Angie Keefer

‘Second Thoughts’, co-published by Kunstverein, Amsterdam, and Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, follows Kunstverein’s earlier publication, Paper Exhibition: Selected Writings by Raimundas Malašauskas, as the second in a series featuring the work of an author whose writing has never before been collected in a dedicated, single object. This collection of essays spans multiple research disciplines, including Angie Keefer’s own biography, and runs parallel to her artistic practice. All of the texts were commissioned and published previously, but many have been rewritten for this book. Keefer deftly brings together technological enquiry with artistic production and quotidian human experience.

I half hold that my life is a fine ride as long as I don’t attempt to navigate. The least critical way to describe this outlook is “bemused fatalism,” and as coping mechanisms go, there’s much to be said for keeping that faith, but so far it hasn’t proved compatible with ambitious ideas like writing a book, though this may turn out to be the first page of a first chapter, in which case I’ve changed my life and overruled fate with you as my witness.
—Angie Keefer

Edited by Maxine Kopsa and Yana Foqué (Managing Editor)
Designed by Scott Ponik

An artist's book presenting a photographic study of onions.

On Onions is a photographic study of onions by artist Elad Lassry (born 1977). Characteristically highlighting the spectrum of hues and shapes for the vegetable, Lassry's selected taxonomy includes sections on red, yellow and white onions, each of which possesses its own distinct taste and benefits. On Onions is Lassry's first artist's book, and the work will exist only in book form; it is at once wry, refreshing and disorienting in its biology workbook style, which makes fruitful use of "the confusion that results when there is something just slightly wrong in a photograph" (as the artist has described his practice in general).

Composed by the artist and arranged by Stuart Bailey, the book includes an essay written by Angie Keefer about the effects of sliced onions on human tear ducts.

“The ritual of the job interview can be considered as a courtship that’s conditioned by protocols that ask for a quite particular display: with social relations as material, a dance of conformity, the attempted imagining and echoing of expectations.”

This anthology of commissioned writing includes contributions by Nadim Abbas, Howie Chen, Heman Chong, Matthew Dickman, Jason Dodge, Angie Keefer, Holly Pester, Natasha Soobramanien, Marina Vishmidt, and Jonas Žakaitis.

Edited and illustrated by Chris Evans, and co-published with Para Site, Hong Kong.