“18 PARIS IV.70” was an exhibition organized by Michel Claura in Paris in 1970. Held at a temporary space on Rue Mouffetard that April, it was accompanied by this trilingual publication (in English, French, and German), edited by Claura and published and distributed by Seth Siegelaub. Claura invited a group of artists to each contribute a work to the exhibition. Having collected a series of artist proposals, Claura then sent this collection to each of the participants, after which they were allowed to change their initial plans. This publication includes a preface and a postface by Claura and a two-part entry ...

Invited to Stockholm in spring of 2015 to work with the graduating MA and BA students of the Royal Institute of Art on “making a publication,” the two foreign editors of A:Art (Stuart Bailey and Angie Keefer) instead found themselves swept into the death throes of a decades-old struggle between rival institutions over the current identity and possible future of a national art scene. The book is a chronological account of events that unfolded among the Academy, the art school, its students, assorted government ministries, and the Swedish press, with accompaniment from various outside texts, including Raymond Williams’ Keywords, an ...

“Reading inquisitively over each others’ shoulders, the poems, meditations, analyses and experiments in this volume respond with audacity and adventure to the challenge of characterizing what reading, this most familiar yet renewedly strange occupation, has been and may yet become.”

THIRD REPORT Two of the protagonists of the final iteration of the exhibition project The Gutenberg Galaxy at Blaker were makers of books who have had a profound influence on the archival practice of Guttorm Guttormsgaard. They were also experts in the destruction of books. A friend of Asger Jorn (1914– 1973) once noted how the Danish artist “presented a danger to any book collection” as he used to tear out pages from books belonging to others in order to create his own. Jorn’s compatriot Rudolf Broby-Johansen (1900–1987) was also a notorious book slaughterer, leaving behind a trail of books full ...

This episode features a panel that was broadcast live from San Francisco’s The Battery on November 7, 2018. The panel—hosted by Untitled, Art’s curator of Special Projects and Books & Editions, Juana Berrío—invites Robin Wright (co-founder, RITE Editions), Margaret Tedesco (founder, 2nd floor projects), and Vee Moran (co-founder, Owl Cave Books) to join in conversation about books that were created within the context of art. The episode also features a reading of Virginia Woolf by artist and bookmaker Brook Hsu.

In-depth discussion of the aesthetic, political, historical architectural, and passional dimensions of artist Yves Mettler’s work on urban squares whose names invoke a multitude of concepts and visions of Europe. With Mettler himself and Atlas Europe Square contributors Stephen Zepke, Teresa Pullano, Neil Brenner, and Reza Negarestani addressing the many dimensions of the project, and with designers Emmanuel Crivelli and Ernesto Luna of DUALROOM about the process of transforming it into a book.

Stephen Willats uses books as tools to engage with people, and to create social spaces for relation and interaction in neighborhoods, museums, and bookshops. This republished essay from 1975 gains currency in the context of current discussions on audience and outlines an interactive approach that avoids the demand or authoritarian imperative to respond and redefines the artwork as a network of relationships between artists, audiences and society, framed by participatory action.

BULLETINS OF THE SERVING LIBRARY is a composite printed/electronic publication that follows a direct line from Dot Dot Dot, the semi-annual journal founded in 2000 and published by Dexter Sinister. The “bulletins” that make up each issue are first published online as PDFs at www.servinglibrary.org over a six-month period, then assembled, printed and distributed separately in Europe and in the U.S.A. Each collection makes up a semester’s worth of loosely-themed material, with its constituent PDFs grouped together on the website.

Camouflage of Large Installations by Charles Stankievech is a rare World War II handbook created by the British Government as a guide for factory owners to implement the then new theories of camouflage in order to protect industrial assets. The handbook is composed of three sections: instructional, advertising by corporations supplying camouflage services and full-page colour swatches. The full-page color swatches are particularly beautiful and when viewed aesthetically are interesting forerunners to the history of monochromes, specifically Yves Klein’s first artwork Peintures (1954): a small portfolio booklet that presents a series of monochromes. Interestingly, Klein had never made these paintings and the ...

In Design by Accident, Alexandra Midal declares the autonomy of design, in and on its own terms. This meticulously researched work proposes not only a counterhistory but a new historiography of design, shedding light on overlooked historical landmarks and figures while reevaluating the legacies of design’s established luminaries from the nineteenth century to the present. Midal rejects both linear narratives of progress and the long-held perception of design as a footnote to the histories of fine art and architecture. By weaving critical analysis of the canon of design history and theory together, with special attention to the writings of designers ...

“Digital publications are on the rise. In our daily lives we read more material than ever on electronic devices, while paper books – once everyday objects – are becoming collectible design objects. For publishers, visual designers and artists it can be difficult to keep up with these developments; few possess the knowledge and resources to develop a digital publishing practice of their own. For arts and design-oriented books, going electronic can be an extra challenge because form and content are deeply intertwined, while electronic book formats were not engineered with visual publications in mind. The Digital Publishing Toolkit initiative – a ...

It feels as if there are more and more magazines about art, culture, lifestyle and the like, more and more titles, both local and international, both good and undistinguished. But what to do with them? Read and throw them away? Or stack and keep them after all? This text wonders about the (quality of the) quantity of art magazines and about what exactly defines those that survive even frequent changes of residence.