Shifting the Angle of Shine

Jill Johnston began the 1960s as an influential dance columnist for the Village Voice and by the start of the next decade she was known as a keen observer of postmodern art and lesbian feminist life who challenged how dance, art, and women can and should be seen. The Essential Jill Johnston Reader collects dozens of pieces of her writing from across her career. These writings—many of which appeared in the Village Voice and the New York Times—survey the breadth of her work, braiding together her thinking, writing, and activism.

From personal essays, travel writing, and artist profiles to dance and visual art reviews as well as her infamous series of columns for the Voice in which she came out as a lesbian, these pieces demonstrate the evolution of her philosophies and writing style. Illustrating how Johnston drew on lessons from dance to reconsider what it means to be a woman, this collection brings a fascinating and brilliant voice of American arts criticism, radical feminism, and gay liberation back to contemporary audiences.

Molecular typography is the study of the chemical and physical underpinnings of letters. All characters are formed from seven basic atomic building blocks, known as typtoms. These typtoms come together in various combinations and configurations to form letters, numbers, and punctuation. Typtoms are not just theoretical tools for exploring the anatomy of type, but actual particles. Letters are molecules.

H.F. Henderson’s work, Understanding Molecular Typography, originally published in 1992, was a seminal work in the field. By condensing information pulled from nearly forty years of publications from the top molecular typographic scientists, Henderson made the science approachable to the everyday American for the first time. Part primer, part field guide, it lays out the basic principles, followed by detailed diagrams of the molecular formation of letters, numbers, and punctuation. A conclusion sums up the field of molecular typography to date, and a comprehensive bibliography provides valuable reference for the reader looking to learn more.

With the demise of the field of molecular typography as a whole in the mid-to-late ‘90s, (perhaps even due to its increased popularity brought on by Henderson’s work), Understanding Molecular Typography ran out of print, and has long since been forgotten. Peculiar as it may be, molecular typography is nevertheless a science worthy of being brought back to mainstream attention, if for no other reason than demonstrating humanity’s frequent scientific misconceptions throughout history. This reprint edition, with a new introduction by Woody Leslie, seeks to do just that.

"Until Henderson's incredible analysis, no one had created a conceptual framework sophisticated enough to do the analytic work in graphical physics that the alphabet required if it was to be fully understood. True, some of the Russian futurists, like Ilia Zdanevich, in their examinations of the properties of language, had begun to grasp the vague outlines of a modern scientific approach to molecular components, to the formation of compounds, and their behavior as chemical substances, within the structure of poetics. But Henderson's research was comprehensive and the results nothing short of astonishing." —Johanna Drucker

This comprehensive publication is the result of a two-year collaboration within the platform Islands of Kinship, which interconnects six mid-scale visual art institutions across diverse regions in Europe (Prague, Bratislava, Bitola/Skopje, Cologne, Helsinki, Riga). The project represents an innovative model of collaboration addressing issues of inclusion, kinship and togetherness, democratic exchange, and the ethics, emotions, and practical solutions needed for fair and sustainable institutional operations.

In this publication a unique group of curators, artists, and experts involved in their respective organizations as inclusion and sustainability coordinators reflect on social and environmental responsibility in artistic and institutional practice from theoretical, political, and practical perspectives. Through essays, mind maps, codes of conduct, and lists of principles and recommendations, they address issues such as accessibility, just representation, and participation. Apart from these contributions, the publication also features artistic projects that were presented in exhibitions and public programs in the framework of Islands of Kinship.

Texts by Ieva Astahovska, Jana Brsakoska, Veronika Čechová, Kris Dittel, Daniel Grúň, Michal Klodner, Eloïse Bonneviot & Anne de Boer, Jussi Koitela, Karina Kottová, Diana Lelonek, Nikola Ludlová, Aneta Rostkowska, Paulina Seyfried, Katarína Slezáková, Taka Taka, James Taylor-Foster, Fran Trento, Ivana Vaseva.

A Toast to St Martirià is an improvised speech given by the cult Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra at the St Martirià fiesta in Banyoles, the town of his birth. Transmitting his subversive attitude and impulsive lust for life, it is a journey through his formative years and early relationships – established in the nightlife of his hometown – that have shaped his particular conception of cinema, art and life. ‘Cinema should be this, making perception of time and space more intense.’

Translated by Matthew Tree
Afterword by Alexander García Düttmann

The Catalan artist and filmmaker Albert Serra was born in 1975. His films usually depict European myths and literature. In 2001, he co-founded the production company Andergraun Films. His Honor of the Knights was selected by Cahiers du Cinéma as one of the ten best films of 2007. For Story of My Death, Serra was awarded the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2013. For The Death of Louis XIV, Serra received the Prix Jean Vigo in 2016. Pacifiction was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022.

Matthew Tree was born in London in 1958. He taught himself Catalan in 1979 and moved to Catalonia in 1984. Since then he has published nine works of fiction and non-fiction written in Catalan, and five written in English. He writes regular columns for Catalonia Today magazine in English and El Punt Avui newspaper in Catalan. He has translated works by Jordi Puntí, Maria Barbal, Monika Zgustová, Joel Joan, Marta Marín-Dòmine and Albert Serra, among others. Two of his English novels, Just Looking and Almost Everything, will appear in Catalan translation at the start of 2025.

Alain Brossat est ex-militant de la LCR ancré dans une lecture anti-impérialiste de la politique. Houria Bouteldja est la cofondatrice du QG Décolonial et une figure de l'antiracisme politique. Dans cet entretien exigeant, les deux penseur·ses et militant·es clarifient leurs divergences et leurs convergences autour de la religion, du racisme, de l'État, du fascisme et de l'impérialisme. Alors que ces questions clivent celles et ceux qui luttent pour l'émancipation, rendant parfois les discussions impossibles, les deux auteur·ices reviennent sur leurs parcours politiques et philosophiques, sans pour autant feindre le consensus de leurs héritages politiques. Entretien coordonné par Marianne VL Koplewicz.