OEI #94-95 Geografier [Geographies]

Once more, an astonishing issue of OEI – a thrilling, compelling, stimulating feast of ideas regarding publishing and the book: the perfect big companion to read and hug in bed while the virus spreads outside.

Bringing together contributions from circa 130 publishing structures, publishing communities, magazines, small press endeavors, artists, poets, writers, editors, theoreticians, curators, scholars, and art bookstores, OEI # 86–87 reflects upon the challenges, pressures and possibilities of publishing and creating publics in different contexts and places in a time of far-reaching – economical, medial, political, social, technological – transformations.

The potential and the versatility of publishing open it to a diversity of practices and approaches in the arts, but as an eminently social form of art, a collective or micro-collective work with shared responsibilities, it is also a never-ending process of “crafting a variegated approach to how you create, publish, distribute, and build a social ecosystem around your efforts”, of trying to “build up and strengthen the community around these printed forms” (Temporary Services).

It is the conviction of OEI #86–87 that print has the power to play an important part in the construction of social spaces, of a social world. As Benjamin Thorel puts it in one of the essays in the issue, “conceiving of the dynamics of publishing as making publics as well as making things public is not a pun – insofar as the artists/publishers encompass, beyond the book itself, its possible ‘lives’, imagining the different spaces, and the different people, amongst whom a publication will circulate.” This is what Michael Warner has called “a public [as] poetic worldmaking”, implying “that all discourse or performance addressed to a public must characterize the world in which it attempts to circulate, projecting for that world a concrete and livable shape, and attempting to realize that world through address.”

This is also, as stressed by Annette Gilbert and others, what can make publishing such an active force, a force co-constituting texts and publications and publics. Indeed, with Michalis Pichler, it is tempting to say that in publishing as practice – perhaps more than in any other art field – “artists have been able to assert the aesthetic value of their own socio-politically informed concerns and to engage, often under precarious conditions, in cultural activities fully aligned with their political values.”

OEI #86–87 also includes sections on and with contemporary poetry from Canada; Fluxus publishing; Krister Brandt/Astrid Gogglesworth; Kalas på BORD (Öyvind Fahlström); Lars Fredrikson; Claude Royet-Journoud’s poetry magazines; Carl Einstein; Gail Scott; Ållebergshändelser; OEI #79: edit/publish/distribute!; “det offentligas försvinnande” and many many other things. [publisher’s note]

Design by Konst & Teknik

Ernesto de Sousa (1921–1988) was a major and multifaceted figure from the Portuguese avant-garde—artist, poet, critic, essayist, curator, editor, filmmaker, and a promoter of experimental ideas and artistic expressions. 
Reflecting questions of hierarchy, authorship, and the complexity of framing or dividing within the multiple and complementary practices of Ernesto de Sousa—whose motto “Your Body is My Body, My Body is Your Body” serves as a poetic manifesto—this publication explores the various aspects of his oeuvre (visual, poetical, and theoretical) and his outstanding inventiveness of concepts.

The volume brings together a selection of works, unpublished archives and their translations, and theoretical texts by Ernesto de Sousa, including the first complete translation in English of «Orality, the future of art?» (1968). Richly illustrated, the book reunites an introductory text by Lilou Vidal, two new essays by Paula Parente Pinto and by José Miranda Justo along with a text by Hugo Canoilas.

"There was a time when bread was sacred; and in a general sense, all fabricated objects deserved the respect that resulted from (for the conscience of those who used them) concretely diving into their own motivations. Human gestures, like aesthetic objects, were inseparable from their relevant functions. Naturalism prompted us to look at natural and fabricated objects with a vision that was cosmic and indifferent at the same time. The objects, today, object. In the future, objects and gestures will perhaps clothe themselves once again in their lost dignity. The word love, a bit of bread, the letter A will stop being mortal accidents of daily life. Desacralized, they will once again be as decisive as the tiniest brushstroke the painter made on his canvas. And each of these brushstrokes will reveal the structure of the world. Life can then be compared to a vast work of art. Everything will be absolutely aesthetic.."
— Ernesto de Sousa

Contributors: Hugo Canoilas, Ernesto de Sousa, Tobi Maier, José Miranda Justo, Paula Parente Pinto, Lilou Vidal

Aeron Bergman and Alejandra Salinas, co-editors at INCA Press (along with Irena Borić), are the guest-editors of this issue of OEI: it contains essays, artworks, and archival materials by 21 artists, theorists, writers, and artist-run spaces (mostly from the Americas).

The subject of the issue is art and neoliberalism, and it encompasses essays, images and other works by Dorothée Dupuis, Max Jorge Hindered Cruz, Luciano Concheiro, Yvonne Osei, Diego Bruno, John Riepenhoff, Suhail Malik, Good Weather, The Luminary, Bikini Wax, Beta-Local and more.

Mousse celebrates its 90th issue with a collectible edition, with a special design and format, entirely focused on fiction.

Bringing together a cohort of writers and artists, Mousse #90 – The Fiction Issue stems from the eponymous Fiction column that has dwelled in our pages for five years, and expands its scope. It was developed together with Rosanna McLaughlin, Skye Arundhati Thomas, and Izabella Scott, who collectively coedited the art and literature quarterly The White Review between 2021 and 2023.

Here you'll find reprints from both Mousse and The White Review as well as new stories and translations we have jointly commissioned. Seven interludes, intended to open up other worlds through images, feature portfolios of drawings by Atelier dell'Errore, Michael E. Smith, Camille Henrot, Michael Landy, Simone Forti, Adelaide Cioni, and Evelyn Taocheng Wang.

Afternoon Editions no. 1: an essay by Jeroen Peeters titled Reseeding the library, gleaning readership. In May 2017, Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine settled during three weeks in the Ravenstein Gallery in Brussels as part of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Invited as a writer in residence, Jeroen Peeters visited the library of living books on a daily basis and recorded his observations by hand in a notebook, which formed the basis for Afternoon Edition #1. Reseeding the library, gleaning readership is an essay on the seed library, on the dispersion of literature through wind, water and animals, on biodiversity and commoning at the heart of readership. On the cover a drawing by Wouter Krokaert of a Philodendron Xanadu. Published May 2018.

A day can be a composition not unlike an essay. Full of possibilities, full of limitations, bound by universal structures and marked by idiosyncratic desires. You go on walks. You read. You do your chores. All the while memory and other forms of imagination keep time with you. Books are strange companions; writing is a lonely thing rich with consolations.

Certain Things is a text by Claudia La Rocco, created with and through ideas such as these.

Published September 2022.

The inaugural issue of the journal of psychoanalysis and interdisciplinary discussions, around the figure of the fold.

Jocaste, a journal of psychoanalysis and discussion, co-published by the International Lacanian Association and Empire Editions, with graphic design by Syndicat studio, aims to be a place for encounters and exchanges between current advances in psychoanalysis and proposals from various disciplines. This journal welcomes contributions from contemporary artists, essayists, poets, psychoanalysts, and women and men engaged in praxis and in the times in which we live.

Texts by Philippe Azoury, Valérie Batteux, Jean Brini, Guillaume Cassegrain, Alexis Chiari, Julie Everaert, Cristiana Fanelli, Virginia Hasenbalg, Christiane Lacôte-Destribats, Sabine Laran, Marie-Christine Laznik, Colin Lemoine, Federico Leoni, Cyrille Noirjean, Thatyana Pitavy, Massimo Recalcati, Jean-Paul Sauzède, Jean-Claude Silbermann, Gibus de Soultrait, Stéphane Thibierge, Eriko Thibierge-Nasu; conversations with Gautier Deblonde, François Petit, Simon Schubert, Gibus de Soultrait.

Lots of straight-talking in BUTT no. 37. Catch Édouard Louis shot by Nan Goldin, Bruce LaBruce meeting Omar Apollo, real talk with Brazilian deputy Erika Hilton and dirty talk with Martin Margiela and Jean Paul Gaultier. Plus a lesbian threeway, Bogotá’s sauna/museum, cocks in sock and oh so much more. Bangers only.