The Medium

‘Katrina Palmer’s The Touch Report asks a question that remains in motion for the duration of this extraordinary book. What is here?  What’s still here?  Here, Palmer writes an account of subjugation that is gestural, an on-going sequence of expulsions and punctures…  Is there a kind of writing so transient it’s barely there?  In Palmer’s writing, we encounter an ethics of presence and form that is deeply moving, completely and unbearably real.’ — Bhanu Kapil, author of How To Wash A Heart

An artist is invited to take up residency in a gallery filled with historical paintings. They are meticulously crafted, maintained, and revered. She begins to make an audit of the paintings, outlining the depictions of violence, subjugation and physical tension on public display. Eleven arrows in a torso, someone’s hair cut as they sleep, a man nailed to a cross. Horses, decapitations, memorable lobsters. 

Written in sparse, urgent fragments that invite closer reading, The Touch Report, turns the reader’s gaze into the dark, to question our notions of ‘civilisation’. 

Want to see something real, says the artist as she creeps through the darkness, keeping a log.

Katrina Palmer was commissioned by the National Gallery, London, as part of the 2024 National Gallery Artist in Residence Programme in collaboration with the Contemporary Art Society, generously supported by Anna Yang and Joseph Schull. This book is published as a result of research made during this residency.

Through The Tinnitus explores spatial and sonic phenomena through psychoacoustics—the scientific study of how sound is perceived psychologically. Using a version of the pioneering Soviet-designed ANS photo-optical synthesiser, images taken in the artist’s locale, the Jamhuri and Sabaki Neighborhoods of Nairobi, are processed and converted into graphical or drawn sound. In the sound work accompanying the book, these ekphrastic rhythms hum to the sonic backdrop of political violence and utopian dreams. 

A free download code for the album will be provided on purchase of the book.

Kamwangi Njue is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and experimental beatmaker from Nairobi, Kenya.

Through The Tinnitus is published as part of Arrhythmia, a series curated for Book Works by Katrina Palmer.

Andrew E. Colarusso’s Black Body Index takes the concept of the ‘ideal black body’ as its guiding object. In thermodynamics and physics, the ideal black body is a theoretical object that absorbs and emits all incident radiation. No such object exists, though a few come close…

Told in a mercurial constellation of fragments that move between memoir, poetry and thermodynamic theory, Andrew E. Colarusso’s Black Body Index inspects the ‘thingification’ of an ideal black life and refutes it—insisting on the freedom to live beyond the demands of an enforced objecthood.

Black Body Index is published as part of Arrhythmia, a series curated for Book Works by Katrina Palmer.

Andrew E. Colarusso was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City. He occasionally writes things when not tending to his bookstore, Taylor & Co. Books, in the Ditmas Park neighbourhood of Brooklyn.

‘One Shape of the Language: Cyrillic Archives’ is an artist’s book documenting Inna Kochkina’s research into the history, style, and politics of traditional Cyrillic.

This research was born from Kochkina’s self-reflective curiosity about the relationship between cultural heritage and typography and evolved into an examination of the socio-political role of traditional Cyrillic. An ancient script, Cyrillic has been used to express various forms of cultural and territorial domination and continues to serve as an imperialist tool, having long been deployed in support of Slavic nationalism both in Russia and in the former USSR territories. 

This publication is the result of Kochkina’s own research into and engagement with archives of typography, as well as conversations with anti-colonial activists, artists, and historians who interrogate traditional Cyrillic and its relationship to colonial power. 

Alongside conducting scholarly research, Kochkina also produced drawings in response to archives of traditional Cyrillic. Making these drawings constituted a form of “studying by making.” With these efforts she has sought to construct an anti-colonial feminist narrative, employing both typographic artifacts and ‘patriarchal’ letterforms.

To make her drawings, Kochkina took samples from these low quality typographic archives, enlarging and transforming them into unexpected graphic shapes that were then recorded in a series of experimental prints. The drawing, collating and contact printing process that she followed allowed her to document and reveal the qualities lent to historical artifacts by digital noise. Through this working method she sought to rethink both the subject of her work as well as traditional approaches to type design practice. This book presents the prints in a roughly chronological sequence, poetically portraying Kochkina’s complex relationship with her native script. Variously precise, messy, and destructive, these works ultimately convey a series of “imaginary” shapes through which to reinterpret traditional Cyrillic of the past and present.

DEARS is a print magazine for transversal writing practices at the crossroads of art, poetry and experimental writing. It brings together authors and writers from different backgrounds and constitutes a dedicated platform for texts escaping the usual genres and disciplinary boundaries.

DEARS promotes the exploration of new forms of language as a way to foster new forms of living together, and emphasizes the growing relevance of trans- versal writing practices in this respect.

DEARS no. 5 / Summer 2023 / ever.over

With texts by Diaty Diallo, Douglas Keaney, Dzifa Benson, Sevinç Çalhanoğlu, Jana Vanecek, and an epigraph by Trinh T. Minh-ha.

An account of Spring Brakers, a project launched during the so-called First Wave. Spring Brakers was an online platform hosting video performances by a different artist each week alongside podcasts on various topics focusing on other labels or musical persuasions.

For this publication, all of the musicians who participated in the project are profiled, resulting in a grounded and oddly inspiring collection of testimonies of how artistic practices are shaped by an era that is still ongoing.

Artists include locals such as Bear Bones, Lay Low, Quanta Qualia, Vica Pacheco, KRAMP, Orphan Fairytale, and more, as well as far-out friends like Ka Baird, MSHR, Jung An Tagen, Eric Frye, and so on.

Each profile has a handy QR to redirect to each artist's video, and each copy includes a code to download a compilation made especially for the publication.

Auditing Intimacy is a collection of postal correspondence, photographs and declassified documents produced by Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly between 2015 and 2020 under the banner of their shared practice The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence. In a spirit of transparency and full disclosure, the publication contains a certified, independent and critical audit of the practice by Alicja Melzacka. The project was undertaken to commemorate the fifth anniversary of O.J.A.I.

Edited by Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly
Artworks by Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly
Essay by Alicja Melzacka
Design by Zero Desk
Documentation by Pauline Miko
Published by Fantôme Verlag
174 pages

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence is the collaborative practice of artists Chris Dreier (DE) and Gary Farrelly (IRE/BE). The work is fuelled by a recurring obsession with architecture, infrastructure, finance,  institutional power and DIY ritualism. O.J.A.I. pursues a strategy of self-institutionalisation where tools and codified rules of engagement are appropriated from economic and political infrastructures for the purposes of structuring intimacy and conjuring autonomy.

Sore is a serial anthology that brings together authors whose writing practices oscillate between the genres of diary keeping and fiction. For the second issue of Sore, ten contributors – both authors and visual artists – were invited to collectively develop their work through a series of informal critiques over the course of five months.

In the first issue of Sore, observations of everyday life intertwined with memories and cultural references to denote the significance of a certain soreness we each carry within us as we negotiate the various challenges of social existence. In this second ensemble, seven new authors widen our understanding of the term ‘sore’ by underlining a need to orient one’s gaze towards what’s hidden underneath, to enter the anatomy of all these necessary contortions and u-turns one performs in order to escape the grip of expected compliance.

With contributions from: Mathilde Heuliez, Lisa Lagova, Muyeong Kim, Nour Ben Saïd, Masha Ryabova, Adrienne Chung, Richard Dmitri Hees, Oscar Le Merle, Morra Kozlitina, Tindra Eliason, Helmer Stuyt, Ilya Stasevich, Kristina Stallvik.

Published by cover crop, Mathilde Heuliez & Lisa Lagova.