for Miss Read Offstage 2018 click here
Friday, May 4, 2018
17:30 SUPERHUMANITY (e-flux) editors Mark Wigley, Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch will be joined by Julieta Aranda, Simon Denny, Anselm Franke and Marion von Osten
The field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects but rather extends from carefully crafted individual styles and online identities to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes.
Superhumanity seeks to explore and challenge our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.” This volume brings together more than fifty essays by leading scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, originally disseminated online via e-flux Architecture between September 2016 and February 2017 on the invitation of the Third Istanbul Design Biennial. Probing the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, this book asks: Who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others? This vital and far-reaching collection of essays and images seeks to explore and reflect on the ways in which both the concept and practice of design are operative well beyond tangible objects, expanding into the depths of self and forms of life.
19:00 Bruno Latour Anthropocene Lecture (HKW)*
At the center of current political storms is the issue of climate change, suggests sociologist and epistemologist Bruno Latour. He reflects on current geopolitical conditions while underlining their intricate link to injustice and nationalist egoisms. In his recent book Où atterrir? Comment s’orienter en politique (English edition Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime forthcoming in 2018), Latour considers the ecological crisis of the Anthropocene as a fundamental crisis of modernity—a modernity built on abstract assumptions and detached from its material constraints. For three centuries, therefore, nature seemed to leave us alone, but now she is back, as a fully-fledged political force that compels us to change direction.
The political anomalies of the present day make clear that current responses to this crisis give birth to unholy alliances against the real problem: finding another way to live on this Earth. Following his lecture, Latour discusses his concept of a “terrestrial politics” with Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
The Anthropocene Lecture series is a cooperation of HKW with the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.
*For logistical reasons, tickets will be available on a first-come-first-served basis from 5pm onwards on the day of the event.
19:30 Takashi Homma (Japanese Contemporary)
Introduction of Takashi Homma’s recent publications as well as the inspiring books made by photographers in Japan.
20:15 Masanao Hirayama (Himaa) & Urs Lehni Live Quiz: Card Game (Rollo Press & Nieves)
‘Card Game’ consists of 50 drawings, each of them printed twice. According to Masanao Hirayama, it “can be played as a memory game, or as Karuta (Karuta かるた, from Portuguese carta, are Japanese playing cards), but also as a game using your own rules.”
Saturday, May 5, 2018 — Conceptual Poetics Day
12:15 Michalis Pichler against the imaginary border between visual art and literature (Introducing CPD 2018)
12:30 Mariana Castillo Deball Ixiptla 4
Ixiptla is a journal about trajectories of anthropology, initiated by the artist Mariana Castillo Deball. Published in the context of exhibitions or art events, Ixiptla takes the form of a highly visual magazine with substantial essays by anthropologists, archaeologists, artists, and writers. The Nahua ‘ixiptla’ concept has been translated as image, delegate, substitute or representative. Ixiptla could be a statue, a vision or the victim that becomes the god for human sacrifice. The various ixiptla of the same god could occur simultaneously. Ixiptla is derived from the particle xip: skin, cover, shell. That is, the container, the recognizable presence, the update of a force embedded in an object: a being there, removing the distinction between essence and matter, original and copy.
13:00 Nemanja Mitrovic The (Im)possibility of Literature as a Possibility of Ethics (Delere Press), moderated by Patricia Reed
Mitrovic will read from his new work, in which Blanchot’s reworking of Levina’s concepts will first associate the passage from je to il with the impossibility of death. Second, a perspective will open on art’s capacity to offer an experience of fundamental alterity in which the time of time’s absence will be described as the temporality of artwork, but also as the temporality of the other.
13:30 Jeremy Fernando, Jennifer Hope Davy, Julia Hölzl [Given, If, Then]: A Reading in Three Parts (Punctum), moderated by Patricia Reed
[Given, If, Then]: A Reading in Three Parts is a book project which attempts to conceive a possibility of reading, through a set of readings: reading being understood as the relation to an Other that occurs prior to any semantic or formal identification, and, therefore, prior to any attempt at assimilating, or appropriating, what is being read to the one who reads. The first reading by Jeremy Fernando, “Blind Reading,” unfolds through an attempt to speak of reading as an event. As such, it is a meditation on the finitude and exteriority in literature, philosophy, and knowledge; where blindness is both the condition and limit of reading itself. Folded into, or in between, this (re)reading are a selection of photographs from Jennifer Hope Davy’s image archive. They are on the one hand simply a selection of ‘impartial pictures’ taken, and on the other hand that which allow for something singular and, therefore, always other to dis/appear—crossing that borderless realm between ‘some’ and ‘some-thing.’ The third ‘reading’ is a writing on images on writings by Julia Hölzl. A responding to the impossible response, a re-iteration, a re-reading of what could not have been written, a re-writing of what could not have been read; these poems, if one were to name them such, name them as such, answer (to) the impossibility of answering: answer to no call.
14:00 Lars Blunck Duchamps Readymades (Edition Metzel) & Dieter Daniels THE READYMADE CENTURY (Spector Books) moderated by Deborah Bürgel (presentation in German)
Marcel Duchamp hat in den 1910er Jahren nicht Alltags gegenstände zu Kunstwerken erklärt. Vielmehr begründete er mit dem Readymade eine radikal neue künstlerische Praxis, die er in hohem Alter nochmals konzeptuell pointierte. Duchamps Readymades rekonstruiert diese andere Geschichte des Readymades und beleuchtet dessen Rezeption und Nachleben in den Werkpraktiken von nachmodernen und zeitgenössischen Künstlern.
Marcel Duchamp did not merely grant everyday objects the status of works of art in an iconoclast gesture (1910s). Rather, he founded a radically new artistic practice, which he pointedly conceptualized later in his life. Duchamps Readymades reconstructs this other history of the readymade and illuminates its reception and afterlife in the artistic practices of post-modern and contemporary artists. The Readymade Century examines Duchamp’s readymades from two perspectives, beginning with the genesis and consistency of Duchamp’s concept in the first 50 years of the “readymade century,” 1916 to 1964. The second part, “Readymade Exposition,” describes the history of the readymade’s reception, which extends far beyond Duchamp’s lifetime.
14:40 Jurczok 1001 Spoken Beats Spoken Word-Performance (Edition Patrick Frey)
Jurczok ist Spoken Word-Künstler, Sänger und MC in Personalunion und gehört zu den Spoken Word-Pionieren der Schweiz. Bereits seit 1996 tritt Jurczok mit Texten auf. Er dehnt seine Worte zu einem geschmeidigen Sound, spricht sie rhythmisch an der Grenze zur Human Beatbox, rappt sie, loopt sie und begleitet sie mit mehrstimmigen Gesang. Mit eigenwilligem Humor und einnehmendem Charme. Spoken Beats nennt sich dieses virtuose Format, für das Jurczok mehrfach ausgezeichnet wurde. Zahlreiche Auftritte, u.a. am Poesiefestival Berlin, Günter Grass-Haus Lübeck, Kimmel Center Philadelphia, Kaufleuten Zürich. Im März ist das gleichnamige Buch mit einer Sammlung seiner Bühnentexte in der Edition Patrick Frey erschienen.
15:00 David Desrimais, Language and Image in the Digital Age (Jean Boîte Éditions)
“If I need to summon this online feeling and there is no electricity, what can I do? What are the textures, the smells, the weight we could to associate to digital feelings? Here the feeling serves as an element of preservation, and the physicality of things as a way to think perennial in digital.”
Based on each participant digital practice and knowledge, and crossed with David Desrimais (Jean Boîte Éditions) know-how, this workshop is a round-trip from digital to analog feelings, and back. On the grounds of recent history, we’ll go browse few case studies (notably some detailed stories about two books: Google, Vol.1 by King Zog and Theory, by Kenneth Goldsmith), our expectations about AI and uncreativeness… Aiming to one expectation: what’s next in our need to produce artifacts that are bridges from screen to bookshelves.
15:30 Simon Morris DO or DIY (Information as Material)
DO or DIY, a two-part essay, concerns itself with the history of self-publishing (first part), looking back at some of the monuments of literary history, to then take impulse from the epigraph, ‘Institutions cannot prevent what they cannot imagine’, and look forward, as it relates to publishing, to the political praxis of the 21st-century’s digital future.
16:00 Sharon Kivland A Lover’s Discourse – Un discours amoureux (MA BIBLIOTHEQUE), a reading with Adeline Mannarini
Kivland read unsolicited ‘encounter’ emails as if they were intended for her alone in a sincere desire for a real love relation, until their repetition bored her. She posted them on Facebook, while she sought their form. Her friend A. C. wrote to tell her how much he was enjoying her lover’s discourse. The form became clear: after the French edition of Roland Barthes’s Fragments d’un discours amoureux (1977).
16:30 Sean Ashton Living in a Land (MA BIBLIOTHEQUE & Eros Press)
Living in a Land is a novel written almost entirely in the negative, consisting mainly of things the narrator has never done, no longer does or will never do. Given that what he has not done is more diverse than what he has, there is much ground to cover, and he approaches the task with arguably greater zeal than a conventional diarist. A study of the conceivable versus the actual, the personal versus the universal, idiocy versus logic, black versus white, circles versus squares, renting versus buying, Living in a Land is a chronicle of a mind fighting its own oppositional nature, a portrait of a hypothetical man.
17:00 Hannes Bajohr Halbzeug (Edition Suhrkamp)
Wo alles Text ist, weil alles Code ist, gibt es kein Werk mehr, nur noch Halbzeug, vorgefertigtes Rohmaterial. Bilder, Filme, Töne, Wörter – im Digitalen ist alles offen dafür, wieder und weiterverarbeitet, transcodiert und prozessiert zu werden. Hannes Bajohrs Lyrikband beweist, dass aus recycelten Texten scharfsinnige Gedichte entstehen können. Inspiriert von der Avantgarde der Moderne, bedient er sich der Technik des 21. Jahrhunderts: Mit Hilfe von Algorithmen hat er u. a. die Romane Kafkas, Bundestagsprotokolle oder Klimaschutzberichte fragmentiert, transkribiert und neu geordnet. Seine Gedichte eröffnen so einen ganz anderen Blick auf Rezeption und Autorschaft im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung.
17:30 Annette Gilbert It’s the idea that counts
Following the supposed de-materialization (Lucy Lippard) in conceptual art, Anette Gilbert will examine the possibility of immaterial literature in conceptual writing. She will talk about examples such as The Invisible Book (Elisabeth Tonnard) and CRUX DESPERATIONIS issues, which include only imaginary works.
18.00 Karl Holmqvist YOU BLEW UP MY HOUSE
Manifesto for the 21st century. A spoken word reading that mixes pop culture with song lyrics and political slogans.
18:30 León Muñoz Santini In the body that is not here. 14195 causes of death (Gato Negro)
Exhaustive list of all causes of death registered by the Ministry of Health of México. Meticulous and exhaustive taxonomy of decease; classified by type, gender, family and circumstance. Instruments usually employed to produce a death certificate, an eloquent part of the bureaucratic codification of life and death, are here subordinated to a different aim. A critical purpose of denunciation in the context of a country, México, where over the last years people disappear by thousands —mainly as victims of necropolitical agents, corruption networks and necroeconomical agents— For these people, a registered cause of death is another stolen Right, and this book is a humble form of vindication and homage.
Sunday, May 6, 2018
12:00 Agnieszka Kilian & Agnieszka Piksa. Dreams & Dramas. Law as Literature. Land & Property & Person and Bit of Existing Legal Fictions (nGbK)
“Cartography cuts forest from the tree”. This cartographic observation can be applied to law, which cuts us to fit certain functions: owners or not owners, and finally, citizens or stateless people. In this round we will approach the fictional character of the legal concept such as land or property. What one might think as granted in the fact it is not, it is much more the product of particular story telling. By bringing a few cases from the reader, we will re-tell and re-draw the land & property & person story. As Mateusz Stępień, one of the reader contributors, wrote: legal fiction might spring to a lay person’s mind as a kind of science fiction. But this since fiction organises our world into a very specific map. The nGbK reader Dreams & Dramas. Law as Literature is a reader presenting the relationship between law describing and creating reality, including ourselves as persons, participating in communities. On the basis of four narrative axes – person, community, territory and property – the book demonstrates the ways in which these concepts are in relation to and of impact to one another.
13:00 Jan Steinbach (edcat), Anne Thurmann-Jajes, (Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen)
Anne Thurmann-Jajes and Jan Steinbach will discuss the potentials and obstacles of online archives. The Research Centre for Artists’ Publications covers several (physically existing) archives with approx. 80,000 publications from all around the world – the largest and most outstanding collection of published artworks in Europe. edcat.net is an open Artists’ Publication (online) catalogue and platform with the vision to create a meaningful research tool, preserve metadata and make it easily accessible, as well as to connect artists, publishers, art historians, collectors, institutions and retailers on an online platform.
14:00 Wilfried Huet (GAGARIN)
GAGARIN – the Artists in their Own Words – is entirely dedicated to the publication of original texts of artists, who are now working, anywhere in the world. Founder and editor Wilfried Huet will talk about the coming into being, the development and the objectives of GAGARIN. Several amazing artists contributions will be displayed and addressed in discussion.
15:00 Luca Lo Pinto, Jonathan Monk Publishing as an Artistic Toolbox (Kunsthalle Wien) Performative lecture
What is the role of art publishing today? How have artists adapted modes of publishing as a tool for their practice? How has the notion of artists’ publishing activity changed, given the ever-increasing amount of fairs and an ever-evolving number of book-related collections in contemporary art museums? Publishing has developed a favorite site and medium for aesthetic and artistic experimentation. It has also become an alternative space for promoting unrestricted individual or collective discourse. The multi-part exhibition project Publishing as an Artistic Toolbox: 1989–2017 explored the potentials of publishing – in the form of books, magazines, journals, artistic interventions, websites – as a particular medium and context both to circulate information, knowledge – and to produce art.
16:00 Miyuki Kawabe (commune press) Japanese Art Zines
Miyuki Kawabe will talk about their publishing activities at commune and introduce us to the japanese art zine scene.
16:30 Shin Akiyama (Edition Nord) Remarkable publishers & artists from Japan Focus Library
Shin Akiyama, the coordinator of “Japan Focus Library” explains the current state of art books in Japan and introduces us to remarkable emerging publishers and artists performing interesting publishing activities.
17.00 Rüdiger Schaper, Andreas Rötzer (Matthes & Seitz), Christian von Borries, Humboldt moderiert von Bernd Scherer (HKW) Buchpräsentation & Diskussion
„Alexander von Humboldt ist 57 Jahre alt, er ist weltberühmt und pleite und muss nach Berlin zurück.“ So beginnt Rüdiger Schapers Biographie des großen Universalgelehrten. Das Gespräch wird insbesondere den Publizisten und Netzwerker Humboldt in den Blick nehmen und auf die politische Vereinnahmung dieser welthistorischen Figur eingehen.
18.00 Jordan Coulombe Crooked Print: A Brief History of Canadian Queer Zines (Crooked Fagazine)
Jordan Coulombe will discuss the development of the queer zine medium, contextualized within a broader history of LGBT print media production. He will focus on how queer zines proposed a new genre of subversive print as a response to the commercialization of gay and lesbian magazines in the 1980s. The presentation will be informed by Jordan’s research at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives and will focus on the integral role Canadian titles played in the foundation of an international network of queer zine producers. He will also discuss how this history inspired his own project, Crooked Fagazine, and how zines help queers create a culture of outspoken discourse and openness through shameless confessional storytelling.