Import – Export, Friperie

Natural Enemies of Books is a response to the groundbreaking 1937 publication 'Bookmaking on the Distaff Side', which brought together contributions by women printers, illustrators, authors, typographers, and typesetters, highlighting the print industry’s inequalities and proposing a takeover of the history of the book. Edited by feminist graphic design collective MMS, the publication includes newly commissioned essays and poems, conversations with former typesetters Inger Humlesjö, Ingegärd Waaranperä, Gail Cartmail, and Megan Downey, and reprints of the original book and other publications.

This ambitious book brings together a wide international selection of new and recent writing by educators and practitioners who question the rules and hierarchies of graphic design education today. It holds a vivid mirror up to the ways in which graphic design is imagined, taught, received, and reproduced. Edited by two designer-educators (Brad Haylock and Luke Wood), 'One and Many Mirrors' provides an urgent overview of the field of contemporary graphic design education for all those concerned with its past, present, and possible futures.

The human eye is designed with a flaw that is common to all other vertebrates: we have a blind spot, the punctum caecum, a small patch on the inside of our boisterous orbs of vision with no photoreceptors. A blind spot can also be psychological or social. We tend to be biased towards situations or people we cannot fully ‘see through’. How can we enlighten our blind spots? What kind of artistic practices can inspire new readings of history, art, music, or even politics?

With contributions by Bent Vande Sompele, Pierre-Antoine Vettorello & Stella Nyanchama Okemwa, and Haseeb Ahmed.  Design by Ward Heirwegh. Chief Editor: Zeynep Kubat. Editorial Board: Mekhitar Garabedian, Caroline Dumalin, Saskia Van der Gucht, Paul Hendrikse.

Métaphoriques Cannibales est un recueil transdisciplinaire, où le cannibalisme est pris comme métaphore, comme un concept ouvert aux analogies, comme anthropopoiésis et boîte noire, et comme fait social total.

Peuplent cet endroit des individus qui s’abreuvent de symboles, d’imaginaires, d’occulte, d’intime et ne craignent pas d’en recracher des images et idées d’une extrême violence, tout en constituant paradoxalement l’univers de leur production comme “safe space”.

Le cannibale est une spécialité belge, composée d’un toast recouvert de filet américain (une variante belge du steak tartare).

Transgressif et provocant, c’est ici un paroxysme de l’altérité et fantasme de l’Autre, qui permet par reflet de nous contempler nous-même.
La vie n’a de saveur que pour devenir viande.

La transgression, c’est aussi aller plus loin. Oser aller plus loin. Plus loin que les normes communément admises qui sont toutes relatives et violentes.
SUBSTANCE MOLLE ET SANGUINE

Nous cherchons des outils spéculatifs pour pænser notre monde.STIMULI VISUELS HOMOGÉNÉISÉS PAR LE ROUGE

C’est d’un brouillard polysémique empli de chimères, d’un tabou lardé de malaise et d’angoisse, bien au chaud dans un ventre plein de plasma, que ɴon-ᴀ émet ce recueil transdisciplinaire.

Dans la large brèche que nous propose l’ouverture de notre thématique, s’engouffre une multitude d’approches : de la chansonnette, au récit spéculatif, de la définition critique, à la BD vorarephile, du reportage photo, à la poésie expérimentale, de la théorie d’écologie spéculatif, à la performance eroticocculte.

Explorons les obscures profondeurs de nos éthiques pour y trouver les fondations de nos ontologies... se mordre d’une balle dans le pied.

Contributeur·rice·x·s
aariel136, Maurane-Amel Arbouz, Nina Bigot,Mathilde Block, Juliano Caldeira, Rémi Calmont, Rouge Cendre, Chloé Clemen, Sam Ectoplasm, Robin Faymonville, Gabriel René Franjou, Tristan Gac, Léo Gillet, Charlotte Guerlus, Théophile Gürtin, KarenDK, Olga Mathey, Louise Mervelet, Jean-Baptiste Molina, Hélène Alix Mourrier, Carole Mousset, Lucy Ozon, Angel Raymond, Andres Komatsu & Camila Roriz, Paradoc sale, Manon Schaefle, Yan Tomaszewski, Tom Valckenaere, Chloé Viton, xX-Sukuba-Xx, Zelig, Janna Zhiri

FUGUES is a study of objects. Elements repeat and imitate one another like a polyphonic canon of voices narrating stories of domestic confinement in looped time.

With images by photographer Nicole Maria Winkler & texts by artist Issy Wood, writer Ella Plevin, model Freja Beha Erichsen and curator Elaine Tam.

Self-published in 1968, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves collects dozens of poems written by Martin Wong between 1966 and 1968. Hand-written in a signature calligraphic style that he was just beginning to develop, the poems ebb and flow visually across the page, much like the fluctuating characters, scenes, and moods that inhabit them. This was Wong’s first book of poetry and it contains a double cover showcasing intricate drawings of skeletal angels and other tableaux, as well as a folded, looseleaf broadsheet containing two poems and a drawing of a boney leaf.

The poems were written during a relatively free period for the artist, shortly after he dropped out of Berkeley and began exploring San Francisco at the height of the hippy movement. The poems range from surrealist and pastoral descriptions of the urban subculture that surrounded him to downtrodden, travel-weary biographical entries that are both lonely and tender. Footprints, Poems, and Leaves functions like a journal capturing Wong’s tumultuous life in this period, which included being arrested at a queer, drug-fueled house party (along with Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn) and a stay in a mental institution in late 1967 and early 1968. Around the time of the book’s publication, Wong enrolled in Humboldt State University to finish his degree, beginning a new chapter for the artist.

Despite the dark backdrops of many of the works, the writing displays a playfulness with form and language and a sense of humor that can be seen throughout Wong’s later work as well. Altogether, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves creates a rich tapestry of visual poetry that is both a product of its time and the budding artistic mind of a young Martin Wong.

In collaboration with Laurent Poleo-Garnier, NIGHTNIGHT is an archive of images and texts from different sources addressing the theme of the night. Over the book as a party that degenerates with fatigue, alcohol and other stimulants, images and layout deteriorate, the subjects get tired, the vision is cloudy...

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.