Skip to main content
rile*books

Search books

Search books by title, author, publisher, keywords...

Cover of Divided we stand, together we fall

(SIC)

Divided we stand, together we fall

Sophie Nys

€20.00

This artist's book presents a set of photographs made by Belgian artist Sophie Nys during her stay in Zurich. It features each of the modernist fountains produced by designer Alfred Aebersold in the 1970s and scattered throughout the Swiss city. The images are associated with amusing and clever captions written by Leila Peacock, a Scottish artist living in Zurich.

In 1973, Alfred Aebersold won the competition organized by the Water Supply Department of Zurich for the design of a fountain. It was to be the visible part of a vast, autonomous and secured water supply system of 89 identical fountains distributed throughout the territory of the city. The context was that of the cold war. The threat, invisible but permanent, was the contamination of the public water supply network by an external agent. Aebersold—trained as an interior designer and founder, together with Jörg Hamburger and Herbert Merz, of studio Gruppe 3 in 1961—was representative of a Swiss design that followed the formal vocabulary of Max Bill. Bill contributed from the 1940s onward to the dissemination of ways of living and Western values to question those of Soviet ideology. Designed in the 1970s but recalling through its formal vocabulary a modernist, stable, and reassuring sculptural language expressed in the organicity and solidity of its forms, this fountain presents itself as a historical paradox of sorts. But it also presents itself as a visual symptom, set within the public space, of a necessity for a continued, ahistorical defense. The context changes, but the threat remains. And the fountain, masking its purpose in the functionality of its bowels—according to a Duchampian modus operandi, in which the sense one could assign to forms is obscured and diverted—, tirelessly spurts the purity of its liquid.

Published in 2017 ┊ 184 pages ┊ Language: English

recommendations

Cover of Le Chauffage #3 - Day Job

Le Chauffage

Le Chauffage #3 - Day Job

Francesca Percival, Felix Rapp and 1 more

Periodicals €20.00

The third issue of Le Chauffage is an inquiry into the relationship between the practices of artists/ writers and their day jobs. This subject stems from a question fundamental to the existing mandate of Le Chauffage: 'how do you keep warm?' and subsequently, 'how do you pay the bills?' As these perennial concerns occupy our everyday lives, we ask artists/writers to consider the influence that their day jobs, side hustles, creative or non- creative forms of employment have on their respective practices.

This issue tries to account for the significant ways in which complex economic realities come to shape the art we produce, look at, and discuss. How do we deal with limited time and resources? How do we reclaim and steal time back? How do our day jobs shape and influence what we make? How do we subvert the means of production of the workplace? Can the constraint of a day job also be a way to alleviate the pressure of professionalising?

With contributions by Daniel Bozhkov, Nathan Crompton Pippa Garner, Chauncey Hare Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes, Garrett Lockhart, Jannis Marwitz Reba Maybury, Tiziana La Melia, Dan Miller, Ragen Moss, Jean Luc Moulène, Jean Katambayi Mukendi Paul Niedermayer, Sophie Nys, Megan Plunkett, Chris Reinecke, Jacquelyn Zong Li Ross On Gabrielle L Hirondelle Hill Margaux Schwarz, Eleanor Ivory Weber James Welling, Werker, The Wig.

Cover of Two Revolutions a Day

Occasional Papers

Two Revolutions a Day

Sophie Nys

Two Revolutions a Day marks the first in-depth publication devoted to the work of Sophie Nys, whose artistic practice over the past two decades has unfolded through an enterprising interplay of research, observation, and formal experimentation. Moving between exhibition-making, design, and subtle acts of re-framing, Nys has developed an oeuvre that resists fixed categories while remaining acutely attentive to the structures – historical, linguistic, psychological – that shape how meaning is produced and circulated.

Rather than presenting a linear retrospective, Two Revolutions a Day is organised as an extended conversation between Nys and critic Christophe Van Gerrewey that mirrors the artist’s own methods. Together, they revisit key works and exhibitions from the early 2000s to today, tracing recurring motifs and questions while allowing contradictions and shifts in perspective to remain visible.

Throughout the book, Nys’s fascination with systems of power and authority intersects with a sensitivity to intimacy, subjectivity, and the everyday, engaging with feminist perspectives that examine the politics of representation. Historical figures, marginal anecdotes, and overlooked documents appear alongside reflections on resistance, collaboration, design, and the conditions under which artworks –and the social roles they inhabit – come into being. Language, in particular, emerges as both material and problem: a tool that promises clarity while constantly slipping, misfiring, or revealing its own limits.

Cover of Bookmarks of sorts

Afternoon Editions

Bookmarks of sorts

Jeroen Peeters

Afternoon Editions no. 5: a collection of found papers annotated by Jeroen Peeters, titled Bookmarks of sorts. During several years Jeroen Peeters collected notes left by readers in library books: faded reader tickets, scraps with notes, a shopping list, train tickets and other little papers used as bookmarks. He noted each time the date and the book in which they were found. Afterwards he wrote commentaries to this collection, an essay on alternative reading practices, marginalia and extra-illustration, on the exchange between readers and the imaginary community lingering in all those library books.

Cover of ESDS Archives 3 : Pascal Doury - carnet inédit c.97-99

Editions L'Amazone

ESDS Archives 3 : Pascal Doury - carnet inédit c.97-99

Pascal Doury

Facsimilé d'un carnet inédit de Pascal Doury réalisé par Jonas Delaborde (Der Vierte Pförtner Verlag) et co-produit par les Editions l'Amazone, réalisé dans le cadre de la publication des Archives Elles Sont de Sortie suite à la parution de Choquer le monde à mort. Elles Sont de sortie. Bruno Richard - Pascal Doury.

Cover of The Mollino Set

Rollo Press & Cabinet Books

The Mollino Set

Lytle Shaw

Photography €18.00

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.

Cover of ZILCH

Infinitif

ZILCH

Maxime Le Bon

In banana boxes, Maxime Le Bon collects and stores a lot of documents in a jumble. Most of them are printed, cut out from newspapers, magazines, old publications, erratas and other fragments of texts. Added to this are drawings that he improvises - some of them torn or stained that he don't want to display or throw away. This collection of heterogeneous items is then being rearranged and slipped into plastic pockets where he stores them. Unstable and in constant change, this improbable archive grows with the years. It sedimented layers of experiences and constitutes this heterogeneous deposit from which can emerge all sorts of fragmentary narratives and accidental arrangements. The publication ZILCH brings together a selection of images from this extensive archive.

Cover of Drafts

TEXTS press

Drafts

Allison Parrish

A weaving draft is a kind of notation for planning and sharing woven textil structures. The threading, along the top, shows how the warp is threaded through the heddles and frames; the treadling, along the right-hand side, show the order in which the treadles of the loom are to be pressed; and the tie-up, in the upper right-hand corner, shows how each treadle interacts with the loom’ frames. The drawdown, in the lower left, shows whether the warp or weft will be on top at any particular intersection of threads—thereby providing a “preview” of the completed textile. Often a draft diagram will indicate the intended color of the warp and weft threads, and the drawdown will show the completed textile’s color patterns. In “Drafts,” Allison uses letters instead of colors, melding digital weaving with writing.

WITHOUT THE E is a series of pamphlets responding to a presence or an absence felt in contemporary digital culture.