Fugue

Andrew Berardini on Artificial Intelligence; Pepón Osorio; Arash Nassiri; Gloria E. Anzaldúa; Marcela Guerrero speaks with C. Ondine Chavoya; Daisy Lafarge; Dani Blanga Gubbay; Davide Stucchi speaks with Alex Bennett; Luca Lo Pinto on Hanuman Editions; Reynaldo Rivera & Abdellah Taïa; Jungle Books...

This issue comes with different covers, randomly distributed.

Regions surface often in this issue—across arts, tales, and gatherings of individuals and meanings—as a possibility to bypass the borders of nation-states and the meta-geographies of colonial modernity.

Slavs and Tatars; Hera Chan on Stephanie Comilang; Stephanie Bailey on Ho Tzu Nyen; Drifting into the Atmospheric by Sohrab Mohebbi; Lauren Cook contributes nine newly commissioned note-like fiction pieces; Asad Raza on Édouard Glissant; Mira Dayal in conversation with Shanzhai Lyric, TJ Shin, and jina valentine; Temporary Communities, Four Points on Radically Public Institutions by Elvira Dyangani Ose; A Signature Truer Than the Name by Dani Blanga Gubbay; tidbits: Ruoru Mou by Amy Jones; Virginia Ariu by Brit Barton; Bagus Pandega by Harry Burke; Ceidra Moon Murphy by Alex Bennett; Oshay Green by Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi; Shafei Xia in conversation with Danielle Shang; books by Christian Rattemeyer; Guest Design: Lamm & Kirch.

This issue comes with different covers, randomly distributed.

Mousse is a bimonthly contemporary art magazine. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format.

Ding Dong Bell is an invitation to cross the threshold into a world that belongs not only to the imagination, but also to the concrete possibility of a different way of inhabiting reality. In this space, details weave together landscapes and reveal characters, hinting at unexpected encounters in a continuous search for shapes and textures, in a chromatic immersion and a sequence of perspectives on a syncretic and archaic world, on an alchemical pictorial practice, where the complex figurative iconography of living beings and cosmic constellations is progressively enriched with tonal stratifications and semantic density.

The collection of paintings outlines universes in which plants, animals, human beings, and subtle presences coexist outside any pre-established hierarchy. The forms cross each other lymphatically and transform without ever being fully accomplished, metamorphically generating a visual ecosystem based on the continuous exchange of substances and the visceral mixture of matter. In this fluid chorus, everything is constantly redefined in the process of becoming, yet without losing its identity. What emerges is a symbolic horizon that becomes a universal hope: an invitation to living beings, witnesses of contemporaneity, to cultivate mutual respect and nurture a providential alliance, where the different planes of existence vibrate in resonance.

The titles of the works, inspired by traditional English nursery rhymes, and the accompanying texts take the form of ancient and surreal chants, capable of evoking both the childhood of the world and its possible future. Their language, closer to illuminated manuscripts than to linear narration, constructs a vivid imaginary world in which whirlwinds and impulses evoke the idea of original totality: at the end of this long succession of worlds, everything seems to tend towards a single, shared substance of being.

Barbara Cammarata (born in 1977) lives and works in Catania (Sicily).

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed grapples with the poetics-pleasures-politics of Black knowledge production, information technologies and belief formation. Her work looks at knowledge and how it is created, embodied, stored, cataloged, hidden, learned, and also unlearned, with particular focus on facets of incompleteness, information (il)legibility and the use of seemingly error-ridden image and text data.
Rasheed works primarily with paper and vinyl that she attaches to walls and public spaces, creating what she describes as "ecosystems of iterative and provisional projects." Based on a 1974 poem of the same name by American writer Lucille Clifton, her exhibition "i am not done yet" deals with questions of incomplete knowledge and continuous learning through "Black storytelling" and "Islamic mysticism." At the same time, the titular sentence "i am not done yet" can also be understood as an assertive, declarative statement in its own right.

This artist book is published on the occasion of Kameelah Janan Rasheed's first ever institutional exhibition in Germany at Kunstverein Hannover in 2022.

"When I think about the density of language, I imagine the material presence of the language in space. But I also hope there is acknowledgment that no sentence is a simple sentence. Every sentence holds meaning, exceeds meaning, moves in different directions simultaneously." - Kameelah Janan Rasheed

Texts by Sergey Harutoonian, Kathleen Rahn, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Legacy Russell

The first monograph dedicated to the Neapolitan feminist and pacifist artists' collective: unpublished documents, images, photographs, and manifestos are accompanied by new creative, political, and historical contributions, evoking the collective joy of Le Nemesiache's history so as to bring a sense of myth back into the world, rewriting and embodying it anew.

Nemesiache is an informal feminist group co-founded in Naples in 1970 by the multidisciplinary and visionary artist and writer Lina Mangiacapre (1946-2002). The collective, which included up to twelve women (centered around Claudia Aglione, Fausta Base, Silvana Campese, Consuelo Campone, Conni Capobianco, Bruna Felletti, Anna Grieco, and Teresa Mangiacapre), fostered an experimental artistic practice and a way of being in the world rooted in feminism, mythology, folktales, sci-fi, and radical imagination, while also introducing "transfeminism" in the early '80s. 

Throughout their long-lasting practice spanning several decades, the group retrieved an androgynous mythosophy to transcend art as mere representation and challenge the feminine as a modern identity category. Their distinct transformative approach within both Italian and Western feminist art history led not only to the emergence of an interdisciplinary practice—encompassing film, performance, writing, rituals, poetry, music, collage, costumes, protests, and conferences—but also the creation of a new political language, grounded in cosmological creativity and justice through mythological rituals.

Edited by Sonia D'Alto.
Texts by Chiara Bottici, Federica Bueti, Cairo Clarke, Sonia D'Alto, Giulia Damiani, Giusi Palomba, Imma Tralli & Roberto Pontecorvo, Elvira Vannini, Giovanna Zapperi, Arnisa Zeqo.

The third Publiek Park publication – Walking Guide – combines essays, archival fragments, and artistic voices to trace both the exhibition route at Plantentuin Meise and the historical path that led from the creation of the Jardin Botanique in the heart of Brussels to its relocation outside the city. Following the logic of a quilt, layering different perspectives, textures, and timelines, the book connects artistic narratives with history and reflections on urban gardens, public space, and botanical imaginaries. Just like the exhibition, the publication offers not merely a portrait of a place, but a reflection on the multiplicity that defines it.

Alongside documentation of the exhibition and contributions from the participating artists, this year’s Walking Guide features writings by Nikolaos Akritidis, Denis Diagre-Vanderpelen, Koen Es, Lana Jones, François Makanga, Noam Youngrak Son, and Jean Watt. The two parks are portrayed in photographs by Michiel de Cleene, with book design by Victor Verhelst and Corbin Mahieu bringing all of these elements together.

This publication is made with the generous support of Plantentuin Meise and all partners.

This eighth instalment of BFTK is on letters and letters. It takes the double meaning of this word as its point of dispatch, inviting recipients to think through and respond to — directly and indirectly — ideas around correspondence, addressing and alphabets. What it means to be in correspondence with somebody, the initiation and continuation of this communicative exchange and what happens when it is severed or lost. How to write directly towards a you, to you; to a particular reader, object, locale. The volume is littered with letters. There are letters about letters, letters to letters, letters that crease, fold, tear and rip, letters that are sent and lost, found and read. There are letters that pile up, their combinations arranged and rearranged to form comprehensive linguistic logics, and there are letters that are simply letters. Contributions sit in eight-page signatures, of which there are twenty-six in total. Of the eight hundred bound copies, twenty-six are left unbound, returned to discrete correspondence, loose abécédaire units for exchange — letters to be leafed through and addressed once more.

PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR
SHADOW IN THAT MIRROR
Chang Yuchen
(pp.1–8, A)

BESTIARY FOR A NON-GENETIC DESCENDANT
Bhanu Kapil
(pp.9–16, B)

THROW STUFF AWAY
Hannah Regel
(pp.17–24, C)

THE MOON HATH XXX DAYS:
LETTERS FOR LETTERS
Helen Marten
(pp.25–32, D)

WHAT DOES THE LOSS FEEL LIKE?
Meg Miller
(pp.33–48, E, F)

LIGHT UP THE A
Kate Briggs
(pp.49–56, G)

THE POSTCODE CONNECTION
Rebecca Ross
(pp.57–72, H, I)

(LETTER) TO S… LABYRINTH-CORTEX
Michèle Métail, trans. Thea Petrou
(pp.73–80, J)

RACKETY CORRESPONDENCES /
A CORRESPONDING RACKET
Nisha Ramayya
(pp.81–96, K, L)

THE COIN OF THE REALM
Lucie Elven
(pp.97–104, M)

UNFOLDING FOLDED FANTASIES:
A CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE SEATED SCRIBE
Fatema Abdoolcarim
(pp.105–112, N)

DEAR DEAREST DEAR MOTHER
Alice Butler
(pp.113–120, O)

/ DON’T BOTHER THE CREASE
Tice Cin
(pp.121–128, P)

FEELING LETTERS, SEEING BLUE
Gemma Blackshaw
(pp.129–144, Q, R)

LINES OF GRACE AND DISGRACE
Francis Haselden
(pp.145–152, S)

AN ABC OF MIMICRY
Jeffrey Stuker & Jan Tumlir
(pp.153–176, T, U, V)

ADDRESS
Céline Mathieu
(pp.177–184, W)

MY VOICE FOLDS YOU
Thea Petrou
(pp.185–192, X)

A LONG DISTANCE LULLABY
Vibeke Mascini
(pp.193–200, Y)

DEBT OF GOLD CAN BE PAID OFF,
DEBT OF KINDNESS IS CARRIED OVER DEATH
Chang Yuchen
(pp.201–208, Z)

LETTERS ON LETTERS
FROM LETTERS ON LETTERS
Matthew Stuart
(covers)

The first issue of the editorial discursive space for the Bergen Assembly triennial, conceived by Saâdane Afif, explores the identity, role and position of the Professor.

Side Magazine is conceived as a site of research for the fourth edition of Bergen Assembly convened by Saâdane Afif. Yasmine d'O., who has been invited as curator of the upcoming edition, will be the executive editor. 
Side Magazine is dedicated to the seven characters in The Heptahedron, a play written by the French poet, essayist, and scholar Thomas Clerc in 2016. In order of apparition these characters are the Professor, the Moped Rider, the Bonimenteur, the Fortune Teller, an Acrobats, the Coalman, and the Tourist.

The first issue of Side Magazine is dedicated to the figure of the Professor. It features seven articles, each of which explores the identity, role, and position of the Professor. Contributors include Uli Aigner, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Jörg Heiser, Christian Nyampeta, Marjorie Senechal, and Vivian Slee. 
Seven issues of Side Magazine will be released in the run up to the opening of Bergen Assembly 2022, opening September 8. A special eighth issue will be published after the opening days. This, combined with the existing seven issues as a collection, constitute the exhibition catalogue and guide.

Saâdane Afif (born 1970 in Vendôme, France) creates installations made up of unexpected encounters between objects. These creations, of uncertain status, oscillate between function and symbol, between art and design, and provoke shifts of meaning that engage a reflection on today's industrial society.

Who is the Oriental Cyborg? asks Aditi Kini in this collection of notes, jokes, and queries into the provenance of a creature designed for labor, 3-D printed in the technoscientific post-colonies, modeled on old automata. Race is a technology, that we know, and technology can be raced — so why inquire into this at all? Perhaps this, the Oriental Cyborg, is a fantasy more than a memory, or an echo more than a form — or just an essayist’s extraction of personal anguish and humor from globalist decay.

Taking on the form of historical analysis / lyrical essay / documentary poem / experimental buzzword / positionality statement, this chapbook and its titular character might still be an elusive mystery even after reading.

“’What is a ghost but a person removed from corporeality?’ This is one among layers of questions Aditi Kini poses in Oriental Cyborg, a lyrical excavation into survival in the era of techno racial capitalism, and its “deleting touch” that so easily voids—reduces to faceless services—the exploited individuals performing various acts of techno-labor. A grieved searching drives this hybrid essay, which feels urgent and necessary as threats from AI grab headlines. This work compels us to see our culture’s love affair with technological progress as a means for continued colonization and domination. It also reminds us, and celebrates, that those erased don’t stay silent forever. We privileged may not be able to hear them yet, but those who are listening know. They roar.” — Allison Cobb

“In the mirror of Aditi Kini’s Oriental Cyborg, I become the monster—a hopeless automaton, an intelligence stripped of roar. With titanium-threaded theory, Kini radiantly stitches together the ideal Asian working machine. Get your own Oriental cyborg today: super dazzling and sexy, historically embroidered, an oracular truth who never tires, never complains, forever mute, what perfection!” — Lily Hoàng

Aditi Kini is an undisciplined writer. They’ve done both NYC and the MFA (at UC San Diego). They were a finalist/alternate for the 2020-22 Jerome Award for Literature. They edit Lumpenpockets, “a nonquarterly sick rag.” Read their words in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, The New York Times, and elsewhere. They’re at work on multiple projects, all at once. They are blessed with two dogs, Lucy the Happy and Charly Kong, who make life worth living.

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.

Contributions by: Nicole-Antonia Spagnola, Georgia Sagri, John Kelsey, Matthew Pang, Cathy Wilkes, Sarah Rapson, Nick Irvin, Gene Beery, Anne Dressen, Anne Pontégnie, Jacqueline Mesmaeker, Sara Deraedt, Anne Rorimer, Kari Rittenbach, Olga Balema, Maria Nordman, Louise Lawler, Julie Ault, Martin Beck, Adrian Morris, Matt Browning, John Miller, Envers Hadzijaj, Enzo Shalom, Bedros Yeretzian, Morag Keil, Helmut Draxler, Gianna Surangkanjanajai, Steve Cannon, Rae Armentrout, Zoe Hitzig, Pierre Guyotat, Lola Sinreich, Fanny Howe, Hélène Fauquet, Marie Angeletti, Richard Hawkins, Andy Robert, Alexander García Düttmann, Daniel Horn, El Hadji Sy, Henrik Olesen, Aurélien Potier, Richard John Jones, Stéphane Barbier Bouvet, Nora Schultz, Peter Fend, Megan Francis Sullivan, Jill Johnston, Sturtevant, Tonio Kröner, Bernard Bazile, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Jérome Pantalacci, Gérard Traquandi, Gladys Clover, Maria Wutz, Jimmie Durham, Richard Sides, Camilla Wills, Michael Callies, Steven Warwick, Matthew Langan-Peck, Dan Graham, Nina Könnemann, Hans Christian Dany, Valérie Knoll, Win McCarthy, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Anna Rubin, Heji Shin, Michèle Graf & Selina Grüter, Inka Meißner, Simone Forti, Morgan O’Hara, Angharad Williams, Ye Xe, Lily van der Stokker, Yuki Kimura, Peter Wächtler, Eva Steinmetz, Michael Van den Abeele, Marc Kokopeli, Bradley Kronz, Robert Grosvenor, Samuel Jeffery, Charlotte Houette, Adam Martin, Wade Guyton, Chloe Truong-Jones.

Edited by Marie Angeletti with Gianmaria Andreetta and Camilla Wills.

Printed in December 2022.
416 pages, Edition of 840.
© 2022 Claude Balls Int. / the author(s).

A comprehensive overview of the unique work of the Italian artist born in 1931 and "discovered" late on the international scene, with numerous texts and an interview.

Published after the eponymous exhibition at Consortium Museum, Dijon, April 26th – September 8th 2024.

Born in Naples, Italy, in 1931, Isabella Ducrot is a young artist with a young career. Like many women of her generation, she moved into art after raising her children. Her formative years were marked by continuous travels with her late husband, during which they amassed hundreds of Persian miniatures and rare antique textiles of many kinds.

Contributions by Franck Gautherot & Seungduk Kim, Verena Lueken, Tobias Pils, Tschabalala Self, Andrea Viliani, Miranda Fengyuan Zhang.