Bibliographic Performances & Surrogate Readings

‘Katrina Palmer’s The Touch Report asks a question that remains in motion for the duration of this extraordinary book. What is here?  What’s still here?  Here, Palmer writes an account of subjugation that is gestural, an on-going sequence of expulsions and punctures…  Is there a kind of writing so transient it’s barely there?  In Palmer’s writing, we encounter an ethics of presence and form that is deeply moving, completely and unbearably real.’ — Bhanu Kapil, author of How To Wash A Heart

An artist is invited to take up residency in a gallery filled with historical paintings. They are meticulously crafted, maintained, and revered. She begins to make an audit of the paintings, outlining the depictions of violence, subjugation and physical tension on public display. Eleven arrows in a torso, someone’s hair cut as they sleep, a man nailed to a cross. Horses, decapitations, memorable lobsters. 

Written in sparse, urgent fragments that invite closer reading, The Touch Report, turns the reader’s gaze into the dark, to question our notions of ‘civilisation’. 

Want to see something real, says the artist as she creeps through the darkness, keeping a log.

Katrina Palmer was commissioned by the National Gallery, London, as part of the 2024 National Gallery Artist in Residence Programme in collaboration with the Contemporary Art Society, generously supported by Anna Yang and Joseph Schull. This book is published as a result of research made during this residency.

Echoing Jean Dubuffet's idea that thought must arise from material in artistic practice, Giuliana Prucca, through this essay, reinterprets a moment in the history of 20th-century art using materials such as stone, sand, earth, and dust. She employs the mineral to illustrate that the creative act would be a trace of the body's disappearance. The loss of humanity and the deconstruction of the subject objectify themselves in the image. In other words, art resides in the tension between representation and its loss, ultimately leaving nothing but an image.

Drawing from the influential figure of Antonin Artaud, she weaves critical and poetic connections between the texts and works of various artists, writers, and thinkers, ranging from Jean Dubuffet to Jan Fabre and Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein and Gutaï, Joë Bousquet to Camille Bryen and Francis Ponge, Gaston Bachelard to Gilles Deleuze, and Georges Bataille to Aby Warburg.

The material is not merely a thematic pretext; it is an active and explosive catapult that questions the arbitrary linearity of a conventionally assimilated art history. Following Ponge's example, Prucca applies the principles of poetry to criticism, starting from Artaud's material, the most undisciplined of poet-artist-thinkers of the modern era. This results in a critically inventive approach dangerously suited to its object, celebrating an anti-critique. The chosen writing materials, stonepaper for the cover and recycled paper for the pages, is consistent, intending to give the impression of being covered in dust.

The essay disrupts traditional reading habits and shatters the conservatism of art criticism by inhabiting writing space differently, presenting a physically engaging interaction. This is an essay in the literal sense, an experience where form never contradicts content, urging readers to take the risk of thinking deeply and embracing a new rhythm. A complex and challenging design invites them to choose different reading options, ultimately treating criticism as one would poetry.

Giuliana Prucca [Paris | Berlin] is an independent curator, researcher, and writer. She is the founder and art director of the publishing house AVARIE, specialising in contemporary art books that explore the relationships between text and image, body and space.

Graphic design, art direction by Vito Raimondi

New York-based professor Lytle Shaw journeys to Italy in this adventurous exploration of the life and work of architect, designer, and photographer Carlo Mollino (1905–1973). In 1933 the young Mollino received a commission from Mussolini’s regime for his first building: an administrative centre in Piedmont. Later works include furniture and interior design, a book on photography, and an asymmetrical car that raced at Le Mans in 1955.

The book centres around Shaw’s realisation that this prolific talent’s conflicted legacy offers a unique window on the role that post-war Italian politics and culture played in the country’s reimagining of itself as a victim, rather than a proponent, of fascism.

L'édition inédite et définitive (établie à partir des tapuscrits originaux en français) du traité fabuleux du philosophe tchéco-brésilien Vilém Flusser (1920-1991), une fiction philosophique et poétique qui, par des chemins détournés, nous confronte à la violence et à l'impasse des sociétés contemporaines.

Un monstre venu des profondeurs de l'océan, un poulpe vampire. Sa violence rappelle les nazis, ses mœurs sont libertaires et libidineuses. C'est une créature infernale, cannibale et brutale, pouvant changer de couleur à volonté, et dotée de trois pénis.
Et c'est notre cousin.

Dans cette fable fantastique, Vampyroteuthis infernalis émerge, non des abysses de l'océan, mais du plus profond de nous-mêmes pour nous tendre un miroir, nous montrer à quel point nous, les hommes, sommes ses proches parents et que nos histoires, nos sociétés, nos modes de vie ne sont, au fond, pas si différents.
Ce texte délibérément provocateur du philosophe tchéco-brésilien Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) n'est ni scientifique, ni objectif : c'est une fiction philosophique et poétique qui, par des chemins détournés, nous confronte à la violence et à l'impasse des sociétés contemporaines.

Flusser avait écrit ce texte en français (outre des versions en allemand et en portugais), et ce livre est la première édition du texte original en français. Il est accompagné des fantastiques dessins de son ami l'artiste et « zoosystémicien » français Louis Bec (1936-2018), co-auteur du livre, traduisant en images pseudo-scientifiques les chimères vampyroteuthiques.

Des essais de Marc Lenot, Élise Rigot et Florent Barrère éclairent la démarche de Flusser et de Bec.

Le cinquième numéro de la revue d'art et de recherche « rétro-prospective » est consacré à l'artiste et performeuse Andrea Fraser, figure clé de l'art des années 1990 et 2000 et du courant de la « critique institutionnelle » (une monographie complétée par une grande enquête sur l'espace critique réalisée auprès d'une cinquantaine d'artistes, critiques et philosophes internationaux).

Avec contributions de Kader Attia, Eva Barto, Sophie Bonnet-Pourpet, Marie de Brugerolle, Gregory Buchert, Daniel Buren, Marie Canet, Gregory Castéra, Inès Champey, Thierry Chancogne, Claire Fontaine, François Cusset, Judith Deschamps, Paul Devautour, Philippe Durand, Joao Enxuto & Erica Love, Andrea Fraser, Nicolas Frespech, Dora García, Romain Grateau, Emmanuel Guez, Thomas Hirschhorn, Aliocha Imhoff & Kantuta Quirós, Béatrice Josse, Franck Larcade, Ju Huyn Lee, Sven Lütticken, Fabrice Mabime, Bartomeu Mari, Chus Martínez, Gwenael Morin, Claire Moulène, Jean-Luc Moulène, Yan Moulier Boutang, Vincent Normand, François Pain, Gerald Petit, Anne Querrien, Thierry Raspail, Sinziana Ravini, Delphine Reist & Laurent Faulon, Christophe de Rohan Chabot, Phillippe Roux, Jean-Baptiste Sauvage, Thomas Schlesser, Ida Soulard, Fabien Steichen, Michel Surya, Emmanuel Tibloux, Vier 5, Ulf Wuggenig, Italo Zuffi.