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Cover of Artists & Agents. Performance Art and Secret Services

Spector Books

Artists & Agents. Performance Art and Secret Services

Sylvia Sasse ed., Kata Krasznahorkai ed.

€38.00

Subversion does not belong to anyone. It can come from artists who outwit the state or from intelligence agencies who infiltrate the art scene on behalf of the state. But what happens when the two sides meet? After the old state security archives in many Eastern European countries were opened, it became possible for this interaction to be studied in detail.

Drawing on scientific essays and artistic contributions, the book shows how the secret police monitored happenings, performance art, and action art and looks at the debates they had about the new art form; it also demonstrates not only how the police documented artistic actions in detail using forensic techniques but also how they manipulated them and sought to thwart them with counter-actions. In addition to this, the book also reveals how artists dealt with the possibility that they were being observed by the secret police and how they now work with the material stored in the archives maintained by the intelligence services.

Published in 2023 ┊ 685 pages ┊ Language: English

recommendations

Cover of ROT

a.pass

ROT

Sara Manente

ROT is a publication reflecting the research “Wicked technology/Wild fermentation,” by Sara Manente that focuses on forms and practice of fermentation as ways to rethink bodies and their making. This glossy magazine performs research, aiming to infect the reader, and questioning how to spread, publish, and help the work survive. 

Sara Manente is a performance artist, dance maker and researcher born in Italy and living in Brussels. She is interested in narrowing the distance between the performer, the audience, and the work. Her research starts from a dance practice that problematizes perception, translation, and ways of doing. Her work comes out in hybrid forms: book launch, 3Dfilm, written text, interview, choreographic piece, workshop, telepathic experience, collaboration, et al.

Cover of The Soft Layer

Varamo Press

The Soft Layer

Jozef Wouters

Performance €10.00

A performance text by Jozef Wouters, The Soft Layer traces and proposes visions and words that enfold the historic building of Dar Bairam Turki in Tunis like a cloak. How can we imagine possible futures for such a place and the community inhabiting it, beyond nostalgia and the spectres of the past? Several voices muse in three languages (Tunisian, French and English) on renovation and history, destruction and cleansing, the limits of science-fiction and the soothing quality of aloe vera.

Published by Varamo Press in the essay series Gestures
First edition May 2022
48 pages, 11.0 x 16.5 cm, sewn perfect binding
ISBN 978-82-691492-4-1

Cover of Writing Wounds to Heal

Self-Published

Writing Wounds to Heal

Pontus Pettersson

Performance €12.00
Writing Wounds to Heal (2015) is a project that uses clothes and photography to express poetry in between the field of clothes, choreography, photography, performance and documentation led by Pontus Pettersson.
Cover of Knee Balance

Self-Published

Knee Balance

Matty Davis

Performance €35.00

KNEE BALANCE (2021) is a performance that uses choreography, writing, photography, and design to traverse particular anatomical, personal, and sociopolitical arcs. Time oscillates and fractures movement. Space unfolds. Situated before a hearth in the throes of balance, the performer becomes a crucible for memory, durability, and the reciprocal relationship between the present and the unforeseen.

Comes nested inside ad hoc polyvinyl sleeve with text by Matty Davis printed on front

This work marks the first in a series of performances by Matty Davis arranged for print by Matt Wolff. Distinct in content and form, each work weaves psychosomatic realities with the spatial and temporal possibilities of print.

Vital contributions have been made to this series of performances by artists including Will Arbery, Whitney Browne, Mark Davis, Eryka Dellenbach, Nile Harris, Jonah Rosenberg, Holly Sass, Matt Shalzi, and Bobbi Jene Smith.

Cover of Experiments in Joy

Civil Coping Mechanisms

Experiments in Joy

Gabrielle Civil

Performance €17.00

Gabrielle Civil's Experiments in Joy celebrates black feminist collaborations and solos in essays, letters, performance texts, scores, images, and more. Following her explosive debut Swallow the Fish, Civil now documents her work with From the Hive, No. 1 Gold, and Call & Response—whose collaborative Call inspired the title. The book also features her solo encounters with artists and writers, ancestors and audiences. Here you will find black girlhood, grief, ghosts, girls in their bedrooms, lots of books, dancing, reading, falling in love, fighting back, and flying. With lots of heart and the help of her friends, Civil keeps reckoning with performance, art and life.