Åsa SonjasdotterPeace with the EarthTracing Agricultural MemoryRefiguring Practice — The artistic enquiry presented in this book responds to the call, made by two Swedish suffragettes and peace activists Elisabeth Tamm (1880–1958) and Elin Wägner (1882–1949) in their pamphlet Fred med Jorden (Peace with the Earth, 1940). Grounded in research into agricultural practices on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, the quotations, documents and photographs of dead and living matter presented in this book testify to ways of living off the land.
Elisabeth Tamm and Elin WägnerPeace with the Earth — The pamphlet Peace with the Earth (Fred med Jorden) was published by the Swedish suffragettes and peace activists Elisabeth Tamm and Elin Wägner in 1940, after the outbreak of the Second World War. Elisabeth Tamm (1880–1958) served as one of the first women in parliament and was an organic farmer. Elin Wägner (1882–1949) worked as a writer and activist on matters of women’s rights, peace, and ecology, and was a member of the Swedish Academy. The authors’ observations and proposals connect questions of agriculture to those of custody of land and habitats, where the ‘arrogant desire’ to own land must be overcome.
Clemens von WedemeyerIllusion einer Menschenmenge — Filmmaterial 7 / In Zusammenarbeit mit Till Gathmann. Mit den Filmen Transformation Scenario, 70.001 und Faux Terrain sowie einem Bildessay, Glossar und Textbeiträgen von Heike Geißler, Fanni Fetzer und Franciska Zólyom.
Clemens von WedemeyerThe Illusion of a Crowd — Film material 7 / In collaboration with Till Gathmann. Including the films Transformation Scenario, 70.001, and Faux Terrain, as well as a visual essay, a glossary and texts by Heike Geißler, Fanni Fetzer, and Franciska Zólyom.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng NdikungIn a While or TwoWe Will Find the Tone — This collection of writings from Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung presents, for the first time in one volume, essays and proposals edited anew. Ndikung’s expanded curatorial practice delineates the space of exhibition making as a space of critical thinking and of experimentation. By proximity, these texts echo each other, resonate with each other, interfere with each other, and present perspectives on the political, poetic, and philosophical potentials of exhibition making, beyond the tight corset of the discipline itself.
Notes on Archives 5 Stefan Pente, Ines Schaber Unnamed Series — Unnamed Series features a succession of artworks provoked by photographs that art historian Aby Warburg had taken as part of his travels to the Hopi Indians in 1898. Warburg noted that the images should never be published, but in the 1990s, the Warburg Institute in London made the images available as part of a glossy hardcover book. The book circulates around a series of aspects that this famous encounter evokes.
Notes on Archives 3 Ines Schaber Picture Mining — In digital data banks, images travel more frequently from one archive to another than they did in analog archives. Sometimes images that are in the public domain are taken by commercial stock-image agencies and offered for sale. This is the case for a series of images of breaker boys in Pennsylvania that Lewis Hine made in the 1910s as part of his series on child labor. The images are both digitally available for free from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and for a fee from Corbis, Bill Gates’s stock-image company, which offered them for sale until it ceased operations in 2016.
Notes on Archives 1 Ines SchaberObtuse, flitting by, and in spite of all—image archives in practice — In recent decades, artists, photographers, curators, and critics have caught archive fever. Archives and their processes have dominated the discussions in and around photography, with particular consequences for documentary and artistic practices. Following these debates, Notes on Archives 1: Obtuse, flitting by, and in spite of all—image archives in practice starts with the assumption that an archive today is not only a place of storage but also a place of production, where our relation to the past is materialized and where our present writes itself into the future. This book explores the difficulties for documentary and artistic practice in and with the archive, and revolves around four key questions: What is the relation between an image and language? What is an author or an owner of an image? What is missing in the archive? And what is an active archive?
Notes on Archives 2 Ines Schaber Culture Is Our Business — In the process of transferring analog material to digital data banks, small independent archives are often not able to keep up with bigger, economically driven archives, such as stock-image companies. Notes on Archives 2: Culture Is Our Business considers the case of Willy Römer, who in 1919 took a photograph of the street battles in the media district of Berlin during the German Revolution. Circulating widely throughout the twentieth century, Römer’s photograph in 2004 came to be owned simultaneously by a number of archives.
Notes on Archives 4 Ines Schaber Dear Jadwa — The concept of the archive of the Umm el-Fahem Art Gallery concentrates on the notion of place rather than on the identity of a photographer or a person being shown. This became the point of departure for the artwork Dear Jadwa, by Ines Schaber. How could one write a history of a place through images? How could one deal with what might be excluded by it? What would happen if there was a need for images that would not fit into the concept of the newly established archive? The latter was the case with two photographs of the Arab Ladies’ Union meeting in Jerusalem in 1944, images found originally in the Matson Collection. In Dear Jadwa, both images are shown along with a letter addressed to a woman who is pictured in both. The photographs are accompanied by an interview with Dr. Mustafa Kabha, cocurator of the exhibition and archive “Memories of a Place,” and a text by Schaber reflecting on the making of the archive.
Encircling the Image of Trauma — This book tiptoes between aesthetics and ethics; it proposes to rethink trauma in its necessity as well as impossibility to be represented and understood. The traumatic experience of violence marks social orders and imbues history. How does it reach beyond distress and pain? This collection of works interrogates alternative narratives: The traces of trauma may also comprise a subversive potential, which withdraws from the hold of power and instead makes room for a sense of history’s vulnerability.
Courants de conscienceUne concaténation de “Dividus” — Conçue pour la 12ème édition des Rencontres de Bamako ce livre recueille la pensée des écrivains, des poètes et des artistes quant à la pratique de la photographie en Afrique et à travers sa diaspora de part la notion de « courant de conscience ». La notion de courants de conscience est liée de manière intrinsèque à celle d’une profondeur de la vision : en d’autres termes, elle correspond à l’idée que la vision peut transcender ses confins optiques pour invoquer les autres sens. La photographie en tant que force vectorielle d’une telle conception de la vision, fait acte de prothèse pour combler notre regard appauvri.
Streams of ConsciousnessA Concatenation of Dividuals — Conceived for the 12th Edition of the Bamako Encounters this book captures thoughts and responses of writers, poets, and artists to the curators’ proposition to think the practice of photography in Africa and its diaspora through the notion of the “stream of consciousness.” The moment of capturing an image can be understood as a solidifying of the streams of consciousness which occur in the photographer’s mind in that decisive moment: the photograph then becomes the place of convergence of all conceptual, aesthetic and cultural ideas and associations out of which the impetus to capture arose.
Streams of ConsciousnessCatalogue — The moment of a snapshot could be an extended moment of capturing the stream of consciousness. The moment something catches the attention of the photographer, the many associations that are made conceptually and aesthetically, the many references that are invoked and situations convoked lead to the shot. Thinking is as much an active as a passive process, and what becomes important is how that which is seen, heard, smelled, felt, tasted or perceived in another way triggers the inner eye to see or inner voice to utter thereby setting this stream of consciousness in motion. So can photography be a means of capturing those streams of consciousness? Which is to say, can a photograph tell us something about that state of mind, that provoked those senses to awake and led to the shot? Can that single shot tell us something about the conceptual and practical processes of development to that single image?
Ich Zeichne Eine KarteVon Dem, Das Du Nicht SiehstRhythmus-Analytische Annäherungen — Eine Versammlung von Echos, Erinnerungen und Erkenntnissen aus drei Jahren Forschung, Performances, Ausstellungen und Gespräch im Rahmen von That, Around Which The Universe Revolves. On Rhythmanalysis of Memory, Times, Bodies in Space. Mit Kapiteln in Lagos, Düsseldorf, Harare, Hamburg und Berlin bringen Projekt und Publikation von SAVVY Contemporary Künstler*innen, Stadtplaner*innen, Schriftsteller*innen, Photograph*innen, Performer*innen, Dichter*innen und Theoretiker*innen zusammen, um die Beziehungen von Raum und Zeit, Erinnerung, Architektur und Städteplanung zu untersuchen, wobei Henri Lefebvres Konzept der Ryhthmusanalyse eingesetzt und weitergedacht wird.
I Will Draw a Mapof What You Never SeeEndeavours in Rhythmanalysis — A gathering of the echoes, memories and findings after three years of research, performances, exhibitions and conversations within That, Around Which The Universe Revolves. On Rhythmanalysis of Memory, Times, Bodies in Space. With chapters in Lagos, Düsseldorf, Harare, Hamburg and Berlin, the S A V V Y Contemporary project and publication bring together visual artists, urbanists, writers, photographers, performers, poets, and theorists to investigate the interrelations of space and time, memory, architecture and urban planning through and beyond Henri Lefebvre’s concept of Rhythmanalysis.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng NdikungThose who are dead are not ever gone Pamphlet 1 — The institution of the ethnological museum or world museum seems to be in the midst of a serious crisis of choking. The delicacies that most of these museums have acquired, which is to say co-opted, which is to say ingested, seem to have collectively missed the track to the oesophagus and got stuck in the respiratory tract. They have been stuck there for as long as the history of mass collections, acquisitions and looting, for as long as the ruthless and ongoing extraction of cultural property has occurred in the former colonies outside of Europe. A twelve-act essay on the maintenance of supremacy, the ethnological Museum and the intricacies of the Humboldt Forum. First published in the tenth issue of South as a State of Mind.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung Ceux qui sont morts ne sont jamais partis Pamphlet 1 — L’institution du musée ethnologique/musée du monde semble traverser une véritable crise d’étouffement. Les mets délicats acquis, ou plutôt cooptées, pour ainsi dire ingérées par la majorité de ces musées, semblent avoir été dépistés de la route vers l’œsophage et s’être coincés dans les voies respiratoires. Toutes ces choses y sont coincées depuis l’acquisition – le pillage – de ces objets. En somme, depuis l’impitoyable déracinement des biens culturels qui perdure jusqu’à nos jours dans les anciennes colonies hors d’Europe. Un essai en 12 actes sur sur la préservation de la suprématie, le Musée Ethnologiques et les complexités du Forum Humboldt. Publié pour la première fois en Anglais dans le dixième numéro de South as a State of Mind.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung Die gestorben sind, sind niemals fort Pamphlet 1 — Die Institution des Ethnologischen Museums scheint sich in einer ernsten Krise des Erstickens zu befinden. Die Delikatessen, welche die meisten solcher Museen meist unter zweifelhaften Bedingungen erwarben, mit anderen Worten genossen und verschluckt haben, scheinen kollektiv den Weg in den Oseophagus verpasst zu haben und blieben stattdessen im Atmungsapparat stecken. Sie hängen dort schon so lange fest, wie die Geschichte von Massensammlungen, Erwerbungen, Plünderungen; so lange wie der rücksichtslose und fortwährende Abbau von Kulturgut in den ehemaligen Kolonien außerhalb Europas bereits andauert. Ein zwölfaktiges Essay über die Aufrechterhaltung der Vormachtstellung, das Ethnologische Museum und die Verwicklungen des Humboldt Forums. Erstveröffentlichung in Englisch in South as a State of Mind, zehnte Ausgabe.
普遍与特殊： 何为亚洲性？ Pamphlet 2 — 《普遍与特殊：何为亚洲性？》这本小书的出版并非一桩小事。一方面，这本出版物包含了酒井直树教授与孙歌教授近期思想实践的一个小切片。他们共同阐述了亚洲的概念在研究我们的区域历史时可以提供的先验性视角，以及重新审视被广泛接受的普遍性与特殊性的关系中遗漏的一些问题。
Universality and Particularity: What is Asianness? Pamphlet 2 — The publication of this book, Universality and Particularity: What is Asianness?, is not a trivial matter. It contains a small segment from the recent thinking of professor Naoki Sakai and professor Sun Ge. Together they elaborate on the transcendental perspectives that the notion of Asia could provide in terms of entering regional histories, and of re-examining the issues left out in the assumed relationship between universality and particularity.
Anouk De ClercqWhere is Cinema? — The book is compiled of portraits of film initiatives from around the world, interwoven with conversations with adventurers who have rebooted movie theatres or built them up from the ground, in the hope that it can be an inspiring compendium for future cinema builders, filmmakers, film curators and film lovers.
Earthrise. Ecological Visions on Both Sides of the Wall — There is no question that ecological ideas acquired a central role in contemporary episteme. In contrast, the heuristic function that these ideas can assume in the current polarisation is questionable: that which, over the last decade, has identified the environmental crisis with the (categorical and totalitarian) concept of the Anthropocene.
Assaf GruberThe Storyseller — Assaf Gruber’s films examine how art affects individuals who are not necessarily drawn to it. What may seem to be the unladen weight of culture, sometimes turns out to be its own rendering. The films’ plots emerge from their characters’ personal environments, addressing the manner by which personal stories become intertwined with political ideologies, and the way in which social relations between private and public spheres are shaped.
Companion 1Rehearsing Hospitalities — Upon what kind of power structures of knowledge and knowing are contemporary art and artistic institutions dependent? Do practitioners in the art field reproduce oppressive Western epistemic paradigms through artistic practices and institutional structures, and if so, is there space for emancipatory ways of knowing? What are the ways that intersectional subjectivities open up new epistemic processes within the artistic field? These are among the questions and considerations that provide a critical lens for the 2019 Rehearsing Hospitalities programme.
Discoteca Flaming StarSticky Stage — Sticky Stage is an installation and a performance. It’s a rehearsal situation, carried by live music, including poems, songs, films and texts. This book gives evidence to Sticky Stage, specified on the basis of the case study at DISTRICT in Berlin. It is a path for future performances. This book is an archive of the performance and a documentation of what will be.
Warren NeidichThe Glossary of Cognitive Activism — This glossary is meant to accompany the three-volume publication The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism Part 1, 2 and 3. It reflects the concerns contained in those volumes. It marks the beginning of a long-term process of creating a dictionary of terms with which to understand and eventually destabilize the complex ways through which a future Neural Capitalism will work in creating contemporary forms of neural subsumption.