Grace Crowley

‘Second Thoughts’, co-published by Kunstverein, Amsterdam, and Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, follows Kunstverein’s earlier publication, Paper Exhibition: Selected Writings by Raimundas Malašauskas, as the second in a series featuring the work of an author whose writing has never before been collected in a dedicated, single object. This collection of essays spans multiple research disciplines, including Angie Keefer’s own biography, and runs parallel to her artistic practice. All of the texts were commissioned and published previously, but many have been rewritten for this book. Keefer deftly brings together technological enquiry with artistic production and quotidian human experience.

I half hold that my life is a fine ride as long as I don’t attempt to navigate. The least critical way to describe this outlook is “bemused fatalism,” and as coping mechanisms go, there’s much to be said for keeping that faith, but so far it hasn’t proved compatible with ambitious ideas like writing a book, though this may turn out to be the first page of a first chapter, in which case I’ve changed my life and overruled fate with you as my witness.
—Angie Keefer

Edited by Maxine Kopsa and Yana Foqué (Managing Editor)
Designed by Scott Ponik

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.

Six years in the making, 'BLOOD' is the first comprehensive English translation of the poems of Danish art historian, communist activist, and writer R. Broby-Johansen.

Translated, edited, and designed by Line-Gry Hørup, Broby-Johansen’s poems are accompanied by a series of full colour photographs by Amsterdam photographer Johannes Schwartz, which document the pair’s trip to Brody-Johansen’s recently established archive. So recent, that they were in fact the first to view it. 'BLOOD' was made possible with the support of Stimuleringsfonds and the Danish Arts Foundation.

In 1971, Michael Morris and Vincent Tarsov—founders of the Vancouver-based artist network Image Bank—invited Eric Metcalfe, Gary Lee Nova, Glenn Lewis and Paul Oberst to create their own, unique alphabet. NowForty years later, with the permission of the participating artists and the help of Image Bank, these historic silk-screened alphabets have finally been published together. The Alphabet Book is designed by Marc Hollenstein, who was inspired to reinitiate the alphabet publication project after having a conversation with Glenn Lewis during the opening of Lewis’ retrospective exhibition at Kunstverein back in 2014.

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

Catalog is a serial publication about cataloging, written by Lieven Lahaye and designed by Ott Metusala. This is Catalog issue 17, ‘Introduction’, it’s part of a sub-series, researching the life, work and near invisibility of writer Duncan Smith (1954–1991).

At midday, March 17th, 2020, Macron’s government decided to place France in suspended animation. Total confinement. The first in a series of strict debilitating lockdowns to combat the spiralling Covid-19 pandemic. This first confinement lasted 55 days. It ended on 11th May 2020. The first part of a dramatic trilogy.

One month in, in April 2020, David West picked up a box of pastels that used to belong to his mother. He had had them for many years but never used them. New to the medium, locked in his Paris studio, he sets himself to the task. Naturally, violence ensues. Folk horror. Animals are disembowelled. Faceless sexualised female bodies perform. Screaming faces educate. Covered figures stand motionless. Shadows. Hooded beings populate. Stabbing, scratching, fading, softening, sforzando. Crescendo. Schadenfreude.

Occasional respite comes when West ventures outside - andante - but the externalised screaming pushes him back in. Hagazussa. Ghosts from West’s past, real and unreal, appear and disappear, figures and shapes, compositional arcs, a slimy snaking emerald hand parts the waves for colour to gush forth a new language verde fosforescente, worm purple, rosa shocking, vermillion, cobalt, ultra-black.

This book reproduces a small selection of some 300 works, in chronological order, in an attempt to document time, evolution, revolt, epiphany and joy. Joy in colour, horror, form, symphony, and finally, West’s visions of a new utopia. Marcato. Decrescendo.

Softcover (21cm x 29.7cm)
100 Pages
50 copies
Signed and numbered by David West

Evol/Love is a project in three parts: a billboard series, installation and publication connecting 160 subtitled movie stills that all contain the word Love.

A collage of voices and definitions arranged in alphabetical order, from ‘Love is where you find it’ (A: A Date with Judy, US 1948, 00:22:37) to ‘But even if it’s a little late, love has a way of coming back to you’(Y: Yeonae/Love is a Crazy Thing, KR 2005, 01:38:02), but read backwards to sound like its antonym: evil.

Self-published: Stichting Mei, Amstelveen, NL 2020
19,6 x 19,6 x 2,3 cm
200 pages, 160 images
Japanese bound, buckram cover with flaps
Offset on pink paper (interior), screenprinted buckram (cover)

Graphic Design Vilmantas Žumbys, Vilnius

Edition of 666 copies