Corner Vol. 1

This book traces the legacy of Zona, Eastern Europe performance art festival that took place in Timișoara, Romania, between 1993 and 2002, years which were marked by a transition from communism to a new society built on different principles.

Bringing together artists from the former "Eastern Bloc," Zona became a space of encounters, a platform for theoretical discussions and postmodern art experiments, which displayed a remarkable diversity of artistic languages. The fall of the Berlin Wall, as Nicolas Bourriaud noted in his book "The Radicant", was the first decisive step towards globalization and the generalization of postmodern thought.

In the early 1990s, adopting subversive strategies helped artists overcome critical moments in totalitarian societies, which had been consolidated for decades in Eastern Europe. They combined techniques of expression such as pastiche, quotes, historical images, popular culture, or subcultures with personal mythologies. What resulted was often a critical mixture with an explosive effect. Body art became an appropriate language for critically analyzing stereotypes about the nation, religion, gender, or social prejudices and taboos. Body art facilitated the transfer of ideas and a dialogue with the audience, or it helped launch questions about identity politics. The concerns and intentions of the festival's protagonists were built around political, social, and artistic topics that were debated between the East and the West.

Essays by Ileana Pintilie, László Beke, Vladimir Bulat, Robert Fleck, Alexandra Titu, Berislav Valušek; artists' texts by Alexandru Antik, Matei Bejenaru, Ștefan Bertalan, Geta Brătescu, Oskar Dawicki, Ion Grigorescu, H.arta Group, Karen Kipphoff, Liliana Mericioiu, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Sorin Vreme.

KILOBASE BUCHAREST A-Z is a publication which is describing Bucharest through a sort of experimental alphabet book: for each letter of the English alphabet, artists, writers, architects and researchers were invited to choose a key term and develop a contribution representing a sliver of the Romanian capital city, capturing a polyphonic set of perspectives on the infinite facets of a city whose identity is notoriously difficult to define.

Contributions by: Irina Bujor, Serioja Bocsok, studioBASAR, Iuliana Dumitru, Ștefan Ghenciulescu, Kilobase Bucharest, Apparatus 22, Mihnea Mihalache-Fiastru, Ștefan Constantinescu, Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber, Gruia Bădescu, Ioana Ulmeanu, Decebal Scriba, Sillyconductor, Prosper Center, Geir Haraldseth, Jimmy Robert, Karol Radziszewski, Lea Rasovszky, Ștefan Botez, Simina Neagu, Bogdan Iancu, Andrei Mihail, Mihai Lukács, Mihai Mihalcea, Cosima Opârtan, Juergen Teller, Hans Leonard Krupp.

The publication also includes a republished insert by late artist Ioana Nemeș, and three reprinted contributions previously published in Kilobase Bucharest A-H (Mousse Publishing, 2011) produced on the occasion of "Image to be projected until it vanishes" exhibition at Museion Bolzano.

A collection of writings by Alina Popa and Florin Flueras written over a seven-year period.

Unsorcery composes and explores ways of sorcery that can eventually surpass or undo some of the contemporary realities and subjectivities. It is an Artworld involved in a productive alienation from concepts through experience and from experience through thought. Unsorcery is an environment in which Alina Popa and Florin Flueras were working together, each following their own path, doing their own practices, texts and performances around the concepts: Life Programming, Artworlds, Black Hyperbox, Second Body, Dead Thinking, End Dream.

New expanded edition of the book first published in 2019.

Alina Popa (1982-2019) was a Romanian artist who moved between choreography, theory, and contemporary art.

Florin Flueras (born 1978 in Târgu Mureș, Romania) oscillates between contemporary performance, visual arts and theory as contexts in which he activates.

A reflection about the status of the image as a balance of forces in tension and a paradoxical act of cancellation of the body through its own representation.

In Ion Grigorescu’s work, as in the book, the body is continually shown in different ways - from photography to film, from performance to drawing - and yet it remains absent, obscuring its own identity in an attempt to question the collective one. As it is impossible to show his art during the regime, it ends up hiding, disappearing inside the image. Instead of showing, the image conceals, because it is non-documentary and non-transmittable; it is an act of birth, a prove of the artist’s resistance, especially as a human being inside (or against) any geographical or historical background. In the rituals of his gestures and in the symbolism of his performances, Grigorescu finds a way to stay alive, preserving his own intellectual status while also defending the dignity of everyday life.

The book traces the progression, both expansive and inclusive, of his work, which inscribes itself into the space of the body and of the world. Grigorescu absorbs elements of the surrounding reality, showing us a continuity between art and life: his act of dissidence is not an outcry of provocation, nor is it extreme; it is an anti-aesthetic operation which uses experimentation and rough techniques to uncover the fiction of art, to denounce the artifice of representation and to affirm images as an instrument of subversive power.

Ion Grigorescu (Bucharest, 1945) is one of the most significant Romanian contemporary artists of the Post-War period and an iconic figure of the conceptual and performative art since the early 70s. He represented Romania at Venice Biennial in 1997 and 2011; his works are in the main public collections, such as MoMA, New York; mumok and Erste Foundation, Vienna; Tate Modern and Deutsche Bank AG, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Métaphoriques Cannibales est un recueil transdisciplinaire, où le cannibalisme est pris comme métaphore, comme un concept ouvert aux analogies, comme anthropopoiésis et boîte noire, et comme fait social total.

Peuplent cet endroit des individus qui s’abreuvent de symboles, d’imaginaires, d’occulte, d’intime et ne craignent pas d’en recracher des images et idées d’une extrême violence, tout en constituant paradoxalement l’univers de leur production comme “safe space”.

Le cannibale est une spécialité belge, composée d’un toast recouvert de filet américain (une variante belge du steak tartare).

Transgressif et provocant, c’est ici un paroxysme de l’altérité et fantasme de l’Autre, qui permet par reflet de nous contempler nous-même.
La vie n’a de saveur que pour devenir viande.

La transgression, c’est aussi aller plus loin. Oser aller plus loin. Plus loin que les normes communément admises qui sont toutes relatives et violentes.
SUBSTANCE MOLLE ET SANGUINE

Nous cherchons des outils spéculatifs pour pænser notre monde.STIMULI VISUELS HOMOGÉNÉISÉS PAR LE ROUGE

C’est d’un brouillard polysémique empli de chimères, d’un tabou lardé de malaise et d’angoisse, bien au chaud dans un ventre plein de plasma, que ɴon-ᴀ émet ce recueil transdisciplinaire.

Dans la large brèche que nous propose l’ouverture de notre thématique, s’engouffre une multitude d’approches : de la chansonnette, au récit spéculatif, de la définition critique, à la BD vorarephile, du reportage photo, à la poésie expérimentale, de la théorie d’écologie spéculatif, à la performance eroticocculte.

Explorons les obscures profondeurs de nos éthiques pour y trouver les fondations de nos ontologies... se mordre d’une balle dans le pied.

Contributeur·rice·x·s
aariel136, Maurane-Amel Arbouz, Nina Bigot,Mathilde Block, Juliano Caldeira, Rémi Calmont, Rouge Cendre, Chloé Clemen, Sam Ectoplasm, Robin Faymonville, Gabriel René Franjou, Tristan Gac, Léo Gillet, Charlotte Guerlus, Théophile Gürtin, KarenDK, Olga Mathey, Louise Mervelet, Jean-Baptiste Molina, Hélène Alix Mourrier, Carole Mousset, Lucy Ozon, Angel Raymond, Andres Komatsu & Camila Roriz, Paradoc sale, Manon Schaefle, Yan Tomaszewski, Tom Valckenaere, Chloé Viton, xX-Sukuba-Xx, Zelig, Janna Zhiri

A short text or a long line written by Mette Edvardsen for Etcetera magazine (June 2018) on an invitation to elaborate on her approach to text, writing and speech from a choreographic point of view. Held by a cardboard cover, the text is here published on its own as a very slim book.

Dead Minutes is a storytelling game about systemic change in an undesirable afterlife. You, the players, will decide what this hell, underworld or land of the dead is like, what its problems are, how change happens there, and what the complications might be when altering something so big, involving so many dead people, over so much time. It’s a game about impossible seeming actions at impossible seeming scales, making difficult choices, and dealing with unexpected outcomes.

The first half of this book gives you everything you need to play a session of Dead Minutes, which takes 2-5 hours with 3-6 people.

The second half features an essay by Patricia Reed that expands on the concepts of heuristic fictions and vital zombies in relation to the afterlife, and a series of afterlife generating 'seeds' contributed by different types of writers - a demonic boardroom presentation by writer and art critic Habib William Kherbek, a ritual from horror game designer Samuel Clarice Mui Shen Ern, a premise by Arthur C Clarke award winning author Chris Beckett, and a letter from Selma Selman.

"Portrait of the Artist as a Writer" is a collection of short stories, quotes and drawings about dinosaurs, gay lesbians and how to lose a joke at the lake.

Risoprinted in pumpkin and purple, perfect binding with glue, first edition of 300, Berlin 2022.