieu of a traditional contribution, IFS, Ltd. has chosen to use the GRAPHIC platform to continue its experiments in trade and publishing.

The Book Trust Prospectus examined new possibilities for funding, trade value, and distribution by attaching a different kind of significance to the object, thus short-circuiting the expected monetary transaction. Production of the Prospectus, however, relied on labor-intensive methods that required hours of input for a relatively small output. With the Futures newsletter, IFS, Ltd. has hybridized the positive aspects of large-scale corporate publishing — economies of scale or large print-runs, distribution of labor, and maximum efficiency — with the dictatorial authorship afforded by self-publishing. This new model maximizes potential as authors and designers while minimizing the opportunity cost of production and distribution.

Within the logic of IFS, Ltd. Futures will also act as a form of currency: readers can use their copy of the newsletter to trade for a copy of the Book Trust Prospectus (see: the Prospectus, left). These recirculated copies of Futures will then be re-made available as a way to generate revenue for a future, freely distributed, as-yet-undefined project thus continuing the self-sustaining eco-system of publishing and distribution, one in which readers and producers collaborate to generate and circulate content outside of the cost-prohibitive channels of traditional publishing.

The IFS, Ltd. Futures Newsletter is, in non-equal parts: a corporate bulletin, a speculative trading instrument, an experiment in memetic and symbiotic publishing, an internal-external analysis of company performance (B. Critton, H. Gassel, B. Griffiths, Z. Klauck, M. Nguyen), a proposal for an allegorical Escape Act (S. Dockray), a bid for a series of six activities (D. Horvitz), an abridged catalogue of semi-fictional gemstones (L. Francescone), a profile of independent art book distributor (Textfield, Inc.), and a self-reflexive / -reflective cartoon caption contest (R. Rozendaal).

Collaboration with Richard Lidinsky and design of poster/edition for the exhibition PALS.

Pals (full title: Pals for Life / Life for Pals) is a teleplay about the dialectics of friendships under the strain of artistic endeavor. Shot principally in January 2011 at the Actual Size gallery in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, the approx. 34-minute video — told from the point of view of a traditional studio audience television program — revels in the angst and emotion of 4 friends/lovers who must install their respective art works in the presence of frenemies large and small. Each Pal is named after a specific human being, though the story implies that these pals are simple archetypes from a vast universe of narcissistic micro-movements.

*PALS (Coming Soon) print/poster ships unframed; trim size is an exact fit for this frame.

Totaalvoetbal is a tactical system in football in which any outfield player can take over the role of any other player on a team. It was developed by Rinus Michels, a Dutch football coach (of both Ajax and the Netherlands national team), in the late 60s and early 70s.

The tactical success of Totaalvoetbal depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team, in particular the ability to quickly change positions depending on the on-field situation. The strategy requires players to be comfortable playing multiple positions; hence, placing high technical and physical demands on them. Totaalvoetbal was widely and successfully adopted by both club and national teams in winning tournaments (including the World Cup), though it ultimately (and ironically) failed to deliver a World Cup title to the Dutch national football team. Also see Catenaccio.

Catenaccio is a tactical system in football with an emphasis on defense. In Italian, catenaccio means “lock”, emphasizing a highly organized and effective defense which is intended to prevent goals. The key innovation of Catenaccio was the introduction of the role of a libero, or sweeper, a player positioned behind the line of defenders. The sweeper’s role is to recover loose balls, nullify the opponent’s striker and double-mark when necessary.

Catenaccio has been criticised for reducing the quality of football games as a spectacle; it became synonymous with “negative football” as it is focused primarily on defending. In the last thirty years Catenaccio has been largely abandoned for other, more balanced tactical approaches; Totaalvoetbal (Total Football), a tactical system created by Rinus Michels in the 1970s, eventually rendered Helenio Herrera’s version of Catenaccio obsolete.