Geir Egil Bergjord: Pierre Henry’s House of Sounds (2010)

“I met French composer and founder of Musique Concrète, Pierre Henry, for the first time during a performance in Stavanger (Norway) in September 2006. Four years later, after numerous travels back and forth between Stavanger and Paris, my joint project with Henry was launched. The book, a seemingly endless flow of photos, moving room by room, from macro close-ups to overviews, is like a visit in the house, accompanied by a CD containing previously unreleased pieces by Pierre Henry: Capriccio, Phrases de Quatuor, Miroirs de Temps and Envol.” (from the author)

The book contains texts by Pierre Henry, François Weyergans, Maurice Fleuret, Yves Bigot, Tommy Olsson, Geir Egil Bergjord, Tor Åge Bringsværd, and Isabelle Warnier.

Publisher Gilka, Norway, 2010
ISBN 9788292829028
224 pages

author

PDF (no OCR)
View online (Issuu.com)

Umělec (1997–) [CZ, EN, DE, ES]

“Since its inception Umelec has remained the only international art magazine in English about contemporary visual culture in Central Europe and beyond. Umelec is dedicated to more focused regional or national issues, and always tries to bring to life the current social-cultural situation, including its more marginal aspects. We do not consider culture as a decoration of the state body, but as one of the most important inspiring values of life, even if it is radical or strange.” (from the publisher)

Publisher: Divus (Ivan Mečl), Prague/London/Berlin
Editor-in-chief: Palo Fabuš; formerly: Lenka Lindaurová and Vladan Šír, Jiří Ptáček, Alena Boika
Graphic design: Dita Lamačová; formerly: Dan Vlček, Ondřej Strnad, Jakub Němeček, Ivan Mečl

Issue 1/2012 (English, HTML), also in German, Czech.
Issue 2/2011 (English, HTML), also in German, Czech.
Issue 1/2011 (English, HTML), also in German, Czech.
Other issues (HTML), incl. Special issues: “Austrian” (2009–1, EN/CZ/DE), “Mexican” (2007–2, EN/CZ/DE/ES), “German” (2005–2, EN/CZ/DE), “Swiss” (2006–2, EN/CZ), “French” (2002–1, EN/CZ). The issues from 2005–3 up to 2009–1 were also published in Spanish.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie: Man a Machine (1747-) [FR, EN, TR, DE, PL]

French physician and Enlightenment thinker Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–51) was the most uncompromising of the materialists of the eighteenth century, and the provocative title of his work ensured it a succès de scandale in his own time.

“In 1747, La Mettrie wrote a small but powerful book arguing that the soul, the human will, and consciousness were all reducible to bodily processes. According to La Mettrie, ‘The human body is a machine which winds its own springs.’

La Mettrie’s L’homme machine (Man a Machine or Machine Man) was likely completed in August of 1747. The book was controversial, arguing against the traditional notion of soul and suggesting that man was no different than any other animal. This small volume espousing this materialist philosophy was just over one hundred pages long, written in forceful but casual prose. Less than half a year after its publication, the book became the center of controversy and led to La Mettrie’s self-exile from Holland.

The book was printed anonymously and copies were circulating in Holland by December. On December 18th, the publisher—Elie Luzac—was called before the Consistory Church of Leyden and ordered to deliver all copies of the book for burning and to promptly reveal the author. The publisher indeed delivered some copies for burning, but claimed he did not know who had written the piece. The following year, the publisher issued two more printings of the book and then promptly left Holland.

In the meantime, rumors began to circulate that La Mettrie was the author of the book. La Mettrie was not naïve about the potential outcomes of this: he had previously fled his native France after the public burning of his 1745 book The Natural History of the Soul. He therefore fled Holland to Berlin on February 7, 1748, where he came under the protection of Frederick the Great who provided him with sanctuary and a small pension and made him the official court physician. La Mettrie died of food poisoning in Potsdam in 1751.” (from Cathy Faye, “Banned and Burned Books: La Mettrie’s L’homme machine“)

commentary (J.E. Poritzky, 1900, German)
commentary (Paul Carus, 1913, English)
commentary (Ernst Bergmann, 1913, German)
commentary (Ann Thomson, 1996, English)
commentary (Peter Gendolla, 2000, English)
wikipedia (English)

L’homme machine (French, 1774, Archive.org)
L’homme machine (French, 1796, Archive.org)
L’homme machine (French, 1800, Archive.org)
L’homme machine (French, With an Introduction and Notes by J. Assezat, 1865, Archive.org)
L’Homme Machine / Man a Machine (French-English, Trans. and With Notes by Gertrude C. Bussey, revised by M.W. Calkins, 1912, Archive.org)
L’homme machine (French, With an Introduction and Notes by Maurice Solovine, 1921, Archive.org)
İnsan Bir Makine (Turkish, trans. Ehra Bayramoğlu, 1980)
Machine Man (English, trans. Ann Thomson, 1996)
Der Mensch eine Maschine (German, undated)
Człowiek-maszyna (Polish, undated, DJVU)