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Jalal Toufic - What Was I Thinking? e-flux journal

Sternberg Press 2017 ISBN 9783956793585 Acqn 27968
Pb 11x18cm 280pp 16.50

What Was I Thinking? is an initiation into thinking. With a mind that is extremely analytical and yet
extremely capable of rendering all kinds of knowledge and experiences permeable to each other,
Jalal Toufic creates here a summa, but an open-ended one. He looks into the arts as if they
were the privileged site of thinking, even when they inevitably fail, and still confronts his
insights/thoughts with texts taken from the traditional religions and mystics of the past. He has
reached in this work an Olympian attitudetuned to his basically Dionysian temperamentthat
announces the beginning of a detachment, of a remarkable serenity (a joy in thinking that
Nietzsche had already understood). Jalal Toufic is today, and has been for some time, the most
original thinker on the planet. He assumes the challenge stated by Heidegger in What Is Called
Thinking? by his own thinking (by writing this book). To imagine the best possible worlds, to go
into uncharted territory; these worlds are eminently those of the arts (as he practices them, as he
delves into their layers, their paradoxes, their darings, ever admitting their maddening inbuilt
inaccessibility). His kind of an endeavour takes a tremendous courage. And a unique freedom:
letting his mind go into unpredicted ascertainments, so that his writing does not fall apart two
days later. Situated somewhere close to the spirit of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and
Nietzsche's breakthroughs, we can say that Jalal Toufic is indeed a destiny.
Etel Adnan

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Material Utopias
Sternberg Press 2017 ISBN 9783956793431 Acqn 27966
Pb 14x21cm 204pp 43ills 26col 13.50

Texts by Max Bruinsma, Amanda du Preez, Domeniek Ruyters, Louise Schouwenberg, Aaron
Schuster, Tamar Shafrir

In the slipstream of conceptual art, the intimate interweaving of meaning and materialization in art
and design came to be discredited in the second half of the twentieth century. The masters
program Material Utopias at the Sandberg Instituut put an end to this tradition by abolishing the
unproductive hierarchy separating concept and making, content and process. In this
publication, various authors reflect on the history of dematerialization and deskilling, the manifold
meanings of materials in art and design, and the challenges for education when the innovative
power of the artistic process is celebrated.

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Craig Kalpakjian Intelligence

Sternberg Press 2017 ISBN 9783956793363 Acqn 27967
Pb 22x24cm 96pp 52ills 42col 22.75

Contributions by Gilles Deleuze, Bob Nickas, Paul Wombell

Among the first artists in his generation to employ digital software in the creation of art objects,
Craig Kalpakjian engages with both historical art discourses and contemporary issues. In his
work, Kalpakjian focuses on the seduction of technology and digital space from a critical position,
questioning utopian ideals and suggesting darker implications.

Intelligence considers the ideas of artificial intelligence exhibited by machines, as seen in the
Sony AIBO robotic dog, and human intelligence, like that which is gathered through interpersonal
contact by the US military in accordance with the US Army Field Guides Manual on
Interrogation, a guide that prohibits abusive techniques of torture. This publication is based on
Kalpakjians Black Box (2002), an artwork shown as part of his solo show at the Andrea Rosen
Gallery that comprises an isolated AIBO robotic dog inside a constructed minimalist box. Over the
course of the exhibition, the robot dog took photographic images of its environment, which were
hung on the wall beside the box. Intelligence includes images produced during the exhibition, as
well as a section that juxtaposes excerpts from the AIBO users guide with those from the US
militarys interrogation manual. Also included is The Tail Wags the Dog, an interview with Bob
Nickas discussing the background and implications of both Black Box and Intelligence, an essay
on Black Box titled Shit Photographs by curator Paul Wombell, and Gilles Deleuzes Postscript
on the Societies of Control, which examines issues revolving around the technology of social
control and confinement.

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Asta Groting - Berlin Fassaden

Sternberg Press 2017 ISBN 9783956793561 Acqn 27934
Pb 21x30cm 56 34ills 2col 13.25

Edited by Andreas Fiedler

Texts by Andreas Fiedler, Deborah Levy

This publication accompanies the first comprehensive presentation of Asta Grtings project
BERLIN FASSADEN. For her exhibition at KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art, Grting
covered the walls and floors with sculptural silicone impressions of Berlin facades containing
traces of bullet holes from the Second World War. Functioning like slow-exposure photographs,
the sculptures capture the history of the facades, from the bullets impact during the war to the
present day. Grting reconstructs wounds as architectural traces and translates them into
abstract pictures. Dust, dirt, and even graffiti are applied to the silicon casts, giving the negative
imprints an almost painted effect, embodying trauma and time in a ghostly silicone skin. As
Groting writes, I want to look from inside these destroyed walls and facades into the worldas if
I could see my own face staring back at me.

This exhibition catalogue, conceived with the artist, focuses on the making of BERLIN
FASSADEN by presenting the artists original photographs of Berlins bullet-ridden facades
alongside images depicting the on-site making of the silicon casts. The precise section of the
facade is revealed and catalogued with its corresponding location, dimensions, and date. An
accompanying essay by writer Deborah Levy explores the inner voice of the holes, scars, and
histories transcribed on the architectural surfaces of buildings in Berlin.

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Visions Of The Now - Stockholm Festival For Art And Technology

Sternberg Press 2017 ISBN 9783956792625 Acqn 27935
Bx 25x35cm 152pp 60ills 10col 35

Edited by Anna Lundh, Julie Cirelli

Contributions by Katja Aglert, Cecilia sberg, Lars-Gunnar Bodin, Rosi Braidotti, Tyler Coburn,
Brian Droitcour, Mathew Dryhurst, Katarina Elvn, Luke Fischbeck (Lucky Dragons), Jacob
Gaboury, Jennifer A. Gonzlez, Goodiepal, Sanne Krogh Groth, Gry Worre Hallberg, Hannah
Heilmann, Holly Herndon, Natalie Jerenijenko, Jacob Kirkegaard, Siri Landgren, Kristin Lucas,
Magnus Larsson, Anna Lundh, Julie Martin, Astrida Neimanis, Laurel Ptak, Sten Ternstrm

Initiated by Swedish artist Anna Lundh, Visions of the Now is a reconsideration of the 1966
Stockholm festival Visioner av Nuet (Visions of the Present), which aimed to examine the impact
of technology on humanity, society, and art; half a century later, we are immersed in the
technology that was still new in 1966. Lundhs project took place in 2013 and brought together
international artists, musicians, theorists, and scientists for a three-day festival of lectures, panels,
performances, sound pieces, installations, and screenings. What, it asked, are our current visions
of the now, and how do we imagine the future?

This two-volume set marks the fiftieth anniversary of Visioner av Nuet and contains the catalogue
and proceedings of the 2013 festival, new contributions by the invitees, and photo documentation.
Archival material from the 1966 festival, with never-before-published correspondence with John
Cage and Buckminster Fuller and texts by Alvin Lucier and Nam June Paik, is featured along with
the connected history of the 1966 New York festival, 9 Evenings of Theatre and Engineering.

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Michael Tedja - The Holarium: Negeren Series 818:32

Sternberg Press 2017 ISBN 9783956793134 Acqn 27937
Hb 17x24cm 1076pp 879col ills 32.50

Contributions by Jelle Bouwhuis, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Carl Haarnack, Edwin Jacobs, Frank
Lubbers, Gean Moreno, Domeniek Ruyters, Janwillem Schrofer

Unlike a number of artists who have begun to use negation, detachment, and inaccessibility as
tools to reflect upon and problematize the narratives mapped onto them as members of diasporic
or immigrant communities, Michael Tedja plays the other extreme. His work seems to exceed and
absorb the institutions that attempt to codify him one way or another, like self-proliferating grey
goo. Whereas his peers may seek to transcend identity as such, Tedjas practice is
hypersubjective and all encompassing.

The present publication assembles a series of drawings; 818 to be exact, divided in 32 chapters.
How can we navigate through them, how can we deal with both the whole and the details? Or as
Tedja writes in The Holarium: Why do we need a specific connection in order to see things as
separate from one another? Can a thing ever be unconnected? Is the human eye even able to
see the things around it as separate from each other?

Tedjas art is predicated on studying the circulation and recycling of images. He is constantly
introducing images in new contexts, exposing and manipulating their mutability. A specific
approach of this kind, built up thematically into an oeuvre, is a new phenomenon. Tedjas oeuvre,
drawing on such disciplines as draftmanship, painting, literature, and installations to produce a
cohesive whole, has generated a visual language that contributes to the development of art in
context of globalization.

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