2013 is chugging along for us at Half Letter Press! We have some newer items in stock and continue to plan for the next publishing ventures.
The newest AREA Chicago is now in stock. AREA Chicago #13: Home Fronts, Housing Struggles joins a solid series of journals of writing and thought straight out of the Stockyards. We're excited to carry our friend Gregory Sholette's new collaboration with artist Oliver Ressler, It's The Political Economy, Stupid. You'll feel a lot less dumb after reading some of the writings in that book, which includes contributions by Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek.
The Llano Del Rio Collective of Los Angeles is at it again. An Antagonist's Guide to the Assholes of Los Angeles is a great 16-page booklet that includes over 80 annotated entries culled from an open public call and research. Suffice to say, it's a must-read for those brave enough to traverse the Temptation Island that is the City of Angels (and Assholes).
HLP and Temporary Services member Brett Bloom co-wrote an essay with his partner Bonnie Fortune to be included in Invisible Spaces of Parenthood, a great collection of ideas and propositions for ways to better support creative workers and their family lives. On the Temporary Services tip, we are also pleased to present Records as Portable Exhibitions and Interactive, Participatory Objects, the 99th publication from Temporary Services. It's an exhibition guide and catalog full of writing and color illustrations reviewing some of the most interesting interactive record albums that we have come across. The cover is 3D!
We also have a new poster/booklet related to our Public Phenomena research.
Temporary Services is working on several ongoing projects, and will also be participating in the Division of Labor Festival, hosted by the long-running interdisciplinary arts organization The Lab in San Francisco. Marc will be there to install and visit in June of 2013. We'll be presenting a large survey of our booklets, books, and posters.
Division of Labor is a festival that includes seven evenings of performance, improvised music, and literary and media art. The festival is hosted at The Lab, an interdisciplinary arts organization founded by a group of artists in 1984. If you're going to San Francisco in June, be sure to make time to meet Marc at the opening reception (Thursday, June 13 from 6:00 - 9:00 pm). Wearing flowers in your hair is optional.
To contact us with ordering questions, chat about books you would like to see at HLP or anything else, email us at publishers@halfletterpress.com.
You can also socialize with us via Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr.
– Temporary Services & Half Letter Press
NEW STOCK:
An Antagonist's Guide to the Assholes of Los Angeles
By The Llano Del Rio Collective, co-produced with Content-Object
16-page, staple-bound, offset, booklet/map
$10.00
Living in any city is easier to negotiate when you know who the city's assholes are and you can avoid them at all costs. Or maybe you don't want to avoid them but want to confront them and perhaps even attempt the noble task of trying to persuade them to change their assholish ways? Enter the Llano del Rio Collective with their third free guide (free only in Los Angeles - sorry). Recently while in Los Angeles on Temporary Services and Half Letter Press business, we were able to pick up a bunch of copies directly from collective member Robby Herbst who, we are really happy to say, is definitely not an asshole.
More information from the press release:
Over 80 annotated entries locate banks, businesses, politicians and polluters, war contractors and museums, a troll, a yeller, and a cruel misdial. This list was sourced through an open public call and research. The guide frames for users sites worthy of creative exploration in Los Angeles, we hope your practice benefits from it.
The guide also includes short essays framing antagonism within Los Angeles social and cultural history; contributions by The Llano Del Rio Collective, Marisa Jahn, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Laura Pullido, and Jennifer Flores Sternad.
An Antagonist’s Guide to the Assholes In LA is the 3rd free map/guide to Los Angeles by the Llano Del Rio Collective. Past guides are A Map For An Other LA (sites of collectivist projects) and Scores For The City (locations for aberrant public behavior).
The Llano Del Rio Collective (www.ldrg.wordpress.com) aims to expand cultural, social, and political imagination of Los Angeles through the production of thematic guides, related events and the hosting of a speakers bureau. We aim to frame practices, rather then be a practice. The project draws its name from the socialist colony founded in California’s Antelope Valley by Job Harriman in the early Twentieth Century. Though not strictly a collective we negotiate collectivist ideals with an advisory group currently constituted by Katie Bachler, Sandra de la Loza, John Burtle, Adam Overton, Hector Gallegos, Ashley Hunt, Tom McKenzie, Ken Ehrlich, Kelly Marie Martin, Steve Anderson, Janet Sarbanes, Fritz Haeg, Kimberly Varella, Erin Schneider, Nicole Antebi, Lara Bank, Jen Hofer, and Colin Dickey. The Llano Del Rio Collective is organized by Robby Herbst.
AREA Chicago #13: Home Fronts, Housing Struggles
Edited by Rebecca Zorach
64-page, double-fold, web offset, newspaper
$5.00
AREA Chicago continues to be a source of much inspiration and we continue to distribute each new thematic issue. This one asks: "Where are living now?" and documents some important Chicago housing struggles. There is a LOT in this issue, as always, but some key subject divisions focus on: Housing Histories, Notes from the Current Crisis, The CHA (with a great account of the CHAos art interventionist project), Gentrification in Pilsen, and a group of seven essays under the banner "Making It Work."
More from the publisher:
AREA Issue #13: Home Fronts, Housing Struggles explores the contested ground where we live and have lived: the history and current state of “housing” in Chicago and the political, personal, and imaginative meanings that accompany these physical spaces and the struggles for them. The issue’s themes include stories and histories of housing in Chicago; the CHA’s Plan for Transformation and its ongoing aftermath; current struggles in Chicago around foreclosure and eviction, detention, and uneven development; housing alternatives and the labor of care; and the effects of gentrification in the Pilsen neighborhood.
Edited by Rebecca Zorach. With contributions by:
Keeanga Yamatta Taylor, Jason Reblando, The Chicago Coalition of Household Workers, Pauline Lipman, Adam Ballard, Sarah Jane Rhee, Heather Radke, Alison Fisher, Queer to the Left, Larry Shure, Phillis Humphries and Deborah Taylor, Crystal Vance Guerra, Mary Pattillo, Damon Rich, Ingrid Haftel, Kelly Humrichouser, Bert Stabler, Basia Toczydlowska, CHAOS Agents, Nicole Marroquin, José G. Herrera Soto, Nyki Salinas Duda, Euan Hague and Winifred Curran, Mark Walden, Merlene Robinson-Parsons, Maria Dolores , Gloria Haris ,Virginia Morales , Vicente Gutierrez, Mary Bonelli , Marcia Iza, Silvia Baca, Yesenia Tellez, Patricia Hill, Kim Scardina, Patricia Scardina, John Newman, Victoria Rivera, Keosha Cummings, Tom Hansen, Tom Tresser, Tricia Van Eck, Neighborhood Writing Alliance, Rozalinda Borcila and Daniel Carrillo, Loren A Seeger, Jayne Hileman, Marie Shebeck, David Nekimken, Jesse Proudfoot, Jake Norris, Jennie Rudderham and Jasson Perez, Michael W. Phillips Jr, and Jerome Grand.
Invisible Spaces of Parenthood
Edited by Andrea Francke
138 pages, perfect bound + staple bound supplement, Risograph book
$15.00
Andrea Francke, a London based artist and mother, opened a functioning daycare center (crèche) for her graduate show. Francke, who moved to Britain from Brazil to study, assumed that having a child would be just a matter of adopting some new routines and then back to business as usual with her art work, social life, etc. When the Chelsea College of Art and Design decided to close the nursery where Francke kept her son while she attended classes, the artist realized that daily life with a child would not be going along as planned.
Francke joined with other parents to protest the nursery closing but the school's administration was not moved. The artist set up a functioning daycare in the gallery of her thesis exhibition which created a platform for public discussions of how budget cuts to public services in Britain were affecting small children and families. Many things came out of Francke's functioning daycare installation. She connected with local nurseries and other parents. She broke boundaries between public (gallery/university space) and private (daycare, childhood, etc). She also realized that her fellow students without children were not concerned with her struggle, because they felt it didn't apply to their live—she felt invisible as the parent of a small child in an academic art context.
All of these discoveries led to her work with the Showroom, a gallery in London that works with the intersection of art, research, and participation. They invited Francke as part of Communal Knowledge, a series with artists partnering with local groups and organizations in the Showroom's neighborhood—considered one of the poorest in Great Britain.
Francke put together Invisible Spaces of Parenthood: A collection of pragmatic propositions for a better future, an exhibition that expanded on her thesis show with events, workshops, interviews with childminders and other care workers, activist connections, and a publication. This manual contains eight specially commissioned essays as well as interviews, event excerpts, discussions and documentation from the exhibition. HLP's Brett Bloom has an essay in the book he co-authored with his partner, Bonnie Fortune.
It's The Political Economy, Stupid: The Global Financial Crisis in Art and Theory
Edited by Gregory Sholette and Oliver Ressler
192-page hardcover book
$29.50
This book comes in the wake of an exhibition sharing the same title and organized by the book's editors Gregory Sholette and Oliver Ressler.
Publisher and author description:
It’s the Political Economy, Stupid argues that it is time to push back against the dictates of the capitalist logic and, by use of both theoretical and artistic means, launch a rescue of the very notion of the social. Edited and organized by two activist artists, Gregory Sholette and Oliver Resler, the project offers a powerful indictment of the current capitalist crisis.
It’s the Political Economy, Stupid combines analytical and theoretical responses from internationally acclaimed artists and thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, David Graeber, Judith Butler, John Roberts, and Brian Holmes, Julia Brian-Wilson, Liz Park, Thom Donovan, Angela Dimitrakaki, Kirsten Lloyd, Kerstin Stakemeier, Dread Scott, Nis Rømer, Melanie Gilligan, Filippo Berta, Linda Bilda, Sherry Millner, Ernie Lawson, Flo 6X8, Maureen Connor, Karl Lorac, The Institute for Wishful Thinking among others.
It’s the Political Economy, Stupid was designed by artist and activist Noel Douglas using visual themes based on graphics derived from Goldman Sachs online stock market pages and features images from the exhibition of the same name that was presented in Pori, Finland.
Reviews:
'In the wake of the capitalist crisis, very few cultural institutions have dared to address the horrors of greed that plague us in such a direct and haunting way." - Alexander Cavaluzzo, Hyperallergic
'Confrontational, intellectual, and occasionally amusing group show, which squarely aligns itself with the Occupy movement." - Village Voice (praise for the exhibition on which the book is based)
About the Authors:
Gregory Sholette is an artist, activist and author based in New York. He co-founded two artists' collectives: Political Art Documentation and Distribution (1980-88) and REPOhistory (1989-2000). He is the author of Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto, 2010) and co-editor of Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (2007) and The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (2004).
Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker based in Vienna. His work has been exhibited across the world including at the Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul and the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt. He is the editor of Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies (2007).
Records as Portable Exhibitions and Interactive, Participatory Objects
By Temporary Services
20-page, staplebound, offset booklet
$4.00
The 99th publication by Temporary Services is a catalog, overview and exhibition guide titled "Records as Portable Exhibitions and Interactive, Participatory Objects." Printed on heavy, glossy paper, this little booklet is packed with writing along with twenty color illustrations. And yes, the front cover, drawn from the back of "Shinin' On" by Grand Funk, will produce a 3-D effect if you have a pair of glasses handy.
From the introduction:
"This booklet focuses on vinyl records and their packaging that are either interactive and participatory, or that operate like portable exhibits. Temporary Services made this booklet to accompany a collection of the albums that are featured in this publication. We love music and the rich collaborations that surround its production and presentation. We also enjoy the democratic aspects of mass produced creative works like records. As a group that has released no records but has authored and/or self-published nearly 100 booklets, books, and newspapers (along with lots of posters and ephemera), we love the idea of creative things that don’t cost a lot of money to make or sell and that thousands of people can own. And okay, a couple people in the group are record collectors so this project was bound to happen at some point.
The albums in this exhibition and booklet represent a range of inspired listening concepts, design strategies and interactive possibilities for 12” long-playing phonographic records. We have collected these records together because they serve as a vehicle for a range of interactive possibilities or an unusually generous array of readable and viewable materials. These records go far beyond the standard presentation of music recorded to vinyl and packaged in a cardboard sleeve. Some of these records include enough printed inserts to comprise a substantial wall display or a small exhibition. Others encourage action – even asking you to draw on the cover or dismantle part of the interior and wear it."
Some of the records discussed in this booklet include albums by: Bootsy's Rubber Band, Cheech and Chong, Chicago Thrash Ensemble, Alice Cooper, Crass, The Ex, Faces, Hawkwind, Jefferson Airplane, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Man, Parliament, Rolling Stones, Sweet, Terry Plumming and The Who.
Public Phenomena [Poster-Booklet]
By Temporary Services
A5 booklet that folds out into A1 poster, full color offset
$4.00
?This poster-booklet is the result of over fifteen years of photographic documentation and research on the variety of modifications and inventions that people make in public. From roadside memorials to piles of unused bicycles, people consistently alter shared common spaces to suit their needs, or let both man-made and natural aberrations run wild. The result is a new kind of public space that lies just outside of ideological articulations – with creative, inspiring, and sometimes confounding moments that push past the original planned design of cities.
Public Phenomena continues to demonstrate to us that people will always find ways to resist plans others make and try to impose on them, whether through direct defiance or quiet misuse. This inspires us to learn from city spaces and the people that use them rather than seeking to impose aesthetics on these spaces.
TThis publication is related to 3 others that we have made: Public Phenomena [Booklet]; Public Phenomena [Book] - PRINT and PDF; and Mobile Phenomena.
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To use an alternate method of payment, please contact us about it first and we can give you instructions on how to complete the transaction. Send an email to pubishers@halfletterpress.com to talk to us.
ATTENTION STORES, DISTROS, SCHOOLS, LIBRARIES!
We offer volume discounts to schools and libraries and wholesale pricing to stores and distributors on some titles. We would especially like you to consider the books that we have published under the Half Letter Press imprint, including:
Revolution as an Eternal Dream: The Exemplary Failure of the Madame Binh Graphics Collective.
PDF: Public Phenomena, only $5
Please contact us at publishers@halfletterpress.com for pricing and distribution details.
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Half Letter Press News is a monthly message to fans, friends, and customers of Half Letter Press. To join or leave the email list for this newsletter, or to change the address where you receive it, please email publishers@halfletterpress.com.
Half Letter Press is run by Brett Bloom, Marc Fischer, and Salem Collo-Julin. Our HQ is in Chicago, and we live there, in Philadelphia, and in Copenhagen.
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www.halfletterpress.com.
