Catalog issue 26 'Waiting in _ _ _ _'

Catalog is a serial publication about cataloging, written by Lieven Lahaye and designed by Ott Metusala. This is Catalog issue 17, ‘Introduction’, it’s part of a sub-series, researching the life, work and near invisibility of writer Duncan Smith (1954–1991).

The fourth in a series of publications, featuring writing by graphic design students of EKA GD MA. Typing... includes essays, scripts, translations and stories on a wide range of topics: killing vowels and milling fonts, personal knowledge management, shortcuts, tedious/careful/tiring/joyful typesetting, type of Georgianness, typing in 3rab(izi) and typing in all lowercase.

With contributions by Anna Wittenkamp Rich, Archil Tsereteli, Fa(tima)-Ezzahra El Khammas, João (Juca) Pedro Nogueira, Karthik Palepu, Laura Martens, Linnea Lindgren, Rok Ifko Kranjc.

Designed by Fatima-Ezzahra El Khammas and Laura Martens
Cover by Hanafi Gazali

Dear Friend is a monthly letter format publication covering design events, issues, and ideas. This publication distributed via snail mail is initiated by Sandra Nuut and Ott Kagovere.

The publication edited by Sandra Nuut & Ott Kagovere features all the letters from the Dear Friend publishing project, which they initiated at the Graphic Design Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2018. The book includes contributions by Singapore-based design writer Justin Zhuang, designer and writer Else Lagerspetz, and artist Lieven Lahaye. The book is designed by Ott Kagovere and published by Lugemik and Estonian Academy of Arts.

Texts by Justin Zhuang, Lieven Lahaye, Else Lagerspetz

Letters written by Alicia Ajayi, Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, Claudia Doms, Nell Donkers, Maarin Ektermann, Rosen Eveleigh, Maryam Fanni, Saara Hannus, Eik Hermann, Paul John, Maria Juur, Ott Kagovere, Maarja Kangro, Arja Karhumaa, Kristina Ketola Bore, Nicole Killian, Rachel Kinbar, Tuomas Kortteinen, Keiu Krikmann, Kadri Laas, Else Lagerspetz, Lieven Lahaye, James Langdon, Jungmyung Lee, Kai Lobjakas, Michelle Millar Fisher, Maria Muuk, Sheere Ng, Sandra Nuut, Laura Pappa, Jack Self, Indrek Sirkel, Paul Soulellis, Triin Tamm, Laura Toots, Alice Twemlow, Loore Viires, Sean Yendrys, Justin Zhuang

“… Ever since its inception as a profession, graphic design has exhibited its necessity to make information public. Its urge to expand and to reproduce reflects its capitalist inheritance. This desire however isn’t always shared by all stories molded and articulated by the discipline.

Publishing is preceded by a series of labours, but the act itself consists just of a very instant. It is one loud shriek from the top of a hill. A toppling-over. From then on a story will tumble downhill—distribute and disseminate. However that happens, and who it reaches is an unpredictable process. Thereafter publishing enables, and sets in motion, all its future readings and retellings.

Wondering the many contradictory sensibilities contained in this process, we attempt to grasp their whys, their hows and their ifs. The following essays— written by Sunny Lei, Haron Barashed, Agathe Mathel, Alina Scharnhorst, Villem Sarapuu, Gal Šnajder, Seppe-Hazel Laeremans, Fernanda Saval and Eva Claycomb—stretch and curl in between these various registers of opening up and closing in.

Unraveling the movements, strategies, forms and intentions of publishing, this book attempts to unfold their utterances, platforms, languidities, reinterpretations, identities, tactilities, ambiguities, characters and audiences.”

—from the introduction by Seppe-Hazel Laeremans and Agathe Mathel.

Sun of an Ignored Putrid Productivity is a speculative novel about the influence of artificial intelligence and accelerating technological progress on our human interactions. The dialogical script is based on personal reflections and pop-cultural, scientific and philosophical references from the beginnings of cybernetics to more recent voices. Randomly generated, constructed and quoted contents cannot be distinguished from each other. The borderline between fact and fiction becomes blurred. What is left is a flickering effect, disorientation, which reflects our perception of reality under conditions of never-ending information overflow.

An artist's book by New York-based author and artist Sam Pulitzer (born 1984), The Premise of a Better Life combines photographs with ethical and existential questions addressed to the viewer, in an allegory of the contemporary condition. These photographs of everyday things, ambiguous details, nondescript landscapes and cityscapes were mostly taken in New York, although the city appears as the pale reflection of a model city.

Each picture is accompanied by a question: "Can you afford yourself?" "Are you waiting for a moment that just won't come?" "If you knew then what you know now, would it make a difference?" "Do you trust happiness?" The montages offer a complex, personal, at times satirical image of the present age.

An original essay by Pulitzer unfolds the project's philosophical and political issues, notably discussing a key reference for the project, Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope.

Le Chauffage (french for “The Heater”) is an artist-run publication based in Brussels and Vancouver. It is conceived as a cross-continental, community oriented platform. Le Chauffage brings together the work and writing of artists / friends from different cities with the  intent to spark discussion and fuel casual forms of critical discourse.

The second issue of Le Chauffage contains photographs and texts, photographs of text, photographs as text and vice versa. Loosely thinking through the format of The Photo Essay celebrated by John Szarkowski in an eponymously titled exhibition at MoMA in 1965, this issue considers some of the artistic possibilities that can be found in such an archaic and historically male-dominated form. 

Many of the contributions that make up this second issue are not photo essays per se. But each one of them considers the printed page as a space in its own right. The magazine becomes an interior where words and images entertain a malleable and distinctly porous relationship. At times, it is also a space where artists and writers from different cities were invited to meet and collaborate. And since interest in other people is also an interest in yourself, it is always unclear who is really transforming who?

Contributions by: Bob Cain & Linda Miller, Moyra Davey, Laurie Kang, Niklas Taleb, Madeleine Paré & Diane Severin Nguyen, Josephine Pryde, Slow Reading Club, Ken Lum, Isaac Thomas, Vijai Maia Patchineelam, Artun Alaska Arasli & Graeme Wahn, Stephen Waddell, Maya Beaudry & Chloe Chignell, Lisa Robertson, groana melendez, Victoria Antoinette Megens and Will Holder.

Editors: Emile Rubino and Felix Rapp
Co-Editor: Francesca Percival
Design: Francesca Percival and Felix Rapp
Cover Design: Francesca Percival
Printed by: Cassochrome, Belgium
Edition of 350

Metropolitan Voids Agency is the first monographic publication dedicated to the collected works of artist Margherita Moscardini. The book recounts the work carried out by Moscardini spanning seventeen years, between 2008 and 2024, inviting a reading of her practice in its entirety as an investigation into ‘urban voids’: those which Moscardini has recognized and designated as voids, or those she has herself invented in the urban fabric.