This publication is an addendum and design guide for the light Lux Principum. Six rotating elevation diagrams illustrate a language model generated text. The publication's cover design has been adapted from The Newtonian system of the world, the best model of government : an allegorical poem. With a plain and intelligible account of the system of the world, by way of annotations: with copper plates, an eighteenth century celebration of the mechanical universe by J.T. Desaguliers. Where Desaguliers is addressed to the Duke of Earl on its opening page, Barker's book is enigmatically dedicated "To Mario" on its last.
The book is a chaotic collection of artworks connected to the act of dressing, unconventional outfits and more or less memorable anecdotes associated with the world of fashion. A tiny evidence of how what we wear can transform reality. Loosely inspired by Elsa Schiapparelli, Hussein Chalayan, the students and professors from Istituto Marangoni, Florence. Production: Roi de Coupe and Fanta-MLN.
The book is a messy exploration on the topic of contemporary performance. It features essays about games, collections of artistic exercises, documentation and description of works by contemporary performers (Kirsten Pieroth, Sharon Hayes, Jiri Kovanda).
Loosely inspired by “Documents of Contemporary Art”, published by Whitechapel.
Production: Roi de Coupe and NAM.
If Art Were To Disappear Tomorrow What Stories Would We Tell Our Kids? is a project that aims to create an archive of tweet-structured texts capable of describing contemporary artworks. This project came about with the idea of ordering a huge amount of works that share the common feature of being very simple yet very meaningful. Italian artist Roberto Fassone and curator Giovanna Manzotti have tried to condense the shapeless mass of images and information of contemporary artworks present in their computers and on the web, into a simple, functional and structured system, in which the complexity of the art world is partially compressed into the brevity of one tweet. The result can be described as an uncanny collection of contemporary fairy tales. First developed as a Twitter based performance comprising hundreds of tweets, the project has been now translated in book form, including 94 tweets organized into a single story.
Roberto Fassone's artistic production is placed in a strange middle ground where unpredictability, irony, genius and magic reign undisturbed. His works, often of a performative nature, can be considered attempts to give substance to immaterial and elusive concepts through the combination of apparently irreconcilable strategies and tools: contemporary art, sport, music, imitations, games, linguistic paradoxes, camouflage, video games, philosophy. Interests and passions that Fassone takes to extreme consequences, with a strictly playful approach. The publication retraces almost ten years of activity by analyzing the artist's main works and trying to outline the salient features - as well as the uniqueness - of his poetics.
Alla ricerca del tempo perso is the firth Imagonirmia Notebook. It is a book-game which guides the reader through Astrusis’ fantastic world. Astrusis is an artisan-researcher from Melandra Sud who, in her short but intense career, reached incredible goals as well as incredible failures. Grazie (perdere tempo) is a journey through time and space. It is a journey through a book. It is an urban tour. It is a stretching of the senses and of the mind which only occasionally encounters directions to indicate a landing place, which can be continuously reached and lost again. It is – above all – an invitation to waste our time and to walk in circles.
The book is an experiment on telepathy. In March 2022 a part of the human body, an animal and an object were drawn on a white sheet. The drawing was folded and hidden.
Since that moment several participants, through the power
of thought, tried to redraw the drawing. The book features 55 attempts.
Production: Roi de Coupe and NAM.
The book is a collection of trip reports written by an artificial intelligence who ate thousands of magic mushrooms. Next to each trip you can find extracts from books dedicated to metaphors, dreams and storytelling. Loosely inspired by erowid.com
Production: Roi de Coupe, NAM and Sineglossa.
The book is the M.A. thesis by Eleonora Torchio, originally entitled “Mathematical problems in the primary school: when the difficulties are in the text”. An in-depth analysis of how problems are written in primary schools. Numbers and words, science and poetry.
Production: Roi de Coupe and Fanta-MLN.
The book is a messy exploration on the topic of titles. It features an essay on the function of titles in contemporary works, interviews to Rabih Mroué and Valerio Nicolai, a naming handbook, a work by Nuvola Ravera and a lot of titles.
Loosely inspired by “Documents of Contemporary Art”, published by Whitechapel.
Production: Roi de Coupe and Fanta-MLN.
The book is a collection of youtube comments, able to create an imaginative or storytelling relationship with the songs they address. An archive of synesthesia, a way to imagine music. Loosely inspired by Teresa Barbagallo, Angelo Licciardello, “beats to relax/study to”, Cory Arcangel, Kenneth Goldsmith. Production: Roi de Coupe, Fanta-MLN.
The book is the result of a workshop, held during a dawn in October. While the first album by the Pink Floyd was playing in the room, the participants reacted to the music by writing text and pasting images. When the album finished, the participants stopped creating. Loosely inspired by Cecile B. Evans and “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” by Pink Floyd.
Production: Roi de Coupe and NAM.
The book is a collection of kids photos while they are playing hide and seek in a cave. While it’s hard to see something, the book encourages imagination. Loosely inspired by Nuvola Ravera, Alphonse Allais and Yves Tumor.
Production: Roi de Coupe and NAM.
The book is a continuous dance between thoughts to live better and thoughts to live worse. Two pages alternate: the first says “Do your best and trust the universe”; the second “Do your worst and don’t trust the universe”.
Loosely inspired by Rabbit Season/Duck Season, with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
Production: Roi de Coupe and NAM.
The book is an exercise book to improve lucid dreaming abilities. Every page asks you if you are in a dream and explain how you know it. Are you in a dream?
The cover features a drawing by Italian artist Mattia Pajè. Loosely inspired by “Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming” by Stephen LaBerge and a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Production: Roi de Coupe and NAM.
The book is the M.A. thesis by Eleonora Torchio, originally entitled “Mathematical problems in the primary school: when the dif culties are in the text”. An in-depth analysis of how problems are written in primary schools. Numbers and words, science and poetry.
Production: Roi de Coupe and Fanta-MLN.
The book is a collection of youtube comments, able to create an imaginative or storytelling relationship with the songs they address. An archive of synesthesia, a way to imagine music. Loosely inspired by Teresa Barbagallo, Angelo Licciardello, “beats to relax/study to”, Cory Arcangel, Kenneth Goldsmith.
Production: Roi de Coupe, Fanta-MLN.
The book is a chaotic collection of artworks connected to the act of dressing, unconventional outfits and more or less memorable anecdotes associated with the world of fashion. A tiny evidence of how what we wear can transform reality. Loosely inspired by Elsa Schiapparelli, Hussein Chalayan, the students and professors from Istituto Marangoni, Florence. Production: Roi de Coupe and Fanta-MLN.
The book is a messy exploration on the topic of titles. It features an essay on the function of titles in contemporary works, interviews to Rabih Mroué and Valerio Nicolai, a naming handbook, a work by Nuvola Ravera and a lot of titles.
Loosely inspired by “Documents of Contemporary Art”, published by Whitechapel.
Production: Roi de Coupe and Fanta-MLN.
Approximately 500 “glow-in-the-dark” novelty stars installed in the artist’s apartment. Windows sealed, digital photographs in low-light conditions. Glow-in-the-dark stars give impression of open exterior space, in reality define the limit of apartment’s walls and ceiling. Photographs produced in collaboration with Joe Owens. Publication produced in collaboration with Fanta-MLN and Paolo Nava.
In his practice, Jason Hirata often demonstrates support, highlighting dependencies and contingencies that are just as inherent in artistic production as they are elsewhere. Supporting Role brings together a collection of the artist's writings from 2019 to 2024. Comprising checklists, press releases, visual descriptions, exhibition reviews, invoices, and curricula vitae, these are texts built from the supporting documents of an artistic practice, while simultaneously offering further support.
Contributions by ROSA AIELLO, GERRY BIBBY, COLEMAN COLLINS, AYANNA DOZIER, ANNIE ERNAUX, AMELIA GROOM, MICHÈLE GRAF & SELINA GRÜTER, MONILOLA OLAYEMI ILUPEJU, ELLEN YEON KIM, BITSY KNOX, DAN KWON, ERIKA LANDSTRÖM, ENAD MAROUF, KATRIN MAYER, AISLINN MCNAMARA, KAMILA & JASMINA METWALY, LUZIE MEYER, VERA PALME, THERESA PATZSCHKE, GEORGIA SAGRI, MAHSA SALOOR, ELIF SAYDAM, MARK VON SCHLEGELL, SIMON SPEISER, ELAINE TAM, C.S. TOLAN, MIKHAIL WASSMER, ANNA ZACHAROFF. Sibyl's Mouths is the most recent in a series of publications by Pure Fiction, a writing and performance group with shifting members active since 2011. From February 12 to March 6, 2022, Pure Fiction presented an exhibition and performance program at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne titled “Shifting Theater: Sibyl's Mouths”. The starting point was a collective reading of Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man, in which the narrator discovers a collection of scribbled oak leaves scattered in a cave outside Naples. Alleged prophecies of the Cumean Sibyl, the textual fragments inscribed on the leaves foretell the story of an epidemic that ravages the globe in the 2100's—a period where solitude, intimacy, and the perception of time is radically renegotiated. Through a multiplicity of textual genres and writerly approaches, contributors examine the questions and forms that emerge from prophecy: the role of the voice in text, writing and performance; fragmentary heterogeneous narratives. The mouth is consulted, not only as a mouthpiece or as a cavernous instrument for vocalization but as an essential part of the digestive tract. Processes in the gut, such as assimilation, excretion, and regurgitation involve multiple temporal directionalities, and may function as metaphorical gateways to intuitive truths.
Eraser! concludes a two-year process of writing and has existed in the form of an exhibition, a performance, and a book. Eraser is as much about the categorical boundaries of our consensual reality—between self and other, human and non-human, waking and dreaming consciousness—as it is about an urge to overcome them. The book’s main protagonist undergoes multiple transformations via psychic and physical transferences with elementary forces—involving a trout and a magpie, among other things—that unsettle the idea of the “stable” self. Eraser proposes a perspective in which the categorical distinctions between individual self, others, and non-human life slowly begin to dissolve. Other worlds of consciousness—of animals, plants, and organic matter—here embody a form of social organization free from the hierarchies of tradition and liberal progress.
This publication is copublished by AFTER8BOOKS and the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf.