Exercise in pathetic criticism

Bricks from the Kiln is an irregular journal edited by Andrew Lister and Matthew Stuart, sometimes with guest editors, that presents graphic design and typography as disciplines activated by and through other disciplines and lenses such as language, archives, collage, and more. It borrows its title from the glossary notes of Ret Marut’s "Der Ziegelbrenner," which was the ‘size, shape and colour of a brick’, and ran for 13 issues between 1917 and 1921.

The latest installment, "#4: On Translation, Transmission & Transposition," was published as an event (and now) a publication, with events at London College of Communication, Burley Fisher Books & Pig Rock bothy, Socttish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Inga (in November, 2019).

GREENING
Helen Marten
(front / back flaps)

JOY & HAPPINESS, FIDELITY
& INTIMACY IN TRANSLATION
Sophie Collins
(pp.4–13)

PLANETARY TRANSLATION
Don Mee Choi
(pp.15–19)

TRANSLATION AND A LIPOGRAM:
OR, ON FORMS OF AGAIN-WRITING
AND NO- (OR NOT THAT-) WRITING
Kate Briggs
(pp.23–33)

UNHOMING (1 of 4):
FOLLOWING HÖLDERLIN’S ‘HEIMAT’
Phil Baber
(pp.35–47)

SNOW WHITE AND THE WHITE
OF THE HUMAN EYEBALLS
Joyce Dixon
(pp.51–62)

ALTAMIRALTAMIRALTAMIRA
Florian Roithmayr
(pp.65–116)

LEVEL UP, LEVEL DOWN
Jen Calleja
(pp.119–124)

TRANS.MISSION [A.DIALOGUE]:
A JAVASCRIPT FOR THREE VOICES
J.R. Carpenter
(pp.127–134)

THE MECHANISATION OF ART
Edgar Wind
(glosses / annotations / insertions by
Natalie Ferris & Bryony Quinn)
(pp.137–144)

UNHOMING (2 of 4)
Phil Baber
(p.147)

COMMISSION FOR A NOIR MOVIE
B IN THE BAY OF BISCAY
Rebecca Collins
(pp.151–157)

UNHOMING (3 of 4)
Phil Baber
(pp.150–162)

EVERY CONTACT LEAVES A TRACE;
TRANSCRIBING OSTEON
Naomi Pearce
(pp.165–170)

HOW DOES A WORK END?
Karen Di Franco
(pp.173–193)

METONYMY Op.1 & Op.2
James Bulley
(pp.197–201)

AFRIKAN ALPHABETS EXTENDED
Saki Mafundikwa
(pp.204–207)

SUSAN HILLER: 1983
Natalie Ferris
(pp.209–217)

EVERY TELLING HAS A TALING /
EVERY STORY HAS AN ENDING
Matthew Stuart
(pp.220–233)

GRAPHIC PROPRIOCEPTION
James Langdon
(pp.235–254)

UNHOMING (4 of 4)
Phil Baber
(pp.257–263)

TUNNELLING AND AGGREGATING
FOR DESIGN RESEARCH
Bryony Quinn (text) &
Peter Nencini (images)
(pp.265–272)

LET IT PERCOLATE:
A MANIFESTO FOR READING
Sophie Seita
(pp.275–280)

288 pgs, 22.4 × 17 cm, Softcover, 2020

In Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other Danielle Dutton imagines new models for how literature might work in our fractured times. Dutton’s writing is as protean as it is beguiling, using the different styles and different spaces of experience to create a collage of the depths and strangeness of contemporary life.

This hybrid literary collection covers an inventive selection of subjects in four eponymous sections which contrast and echo one another, challenging our expectations and pushing the limits of the dream-like worlds and moods that language might create.

‘Danielle Dutton is a writer whose work I wait for. When a new book comes, I keep it very close… Her growing body of work is among the most formally inventive (and therefore essential) I can think of, and Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other is a vital, enlivening addition to it.’ – Kate Briggs

Danielle Dutton is the author of the novels Margaret the First and SPRAWL, the prose collection Attempts at a Life, the illustrated nonfiction chapbook A Picture Held Us Captive, and she wrote the text interpolations for Richard Kraft’s Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera. Her fiction has appeared in magazines and journals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The White Review, Harper’s, BOMB, and NOON. Dutton teaches at Washington University in St. Louis and is cofounder and editor of the award-winning feminist press Dorothy, a publishing project. Born and raised in California, she has lived on the (former) prairie now for roughly twenty years.

A forgotten mid-century genius, recently rediscovered in France and never before translated into English, Hélène Bessette is a treasure and a bracing force to reckon with.

With a contribution by Eimear McBride
A New Yorker Best Book of 2025

Lili Is Crying, Hélène Bessette’s debut novel, conveys with singular force the fraughtness and depth of the troubling relationship between Lili and her mother, Charlotte. With a near-mythic quality, Bessette's stripped-back prose evokes at once the pain of thwarted love—of desire run cold—and the promise of renewal. Lauded by critics on its initial 1953 publication for its boundary-pushing style, Lili Is Crying catapulted Bessette to cult status in France. The novel is moving and maddening in turns, with its characters trapped in their own cruelties and sorrows, but in its spareness and strength it feels true. "Show me a woman who's chosen something." Bessette's books were hailed for their unusual economy of expression, rarity, strange humor, and sheer vivacity. She characterized her new kind of novel as "a freshly cut slice of life, whose force comes from its lack of commentary."

The Appendixes #1-4 is an editorial series by Mette Edvardsen, Léa Poiré and Victoria Pérez Royo that came out of the project Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. For a two-year residency at Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (2022-23), they came together as a small work group, shaping the work process, hosting presentation formats and making the publication series on paper as four cahiers.

The cahiers comprise a collection of commissioned texts and contributions created for this context, selected documents and traces from work sessions and encounters organized during the residency, texts read together and republished for this occasion, a collection of references, notes in progress, unfinished thoughts and loose fragments - on paper, between pages.

p 5-7 Almost on my way to you
p 8-10 Presque en route vers toi
Laía Argüelles Folch

p 12-13 Exercise in translation of Breve ensayo sobre la carta (Brief essay on the letter) by Laía Argüelles Folch
p 14-15 Exercice de traduction de Breve ensayo sobre la carta (Bref essai sur la lettre) de Laía Argüelles Folch
Quim Pujol, Paula Caspão, Simon Asencio, Pascal Poyet, Mette Edvardsen, Léa Poiré, Victoria Pérez Royo & Laía Argüelles Folch

p 16-17 Like a dinosaur upon awakening
p 18-19 Comme un dinosaure au réveil
Pascal Poyet

p 20-23 Is she a translator?
p 24-27 Est-elle traductrice?
Olivia Fairweather

p 28-29 New edition revised by my author
p 30-31 Nouvelle édition revue par mon auteur
Léa Poiré

p 32 Notes from a translation in progress
p 33 Notes d'une traduction en cours
Kate Briggs

p 34-37 Mothers & tongues
p 38-41 Langues (maternelles)
Mette Edvardsen

p 42-43 Collective reading of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
p 44-45 Lecture collective de Finnegans Wake de James Joyce
Dora García and readers, et les lecteur·rices

p 46-49 Notes for a talk that did not happen
p 50-53 Notes pour une conférence qui n'a pas eu lieu
Olivia Fairweather

p 54-65 Meticulous comparison of two books with their versions rewritten from memory, excerpts from a work document
Comparaison méticuleuse de deux livres avec leurs versions réécrites de mémoire, extraits d'un document de travail
Julián Pacomio & Ángela Millano

Johanna Drucker's The Century of Artists' Books is the seminal full-length study of the development of artists' books as a twentieth-century art form. By situating artists' books within the context of mainstream developments in the visual arts, Drucker raises critical and theoretical issues as well as providing a historical overview of the medium. Within its pages, she explores more than two hundred individual books in relation to their structure, form, and conceptualization. This latest edition of the book features a new preface by Drucker and includes an introduction by New York Times senior art critic Holland Cotter.

For the project Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine a group of people/ performers memorize a book of their choice. Together they form a library collection consisting of living books. After years of learning by heart and reciting for readers, some of the books have now been written down from memory to create new editions, versions resulting from this process. This book is one of those books, chosen by one person, learned by heart and recited many times, and now written down again from memory. This edition is not a re-edition of the original text. It is a re-writing of the text after the process of reading, memorizing and reciting, with all the alterations that might have occured in the course of this process.

Special issue of this US magazine dedicated in its entirety to the late Australian artist/compositional linguist/raconteur Chris Mann, who died in 2018. The magazine contains tributes from Mann associates and admirers, including Warren Burt, Amanda Stewart, Pi-0, Ronald Robboy, Linda Kouvaras, Alvin Lucier, Ruark Lewis, Annea Lockwood, as well as Mann’s own writing and an interview with him by Philip Blackburn.

88 pages bound in soft-cover glossy colour cover by Brigid Burke.

In Edge Theory, Darian Razdar examines the slippery chasm between self and other. Contaminating theory with poetry and vice-versa, this brief and sexy treatise unspools the ever-shifting nature of relationality through a prism of intertextual references, tautologies, double-negations, and double-entendres. Accompanied by eclectic artwork by Alicia Nauta, Edge Theory is a cerebral and sensual exploration of the contours of desire.