De Ridder Retrospective (1983) [NL/EN]
Filed under artist publishing, catalogue | Tags: · art, fluxus, performance, radio art, theatre
Book with comic strips, conversations and a chronology of Dutch radio art maker, magazine editor and Fluxus member Willem de Ridder, issued to accompany his retrospective at the Groningen Museum in the Summer of 1983. The part in English starts on page 34.
“In 1961, Willem de Ridder set up Mood Engineering Society together with Peter Schat, Wim T. Schippers, Misha Mengelberg, Jaap Spek, Louis Andriessen and Govert Jurriaanse, most of them avant-garde musicians. Among their first activities was De Ridder’s Papieren konstellaties [Paper Constellations], which could be ‘constructed’ anywhere as long as an audience was present to participate in this so-called PK theatre and help determine its appearance. Traditional theatre, it was felt, had to be given the boot. It had remained stuck too long in the renaissance model of the proscenium stage and should be replaced by dynamic, mobile installations, variable acoustics and–following John Cage–the theatricality of silence, which, it was anticipated, would make the audience restless. The group performed three concerts in February 1962. Fully in the spirit of Fluxus, the hierarchy between artist/composer and performer as well as between performer and audience was abolished. Objects fulfilling a clearly visual function, such as a tape recorder, were featured in the concerts. The introduction of a visual element suited the ambition to destroy the traditional boundaries between the disciplines of art, following Cage’s example. After the concerts, MES was dissolved, despite the fact that various museums in the country were offering them the opportunity to put on new performances. De Ridder became a representative of Fluxus for the Netherlands in 1963.” (Marga van Mechelen, 2006)
Written and compiled by William Levy and Willem de Ridder
Publisher Groninger Museum, Groningen, 1983
ISBN 906477062X, 9789064770623
80 pages
via thepiratebay.worm.org
PDF (33 MB)
Comment (0)Dominique Gonzales-Foerster: 1887 – Splendide Hotel (2014) [French, English]
Filed under artist publishing | Tags: · 1880s
“In Splendide Hotel – 1887 there is one sole room and it is transparent, containing apparitions of all literary, musical, scientific and abstract sorts. From an internal monologue to quantum physics to the gramophone and bioluminescence, within this little book there is a collection of nearly all the references serving to rebuild this hotel within the Cristal Palace to reveal 1887 as the birth year of our universe.”
Published on the occasion of exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Publisher Onestar Press, Paris, 2014
126 pages
Maj 75, A–L (1978-84, 1990) [YU]
Filed under artist publishing, catalogue, magazine | Tags: · art, conceptual art, new art practice, yugoslavia
“Maj 75 was an artists’ magazine initiated in 1978 by a group of Zagreb-based artists, the Group of Six Artists (Grupa šestorice autora: painter Boris Demur; photographers Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović, and Fedor Vučemilović; poet Vlado Martek; and filmmaker Mladen Stilinović), or “a group of friends”, as they refer to themselves in the introductory pages of the magazine. The name of the magazine referred to the date of their first public exhibition. It was conceived as “magazine-catalogue” for their self-organized “exhibition-actions” which ranged from performing and creating installations on city streets and squares to taking trips to the seaside, where they created, performed, and documented work. Comprised solely of pages presenting artworks, the magazine can be viewed as an alternative exhibition space, enabling the artists to communicate their work to the public without the mediation and the sanctioning authority of art institutions and curators. Between 1978 and 1984, 17 issues were published (identified by the letters of the Croatian alphabet), with an additional one produced in 1990 and commemoratively titled Ex-Maj. Issue F, edited by Vlasta Delimar, was a women-only issue.” (Source)
“Exhibition venues were fairly limited for artists so the pages of Maj 75 became an alternative space for not only the Group of Six, but also an extended circle of Yugoslavian and other Eastern European artists, to produce and disseminate their work publicly. Artists such as Vlasta Delimar, Tomislav Gotovac, Sanja Iveković, Mangelos, Balint Szombathy, Raša Todosijević and Goran Trbuljak are a few examples of the many contributors during the history of publication. The magazine was printed in the studio of Vlasta Delimar and Željko Jerman.” (Source)
Published in Zagreb, 1978-84, 1990
via Digitizing Ideas
Commentary: Darko Šimičić (2003), Gwen Allen (2011), MoMA.org (2011), Ivana Bago (c2014).
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