Make Your Own Life: Artists In & Out of Cologne (2006)

“Catalogue for the 2006 exhibition curated by Bennett Simpson at the ICA Philadelphia, which brought together over 25 artists of three generations—centering from Cologne but also including Los Angeles, New York, London, and Berlin—to explore themes of autonomy, artistic collectivity and social relationships, and the privileging of the artist’s life and context as a basis for understanding creative practice.

In the 1980s and early-90s, the German city of Cologne was one of the most important centers for contemporary art in Europe, if not the world. With its many galleries, artist run-spaces, and artist bars, the city assumed a kind of mythological dimension, a place where artists came to show, sell, socialize, and distinguish themselves and their work on levels symbolic and real. The open question of how one makes one’s art in relation to a set of communities, histories, market conditions and social attitudes was at the core of the Cologne scene. It was fiercely debated, dramatized in exaggerated behavior, art works and exhibitions alike, and it contributed greatly to the impression that Cologne was a place of extreme self-consciousness and audacity.”

Artists: Bernadette Corporation, Cosima von Bonin, Merlin Carpenter, Stephan Dillemuth, Michaela Eichwald, Andrea Fraser, Kim Gordon, Charline von Heyl, Gareth James, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Jutta Koether, Michael Krebber, Louise Lawler, Hans-Jorg Mayer, Lucy McKenzie, Nils Norman, Albert Oehlen, Christian Philipp Muller, Stephen Prina, Josephine Pryde, Blake Rayne, Reena Spaulings, Josef Strau, Rosemarie Trockel, Filmgruppe West, Christopher Williams, and Christopher Wool, a.o.

Edited by Jenelle Porter
Publisher Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 2006
ISBN 0884541088
96 pages
via ICA Phil

Exh. review: Christian Rattemeyer (Artforum).

Exhibition
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (18 MB)

Wu Hung (ed.): Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (2010)

This sourcebook and anthology is “a collection of selected texts that includes artists’ manifestos, exhibition catalogue texts, essays by critics, and interviews with key artists, many of them available in English translation for the first time. Arranged in chronological order and framed by contextual explanations, these documents guide readers through the developments in the Chinese art scene from the late 1970s to the 2000s.”

Edited with the assistance of Peggy Wang
Publisher Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010
ISBN 9780822349433, 0822349434
xvi+455 pages

Reviews: Bloomer (China J 2011), Winterton (Taipei Times 2011), Pearlman (Leonardo 2011), Dal Lago (ARTmargins 2014).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (21 MB, updated on 2023-9-19)
Additional texts (PDFs)

The German Experimental Film of the 1990s (1996) [German/English]

A survey of short experimental films made in Germany between 1990-95.

Der Deutsche experimentalfilm der 90er Jahre
Edited by Bruno Fischli and Carola Ferber
Written by Jochen Coldewey
Translation Martin Robinshaw
Publisher Goethe Institut, Munich, 1996
101 pages

WorldCat

PDF (68 MB)