The Alphabet Book

Lip Magazine was self-published by women in Melbourne from 1976 to 1984 and stood as a lightning rod for Australian feminist artistic practice throughout the Women’s Liberation era. The art and ideas expressed over Lip’s lifetime track groundbreaking moves in performance, ecology, social-engagement and labour politics—all at an intersection with local realities. Collecting and presenting the materials of Lip for the first time since their original appearance, The Lip Anthology, edited by Vivian Ziherl, privileges the range and dynamism of contesting feminisms that comprised the Lip project.

Designed by: Marc Hollenstein

Tense is a never-realised publication, written and composed by Lucy Lippard and Jerry Kearns in 1984, that only now has been released in a very limited run on our imprint. The book accompanied the exhibition Top Stories, which took a closer look at the 29 issues of the prose periodical with the same title, founded in the late 1970s by Anne Turyn.

Top Stories was dedicated to fiction by emerging women artists and writers from that time. Tense was originally intended to become part of the series as well, but never made it to print. It was only recently – during the making of the exhibition at Amsterdam’s Kunstverein – that the original mock-up was retrieved from the editor’s archives and finally sent off to the printer.

Grace Crowley is a publication based on letters sent to the Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting Grace Crowley (1890–1979) by friends, family and colleagues. Parts of those letters, which are now housed in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the State Library of New South Wales archives in Sydney, were transcribed and categorised by Riet Wijnen in subsections such as ‘Marital Status’, ‘Teaching’, ‘Hosting’, ‘Eurasia’, ‘X’, ‘Being A Woman’, ‘War’, ‘$’ and ‘Making Work’. The result is an alternative biography constructed solely through a living set of relations.

Canonically Speaking is the second title to appear on the First Drafts imprint, a zigzag in Kunstverein Publishing’s output that’s dedicated to publishing completed manuscripts that would otherwise, for an array of reasons, not see the light of day in this rough early form.

Central to Canonically Speaking is the idea that (female) life is an inherently surrealist experience. In this spirit, the ‘absurd’ is embraced as a means to speak out on themes such as self-image, spirituality, mental health and work. While slipping between poetry, comprehensive list-making, knock knock jokes and intertextual references, forms of recital and misinterpretation often take place, whereby characters quote and repeat sentences and words from a large variety of sources, jumping from the health benefits of whale blubber to court transcripts of Bill Clinton's impeachment to the plasma that is released when microwaving two grapes side by side.

In Sleigh Ride, a kinetically wondrous prose tale from poet Joe Fletcher, a father and his convalescing son plunge in carpentered, stallion-drawn sleigh slashing through lush forest, advancing through a sequence of diorama-like settings. The books ten chapters are interspersed with gouache collages by Kraków artist Mikołaj Moskal (REMMUS), rooted and riverine, functioning as curtains swept aside to reveal each chapter of Fletcher’s exhilarating nocturne.

There was a sleigh: jet black and gleaming.

The long steel runners curved at their termini like arabesques of ice. It was too dark to clearly discern the design on its side, but it was intricate, ornate, suggestive of cuneiform and the minarets of Cairo. Two orange lanterns mounted above the driver’s chair were each encircled by a cloud of gnats and moths. Draped in fabulously embroidered saddlecloths, Ajax and Hector stomped the earth.

Given that the only exit from the cellar was the door, hardly wider and taller than a man, I marveled at how father could have extracted his creation from his smithy and pointed it at the forest. But I said nothing as I climbed unaided onto the purple velvet couch.

Peter Downsbrough (New Jersey, US, 1940) lives and works in Brussels (Belgium). Associated with major international art movements such as minimal art, conceptual art, and visual poetry, his work spans across various mediums including sculpture, wall pieces and room pieces, books, work on paper, photography, film, and video. The work, which has affinities with architecture and typography, explores the traditional use of space and language, while criticizing power structures, e.g. urbanism, that influence social interactions and shape the landscape.

A special edition issue curated, designed and published by AVARIE, Paris and Labor Neunzehn, Berlin. It accompanies KAMERA SERIES, while it is an independent and valuable object to collect.

The central idea that informs and directs the booklets’ montage is the interplay between the concepts of addition and subtraction. This is achieved by unveiling a missing image in the screening or an unreleased second from an artist's film, expanded to 24 pages. Additionally, each booklet contains a piece directly removed from the show.

The editing establishes a dialogue between film frames and performed writings derived from texts, scripts, storyboards, and notes. The KAMERA exhibition is consequently extended into a physical space—the book—allowing for its widespread dissemination, complementing and contrasting with its potential online occurrence.

KAMERA SERIES is a screening program of experimental films, video art works and printed matter taking place in a former GDR building in Berlin. Each event showcases a retrospective of selected films by an artist and a small exhibition of his/her publications or works on paper over a span of 4 days.

This publication acts as a postscriptum to the exhibition project Through The Valley of The Nest of Spiders by Simon Asencio for SB34—The Pool in Brussels. Dedicated to Samuel R. Delany's sci-fi and sexutopia novel, the exhibition was conceived as a process of annotating the book, expanding on the ethics discussed by the characters of the novel through installation, performative readings and with the complicity of other artists and their works. This devious object pursues such an intertextual process, extending and disseminating the writings forged by the exhibition. 

Cette publication se présente comme le post-scriptum de l'exposition de Simon Asencio Through The Valley of The Nest of Spiders pour SB34—The Pool à Bruxelles. Dédiée au roman de science-fiction et de sexutopie de Samuel R. Delany dont elle porte le titre, l'exposition a été pensée comme un processus d'annotation de ce livre, développant les formes éthiques mises en pratique par les personnages du récit, à travers des installations, des lectures et situations performatives, avec la complicité d'autres artistes. Cet objet interlope poursuit ce processus intertextuel, en prolongeant et disséminant les écritures forgées par l'exposition.

With contributions by / avec les contributions de: Reinhold Aman, Henry Andersen, Simon Asencio, Jen Brodie, Chloe Chignell, Jack Cox, Samuel R. Delany, Diana Duta, Loucka Fiagan, gladys, Stefa Govaart, Sean Gurd, Pauline Hatzigeorgiou, Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Bernard-Marie Koltès, David J. Melnick, Matthieu Michaut, Margaret Miller, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Anouchka Oler Nussbaum, Grisélidis Réal, Páola Revenióti, Sabrina Seifried, Raphaëlle Serres, Valerie Solanas, sabrina soyer, Megan Susman.

Fugue is published on the occasion of the eponymous duo exhibition by artists Aaron Amar Bhamra and Céline Mathieu, presented at Jester in Genk, Belgium. The title, derived from the Latin fuga (flight), evokes both its musical and psychological meanings: a contrapuntal compositional technique and a state of dissociation. These dual connotations—aural and mental—resonate throughout the exhibition and this accompanying publication.

Céline Mathieu's work moves between the sensory and the conceptual, integrating multiple media to explore the circulation of thoughts and materials in relation to specific sites. Aaron Amar Bhamra's practice draws on recurring forms and materials to construct evolving personal and social archives, often reactivating exhibition spaces by engaging with their historical contexts.

In addition to documenting the exhibition, the publication features an introduction by Jester's artistic director Koi Persyn, a visual score of a sound composition by Charlie Usher, written contributions by Céline Mathieu, curator Eloise Sweetman, and researcher Johanna Schindler, as well as a series of analog photographs by Aaron Amar Bhamra.

Contributions by Koi Persyn, Céline Mathieu, Charlie Usher, Eloise Sweetman, Johanna Schindler, Aaron Amar Bhamra.

Austrian artist Aaron Amar Bhamra (born 1992) often procures exhibition spaces that subtly expose their systematics and physical experience by incorporating imprints reminiscent of other spaces or past exhibitions. He occasionally uses recurring forms and materials, weaving a site of shifting personal and social archives.

Céline Mathieu (born 1989) is a Belgian artist and writer. Her practice is often site and condition specific, using sound, scent, sculpture, performance, text and different materials in performative installations. The work is both sensory and conceptual. Her work looks into the circulation of thoughts and materials. Material and economic cycles merge with hyper-personal items, resulting in fluid work that cannot quite be pinned down.

When living things bloom & molder all in a heartskip, when they expand toward death, this is what worms hear.

Artist’s book of paintings by Mikołaj Moskal: gouache, archival paper elements, simple & meaningful captions. REMMUS is a graft of Podlasie earth-water-sky and Mikołaj’s pigments, heart, and intuition. Designed in close collaboration with graphic artist and designer Kaja Gliwa.

The paintings are bracketed by a poem each by Kuba Niklasiński (“Flows | Flaws”) and Stefan Lorenzutti (“What Worm Heard”), handwritten by Mikołaj in English and Polish.