All Incomplete

Poetry as both a form and genre has many possibilities to exist within; however, poetry too often is burdened by the imperative to have an argument and a set of imagery and meanings that are preconceived and placed within the poem. In this way, poetry gets conflated with writing a thesis or project, and the poet simply the presenter of perfectly argued language. When poets attempt to bridge the gap between genres and write within the contemporary essay form, they are tasked to construct perfect arguments there as well and avoid the associative and aesthetic logic that makes poems important. The term essay itself was coined by Michel de Montaigne in the 1500s — it comes from the French word essai, which means to test or experiment with what one knows as a learning tool, and is in partial opposition to the terms we use to discuss the essay now

ESSAYS calls on thinkers and writers to move beyond this linear thinking into the realm of what an essay by someone like Montaigne might do. His essays do as they say they will—they test out ideas, they are unafraid to get messy in their execution, they are brave enough to go forward into the uncharted waters. In them, it’s completely beside the point to get back to where they started, let alone where they’d say they would go. They are simply beside the point. It’s true.

ESSAYS, edited by Dorothea Lasky, is a book of essays on the essay, which enact and query these directives. The volume collects essays by poets Ariel Goldberg, Ken Chen, Wayne Koestenbaum, Tracie Morris, Anaïs Duplan, Raquel Salas Rivera, Brandon Shimoda, Cecilia Vicuña, Fred Moten, and Mónica de la Torre.

distinguish the limit from the edge is an intergenerational dialogue between Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Jimmy Robert. Their connection emerges through the intersection of text and image between selected work from Cha’s oeuvre and Robert’s practice that share the formal strategies of the fold.

Robert’s work utilizes paper as a sculptural material, and his hand sometimes appears to shape the page. For Cha, the fold is present in her compositions enmeshing language through strategies of visual poetry, as in L’Image Concrete feuille L’Objet Abstrait (1976),  and Untitled (après tu parti) (1976) which are both previously unpublished. The possibility of overlaying one’s work with the other, emphasised by the book’s spiral-bound double spine, and reverse fold-outs, forges an intimacy, a shared sensibility, and an encounter with the corporeal. In conversation with editor Jacob Korczynski, Robert refers to Fred Moten’s In The Break, stating, ‘Suddenly time falters. Words don’t go there. And if words don’t go there, then what does?’ 

distinguish the limit from the edge is commissioned by Book Works, edited by Jacob Korczynski and designed by Wolfe Hall. The book is published in association with Participant Inc. with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Arts Management Services, after the exhibition:

flipping through pages keeping a record of time: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha & Jimmy Robert curated by Jacob Korczynski at Participant Inc., 6 September – 3 November, 2024, supported by a Fall 2020 Curatorial Research Fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

This most substantive monograph yet published on the work of German-born, New York–based multimedia artist Andrea Geyer focuses on her recent explorations of the marginalized yet pivotal role that women have played in the formulation of American modernism, tracing and honoring the ephemeral acts, initiatives, and stories that shaped it. Featuring full-color images of Geyer’s artworks and research materials, including documents, found photographs, and previously unpublished photographs by the artist, Dance in a Future with All Present offers insight into Geyer’s art and the multiple histories of modernism.

Includes texts by Matthew Jeffrey Abrams, Andrianna Campbell, Juli Carson, Barbara Clausen, Lynne Cooke, Dean Daderko, Saisha Grayson, Sharon Hayes, Megan Heuer, Danielle A. Jackson, Alhena Katsof, Kristan Kennedy, Thomas J. Lax, Ralph Lemon, André Lepecki, Renate Lorenz, Josiah McElheny, Fred Moten, Kristin Poor, Yvonne Rainer, Gabriela Rangel, Jeannine Tang, and Soyoung Yoon.

Copublished with Portland Institute of Contemporary Art in 2019.
Edited by Alhena Katsof, Karen Kelly, and Barbara Schroeder. 
Design by Dante Carlos.

A political and aesthetic critique of racial capitalism and modes of social experimentation in the form of resistance to the colonial commons.

Stefano Harney (born 1962) is Honorary Professor at The Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia and a Visiting Critic at Yale School of Art. He has held teaching positions in New York, Leicester, London, and Singapore. He now teaches at the Dutch Art Institute. An interdisciplinary scholar, his research spans (the intersections of) social sciences, arts and humanities, as well as the fields of business and management.

Preface by Jack Halberstam.
Collective translation (original title: The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, Minor Compositions, 2013).

Graphic design: Sophie Demay & Maël Fournier-Comte (In the Shade of a Tree).
 
published in February 2022
 
French edition
12,5 x 19,5 cm (softcover)
208 pages

Pivot is an experimental, book-length poem exploring the profound act of "turning", with the Haitian Revolution as its cornerstone.

Pivot moves beyond historical narrative, scrutinizing this epochal event through its pivotal moments—critical junctures of rupture and radical reorientation. Mason Jordan masterfully employs repetition, metaphor, and other minimalist abstractions of language to delve into the visceral and conceptual mechanics of turning: a turning away from colonial subjugation, a turning towards new vocabularies of freedom, and the cyclical turning of memory. Through linguistic architectures and etymology, akin to the likes of Fred Moten, N. H. Pritchard, and M. NourbeSe Philip, Pivot examines international revolt, revolutionary fervor, and the development of Black Marxism(s) through a critical reflection on Haitian revolutionary history.

Ethical Portraits investigates the representation of the incarcerated in the U.S. criminal justice system. Through interviews, creative non-fiction, and cultural theory, Hatty Nestor deconstructs a range of different prison portraiture.

Prisons systematically dehumanise the imprisoned. Visualised through mugshots and surveillance recordings, the incarcerated lose control of their own image and identity. The criminal justice system in the United States does not only carry out so-called justice in ways that compound inequality, it also minimises the possibility for empathetic encounters with those who are most marginalised. It is therefore urgent to understand how prisoners are portrayed by the carceral state and how this might be countered or recuperated. How can understanding the visual representation of prisoners help us confront the invisible forms of power in the American prison system? Ethical Portraits investigates the representation of the incarcerated in the United States criminal justice system, and the state's failure to represent those incarcerated humanely.

Through wide-ranging interviews and creative nonfiction, Hatty Nestor deconstructs the different roles of prison portraiture, such as in courtroom sketches, DNA profiling, and the incarceration of Chelsea Manning. Includes a foreword by Jackie Wang.

Hatty Nestor is a cultural critic and writer, published in Frieze, The Times Literary Supplement, The White Review and many other publications. She is currently completing a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London.

No Place Press is collaborating with Jalal Toufic on an ambitious publishing project: The Collected Writings (1991–2024) of a Mortal to Death: Jalal Toufic. Spanning three volumes of more than six hundred pages each, the series gathers re-edited versions of his earlier works alongside two newly written books, arranged and organized by the author himself. For new readers, the volumes provide an introduction to Toufic’s central concepts—including the withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing disaster, radical closure, silence-over, the 180-degree over-turn, and the dancer’s two bodies—while for longtime readers they offer a comprehensive view of more than three decades of thought, presented in their most rigorous and fully articulated form. Yet, in keeping with Toufic’s practice—which participates in untimely collaboration (including with future filmmakers, thinkers, and artists) and abides in the suspension of the avenir of messianism/Mahdism—some of these works remain forthcoming even after their inclusion in the Collected Writings.

Volume 1 (2025) includes newly revised editions of Toufic’s first three books—Distracted (1991/2003); (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993/2003); and Over-Sensitivity (1996/2009)—together with the script Jouissance in Postwar Beirut (2014) and, new, The Unreviewed Writings of a Peerless Thinker (2024).

In this edited collection of work spanning more than 20 years, Silvia Federici provides a detailed history and critique of the politics of the commons from a feminist perspective. In her clear and combative voice, Federici provides readers with an analysis of some of the key issues in contemporary thinking on this subject. Drawing on rich historical research, she maps the connections between the previous forms of enclosure that occurred with the birth of capitalism and the destruction of the commons and the "new enclosures" at the heart of the present phase of global capitalist accumulation.

Considering the commons from a feminist perspective, this collection argues that women and reproductive work are crucial to both our economic survival and the construction of a world free from the capitalist hierarchies. Federici is clear that the commons should not be understood as happy islands in a sea of exploitative relations—but rather autonomous spaces from which to challenge the existing organization of life and labor.