Franz Roh, Jan Tschichold (eds.), Foto-Auge: 76 Fotos der Zeit / Œil et photo: 76 photographies de notre temps / Photo-Eye: 76 Photos of the Period (1929) [DE/FR/EN]

“Two books were published to accompany the 1929 Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart organised by the Deutscher Werkbund: Foto-Auge, edited by Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold, and Es kommt der neue Fotograf!, edited by Werner Gräff. With its cover of El Lissitzky‘s now famous Self Portrait of the artist as a hand in service to the eye celebrating the monocular medium (photography), Foto-Auge served both as an catalogue of the work exhibited as well as a visual polemic detailing László Moholy-Nagy‘s New Vision. Featuring work from the world’s leading modernist photographers, as well as anonymous news and bureau photos, Roh’s and Tschichold’s editing and sequencing energetically riff on the Bauhausian notion of enlightened objectivity.”

With photographs by Piet Zwart, John Heartfield, El Lissitzky, Eugène Atget, Andreas Feininger, Max Ernst, Herbert Bayer, Willi Baumeister, George Grosz, Gutschow, Florence Henri, Hannah Höch, Hans Leistikow, Max Burchartz, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Peterhans, Man Ray, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Geert Paul, Hendrikus Schuitema, Maurice Tabard, Karel Teige, Grete Vester, Dsiga Wertoff, Edward Weston, Umbo, a.o. Introduction by Franz Roh (“Mechanismus und Ausdruck. Wesen und Wert der Fotographie”).

Publisher Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fritz Wedekind, Stuttgart, 1929
Designer Jan Tschichold
Printer Heinrich Fink
18+[76] pages, 30 x 21 cm
via Thebaus

Commentary: Inka Graeve Ingelmann (MoMA, 2014), Object:Photo exhibition (MoMA, 2014), Felix (Wiedler.ch, n.d.).

WorldCat

PDF (166 MB)

Brandon LaBelle, Christof Migone (eds.): Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (2001)

“Writing Aloud is an anthology focusing on the relationship of language to sound, writing to music, and brings together a highly diverse collection of essays, interviews, meditations, visual projects, text-sound scores and audio by some of the leading individuals in the field of cultural and performance studies, experimental music and contemporary art.

Starting from the perspective that the sound of the voice is crucial to our perceptions and understandings of language, to the creative possibility of being without language, Writing Aloud examines the repercussions of such a perspective. Considering the sonics of words, it extends this examination of vocalization and articulation into how it contributes to and influences communication and notions of self-recognition. And further, how orality effects the act of writing itself, stages the tension between sense and non-sense, and provides space for self-reflection.

Through cultural, historical, linguistic, musical and artistic histories and practices, this field of research is addressed in order to open up a diversity of attitudes and approaches toward a broader understanding of what it means to speak. Such works as Nicholas Zurbrugg’s detailed examination of the history of sound-poetry, which underscores this often under-represented field as being a vital link between the avant-gardes of modernism and contemporary culture; Sean Cubitt’s meditation on the voice in relation to contemporary technologies; and Fred Moten’s examination of the Black avant-garde through the works of Billy Strayhorn, Delaney, and Antonin Artaud in relation to deeper questions of identity – these original works advance our understanding of ‘vocalization’ as existing within a complex and highly charged social, political and cultural arena where identity is a contested site.

In conjunction with these analytical works, Writing Aloud also provides readers with some valuable reconsiderations and reproductions of historical work, such as Marina Abramovic’s performance from 1975, Freeing the Voice, in which the artist exhales every breath as a scream for one hour; plus a revealing and insightful interview with the composer Alvin Lucier, whose compositions from the 60s to today continue to challenge and astound listeners; a valuable document of a long lost French artist, Arthur Petronio, whose recordings from the mid-60s, Verbophonie, trace a highly personal and idiosyncratic terrain of voice and electronics; and important visual and audio documentation of an early installation, Body Building, by the artist Vito Acconci. Through such a range of contributions Writing Aloud suggests links between disparate practices and stimulates conversations between disciplines, one which follows the line where text and sound meet, speaking and music collide, and theory and writing converse.

Also included in the anthology are GX Jupitter-Larsen, Terri Kapsalis, Norie Neumark, Kim Dawn, Alexandre St-Onge, Jocelyn Robert, Robert Ashley, Achim Wollscheid, Bart Plantenga, Vincent Barras, Michel Chion, John Duncan, and others.”

Publisher Errant Bodies, Los Angeles, 2001
ISBN 9780965557030, 0965557030
279 pages
via cmigone

Reviews: Christopher DeLaurenti (The Tentacle, 2001), Jim Drobnick (Parachute, 2002), John Dack (Computer Music Journal, 2003).

Publisher
Editor
WorldCat

PDF (37 MB)

Karen Kurczynski: The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn: The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up (2014)

“Danish artist Asger Jorn has long been recognized for his founding contributions to the Cobra and Situationist International movements – yet art historical scholarship on Jorn has been sparse, particularly in English. This study offers a synthetic account of the essential phases of this artist’s career. It addresses his works in various media alongside his extensive writings and his collaborations with various artists’ groups from the 1940s through the mid-1960s. Situating Jorn’s work in an international, post-Second World War context, Karen Kurczynski reframes our understanding of the 1950s, away from the Abstract-Expressionist focus on individual expression, toward a more open-ended conception of art as a public engagement with contemporary culture and politics.”

Publisher Ashgate, 2014
ISBN 9781409431978, 1409431975
xiii+261 pages
via Situationist Library

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (13 MB)