Avery F. Gordon: The Hawthorn Archive: Letters from the Utopian Margins (2018)

“The Hawthorn Archive, named after the richly fabled tree, has long welcomed the participants in the various Euro-American social struggles against slavery, racial capitalism, imperialism, and authoritarian forms of order. The Archive is not a library or a research collection in the conventional sense but rather a disorganized and fugitive space for the development of a political consciousness of being indifferent to the deadly forms of power that characterize our society. Housed by the Archive are autonomous radicals, runaways, abolitionists, commoners, and dreamers who no longer live as obedient or merely resistant subjects.

In this innovative, genre- and format-bending publication, Avery F. Gordon, the “keeper” of the Archive, presents a selection of its documents—original and compelling essays, letters, cultural analyses, images, photographs, conversations, friendship exchanges, and collaborations with various artists. Gordon creatively uses the imaginary of the Archive to explore the utopian elements found in a variety of resistive and defiant activity in the past and in the present, zeroing in on Marxist critical theory and the black radical tradition. Fusing critical theory with creative writing in a historical context, The Hawthorn Archive represents voices from the utopian margins, where fact, fiction, theory, and image converge.

Reminiscent of the later fictions of Italo Calvino or Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, The Hawthorn Archive is a groundbreaking work that defies strict disciplinary, methodological, and aesthetic boundaries. And like Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, which established Gordon as one of the most influential interdisciplinary scholars of the humanities and social sciences in recent years, it provides a kaleidoscopic analysis of power and effect. The Hawthorn Archive’s experimental format and inventive synthesis of critical theory and creative writing make way for a powerful reconception of what counts as social change and political action, offering creative inspiration and critical tools to artists, activists, scholars across various disciplines, and general readers alike.”

Publisher Fordham University Press, 2018
ISBN 0823276325, 9780823276325
xii+472 pages

Interview with author: Krystian Woznicki (transversal, 2019).

Review: Eddie Bruce-Jones (Race & Class, 2019).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (46 MB)

Vasulka Kitchen Cooking Reader (2020) [Czech]

“This collection of texts is being published either relatively early, or perhaps a bit late: about one year after the colloquium Art Works from the Digital Era in Galleries and Museums. Since then, unexpected events have altered our course, reframing our thinking about the overlap between art, time, entropy, duration and disappearance, and perhaps adding a greater sense of urgency than it had one year ago.

The colloquium was organized to celebrate the the first anniversary of the opening of the Vašulka Kitchen Brno: Center for New Media. The organizers discussed topics with colleagues from the Brno House of Arts and the National Film Archive in Prague, hoping to promote thinking about the state and fate of art works of an “unstable“ nature, especially within the context of Czech collections, galleries, and museums. The objective was to establish contact, and to potentially cooperate with similar initiatives in Central Europe. During the two‑day meeting, the contributions mostly touched on the orientation of artistic and expert initiatives and institutions which were already focused on this issue, or were planning to turn their attention to it. In addition to contributions from Czechia, Vasulka Kitchen also welcomed contributors from the Netherlands, Germany, France, Norway, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the United States, who shared their experiences of and opinions on the topic.

This publication is dedicated to the memory of Woody Bohuslav Vašulka.”

With English introduction and abstracts.

With contributions by Flóra Barkóczi, Dušan Barok, Martin Blažíček, Vannevar Bush, Lenka Dolanová, Kateřina Drajsajtlová, Jakub Frank, Joey Heinen, Jana Horáková, Erkki Huhtamo, Vít Janeček, Michal Klodner, Barbora Kundračíková, Štěpán Miklánek, Gustav Metzger, Anna Olszewska, Kryštof Pešek, Miklós Peternák, Pavel Sikora, Matěj Strnad, Barbora Šedivá, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Peter Weibel, Gaby Wijers, and Gene Youngblood.

Edited and with an Introduction by Miloš Vojtěchovský
Publisher Vašulka Kitchen Brno, Brno, October 2020
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 License
ISBN 9788090776333
253 pages

Review: Lukáš Pilka (Flash Art CZ/SK, 2021, CZ).

Book presentation (video, 13 min, Czech)
Colloquium
Publisher

PDF (77 MB, updated on 2020-11-28)
Wiki (added on 2023-6-7)

Martina Griesser-Stermscheg, Nora Sternfeld, Luisa Ziaja (eds.): Sich mit Sammlungen anlegen. Gemeinsame Dinge und alternative Archive (2020) [German]

“Wie lässt sich die Idee der Commons im Kontext von Museen, Archiven und Sammlungen denken? In welchem Spannungsverhältnis stehen alternative Sammlungsstrategien und die Reproduktion eines etablierten Kanons? Welche Rolle spielen künstlerische Praxen für die Demokratisierung und Zugänglichmachung von Sammlungen?

Gegen den Trend einer zunehmenden Ökonomisierung und Kanonisierung des Sammelns gibt es immer lautere Stimmen, die Leerstellen in Sammlungen kritisieren und Diskussionen über neue diverse Sammlungsstrategien befeuern. Versteht man die Schaffung von Commons auch als eine soziale Praxis für die Formulierung alternativer Formen der Wissensproduktion und des Wissensaustauschs, so eröffnen sich für öffentliche Museen, Sammlungen und Archive herausfordernde Fragestellungen hinsichtlich Zugänglichkeit, Eigentum und Öffentlichkeit. Ausgehend von dem kürzlich erschienenen Band Sich mit Sammlungen anlegen. Gemeinsame Dinge und alternative Archive entwickeln die Beitragenden neue Perspektiven auf die Verknüpfung etablierter institutioneller Infrastrukturen und alternative Methoden des Sammelns.

Mit Antonia Alampi, Stefan Aue, Filipa César, Knut Ebeling, Martina Griesser-Stermscheg, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Vera Lauf, Cornelia Sollfrank, Nora Sternfeld, Luisa Ziaja, Franciska Zólyom u. a.”

Publisher De Gruyter, Berlin, 2020
Angewandte series
ISBN 9783110700442, 3110700441
300 pages

Book launch (with video discussion)
Project
Editors
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (27 MB)