Our series allow for continuous reflections on topics we consider most relevant and at the same time pay tribute to long-term relationships with people we like to think with.
Ante-politics is a series co-published with @tamuedizioni. It’s first volume Undercommons. Pianificazione fuggitiva e studio nero will be released on February 22 as the first book of the series and the first Italian edition of the essential writings by Stefano Harney & Fred Moten.
Perspectives brings together essays and proposals creating volumes that allow a space of critical thinking and of experimentation. Each volume hosts a body of texts that echo each other, resonate with each other, interfere with each other, and present perspectives beyond the tight corset of the discipline itself. The series aims to reevaluate certain socio-political phenomena, cultural or economical paradigms, in theory and practice, considering how their canons could be renegotiated and providing new proposals.
The publications in this series reflect and document the activities of and expand on the research, discursive, performative and curatorial projects of SAVVY Contemporary: The Laboratory of Form-Ideas. In the spirit of SAVVY Contemporary as an art space which situates itself at the threshold of notions and constructs of the West and non-West, primarily to understand, negotiate, and deconstruct the ideologies and connotations eminent to such constructs, SAVVY Publishing aims at promoting epistemological diversity, resonating with Boaventure de Sousa Santo’s, “Another Knowledge is Possible.” By acknowledging the limits and faults of our disciplines and advocating for processes of unlearning, our effort is thus to create a platform which encourages extra-disciplinary knowledges and promote the thinking and writing of authors, artists, philosophers, scientists, and activists whose practices challenge Western epistemologies, and look towards epistemic systems from Africa and the African diaspora, Asia-Pacific, the Middle-East and Latin America.
The series brings together SAVVY Publishing and Archive Books in a collaboration based ona shared interest in a multiplicity of knowledges from beyond the Western canon; and a commitment to foster critical discussions and forge new collaborations and coalitions. We like to think of the books in this series as, to use Chicana poet and feminist Gloria Anzaldua’s expression, “borderlands,” that is to say, spaces where “a new story to explain the world and our participation in it” can be elaborated and told; spaces where epistemological disobedience (Walter Mignolo) and divergent thinking can be practiced.
The Arab Image Foundation and Archive Books are partnering on a series of publications. These stem from multi-disciplinary research, artistic works, and practices around photographic collections that are from the diversity of the Arabic-speaking region and its diaspora communities worldwide. The desire is to share multiple perspectives around archives, image practices, custodianship, language, access, and other topics that reflect critically how we exercise memory and on realities of today. Our aspiration is to invite researchers, artists, writers, photographers, poets, archivists, and craftspersons to provoke us into thinking about different ways of telling our stories, what societies we aspire to live in, and also about a life worth living.
This collaboration is launched with the publication of Becoming Van Leo. The cased three-volume publication of 628 pages pays tribute to the practice of the late Egyptian-Armenian photographer, Van Leo, who is a reference in the region’s photographic history. Authored by Karl Bassil in collaboration with Negar Azimi and Katia Boyadjian, this book is co-published by the Arab Image Foundation and Archive Books, in partnership with the Prince Claus Fund and Sharjah Art Foundation, and with the cooperation of the American University in Cairo. It is designed by Mind the gap and printed by 53dots, both in Beirut.
IZA Editions focuses on writings by art historians and theoreticians from Central, East, and South-East Europe that critically disrupt predominant interpretations within visual arts, and further analyse both neglected historical and recent phenomena therein. It is being co-published with the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory
When Attitudes Become the Norm The Contemporary Curator and Institutional Art