DEARS No. 1 TO.GATHER

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.

Alice Notley is considered by many to be among the most outstanding of living American poets. Notley's work has always been highly narrative, and her new book mixes short lyrics with long, expansive lines of poetry that often take the form of prose sentences, in an effort "to change writing completely." The title piece, a folksong-like lament, makes a unified tale out of many stories of many people; the middle section, "The Black Trailor," is a compilation of noir fictions and reflections; while the shorter poems of "Hemostatic" range from tough lyrics to sung dramas. Full of curative power, music, and the possibility of transformation, In the Pines is a genre- bending book from one of our most innovative writers.

A visionary anthology that examines and reimagines the archive as a form of collective record-keeping, featuring work by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Douglas Kearney, Brenda Shaughnessy, Mahogany L. Brown, and many new and emerging voices. 

Inspired by Naima Yael Tokunow's research into the Black American record (and its purposeful scarceness), Permanent Record asks, what do we gain when we engage with our flawed cultural systems of remembrance? How does questioning and creating a deep relationship to the archive, and in some cases, spinning thread from air where there is none, allow us to prefigure the world that we want? Including reflections on identity and language, diasporic and first generation lived experiences, and responses to the ways the record upholds harm and provides incomplete understandings, Permanent Record hopes to reframe what gets to be a part of collective remembrance, exploring "possibilities for speculating beyond recorded multiplicity."

Gabrielle Civil's Experiments in Joy celebrates black feminist collaborations and solos in essays, letters, performance texts, scores, images, and more. Following her explosive debut Swallow the Fish, Civil now documents her work with From the Hive, No. 1 Gold, and Call & Response—whose collaborative Call inspired the title. The book also features her solo encounters with artists and writers, ancestors and audiences. Here you will find black girlhood, grief, ghosts, girls in their bedrooms, lots of books, dancing, reading, falling in love, fighting back, and flying. With lots of heart and the help of her friends, Civil keeps reckoning with performance, art and life.

FROM THE PROP TO THE INSIDE gathers texts on the concept of the prop—as object, requisite and support—on stage and in the exhibition space. The starting points of this book are objects and installations of the artist Michaela Schweighofer, which deal with the stage as a platform and the sculpture as a prop.

The authors are friends: artists, critics and curators whom she has invited to write a text at the interface of their and her practice. The contributions within take on multiple forms; letters, essays and interviews—they are intended to create a theoretical-subjective anthology that makes visible the phenomena of the private as symptoms of the structural, as well as to provide a direct insight into contemporary artistic creation.

Text: Juliane Bischoff, Veronika Eberhart, Cornelia Lein, Cathrin Mayer, Gianna Virgina Prein, Agnieszka Roguski, Juliane Saupe, Michaela Schweighofer & Chloe Stead

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.