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Descartes' Daughter
Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956790423 Acqn 24965
Pb 13x19cm 112pp 12col ills 13
Texts by Melanie Gilligan, Jenny Jaskey, Fionn Meade, Kari Rittenbach, Piper Marshall
Descartes Daughter, edited by Piper Marshall, former curator of the Swiss Institute in New York,
documents the critically lauded 2013 exhibition of the same name as well as continuing its ideas.
Taking the historical account of philosopher Ren Descartes creation of an animatronic effigy of
his deceased young daughter as its foundation, the exhibition explored the traditional divide
between conceptual and expressive works, those dealing with either the mind or the body.
The reader includes five essays that explore the room in between this divide, both within the
works exhibited and beyond. Fionn Meade, curator at the Walker Art Center, submits a poetic
elegy to Ren Descartes, placing his ideas and the discussion around them at the center of this
book. Jenny Jaskey, director and curator of the Artists Institute, writes on scale and the
subjective, metabolic qualities of human. Piper Marshall asks how one can curate a feminist art
exhibition, firmly merging the discussion.

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Textiles - Open Letter

Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956791376 Acqn 25014
Hb 20x25cm 312pp 175ills 100col 27.95
In collaboration with Sabine Folie, Georgia Holz, Susanne Titz
Texts by Elissa Auther, Sabeth Buchmann, Rike Frank, Judith Raum, Seth Siegelaub, Tai Smith,
Georg Vasold, Leire Vergara, Grant Watson
One essential characteristic of textiles is their richly intertextual nature. Their contemporary
appeal and historicity derive from their place in the history of art and culture as well as in the
history of media, society, and technology. Representing traditions found in both applied and fine
arts, textiles hover between formalism and functionalism; as objects and techniques, they
mediate between relations to the self and relations to the world, between affect-driven and
knowledge-driven processes of appropriation. Functionally versatileas objects of utility and
media of an abstract (visual) languagetextiles read as the fulcrum of an ensemble of activities,
and illustrate specific entanglements that, since the beginning of modernity, have transformed the
relations between subject and object, the material and the immaterial, artistic and artisanal
labour, and different cultures.
This publication examines the referential and analytical qualities of textiles through both
contemporary and historical works. The contributions in this book reflect on the complex interplay
between the various functions and connotations of textilessuch as the emphasis on their tactile
qualities or the artistic value attributed to themand the attendant conflicts and antagonisms that
articulate relations of power and value and of the interaction of artistic processes with their
overarching contexts.

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Two Days After Forever - A Reader On The Choreography Of Time. Christodoulos

Panayiotou
Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956791383 Acqn 25019
Pb 14x21cm 224pp 11ills 1col 14.50
Edited by Omar Kholeif
Contributions by Vassos Argyrou, Mirjam Brusius, Alkis Hadjiandreou, Yannis Hamilakis, Malak
Helmy, Didier Maleuvre, Walter Mignolo, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Yiannis Papadakis, Nasa
Patapiou, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Eike Wittrock, Konstantina Zanou
Published on the occasion of the Cyprus Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, Two Days after
Forever is not an exhibition catalogue, but rather an alternate temporal manifestation of the
themes of the pavilion itselfin 2015, realized by artist Christodoulos Panayiotou and curated by
Omar Kholeif. Adopting a variety of modes of address, this book acts as a kind of theatre for
considering the questions: How does one choreograph a history that is constantly being reimagined? And, how do we speak of an anthropology of movement?
With critical writing, poetry, open-ended letters, sketches, and provocations through both new and
existing texts, this publication explores materiality as performance and how quiet gestures can
function as subversive counterpoints to homogenous nationalistic narratives. The backdrop,
Cyprus, becomes a site of multiple imaginaries from where this reader will seek to articulate a
new route of escape.
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Mirjam Thomann 2015

Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956791352 Acqn 25020
Pb 21x26cm 96pp 109col ills 14.50
Edited by Eva Maria Stadler and Mirjam Thomann
Contributions by Tom Holert and Eva Maria Stadler
This artists book and monograph presents a broad selection of Mirjam Thomanns work from
2006 to 2015including a ceramic project at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; spatial
interventions at Galerie Christian Nagel in Cologne and Berlin; an installation at Casco Office
for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht, later recontextualized for exhibitions in Arnsberg and
Cologne; or a series of display sculptures based on a reconstruction of exhibition architecture
from the 1960s. For all her work, Thomann uses what is at hand at a certain site as an impetus,
as material, space, and terrain.
Along with spreads of 109 color images, 2015 Mirjam Thomann includes a preface by art
historian and curator Eva Maria Stadler and a comprehensive essay on Thomanns work by art
historian, critic, and artist Tom Holert. Stadler reflects on how Thomanns Aufstellungen (setups)
refer back to the history of exhibitions.
Tom Holert insightfully surveys Thomanns exhibitions against the backdrop of four dimensions:
what is at hand, the modular, the periphery, and the practical. He discusses how Thomanns work
effectively draws from the etymology of the term premisee.g., by considering the training to
become an artist, the tradition of a medium, the knowledge of a generation, the canon of a milieu,
the conditions of an institution, the specifications of a spatial situation, the power relations in the
art businesses.
The book, designed by the artist, consists of a text section followed by a sequence of plates, all
equal in size and arranged in a reversed timeline. Next to installation shots, reproductions of
booklets, and invitation cards and images documenting performances, the plates include archive
material collected by the artist such as postcards, video stills, floor plans, and snapshots.

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Gabriel Lester - Forced Perspectives

Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783943365658 Acqn 25025
Pb 28x28cm 272pp 28.95
With contributions by Lee Ambrozy, Gabriel Lester, Philippe Pirotte, Vivian Sky Rehberg
In this book Gabriel Lesters prolific adventures and art practice are illustrated through an
alphabetical assortment of his most prominent installations, interventions, sculptures, and films of
the past fifteen years. Alongside comprehensive exhibition documentation, the actual construction
and installation of the artworks is presented. Pairing result and production enables an exclusive
insight into the teamwork and organization that allowed each work to be realized. This blend
provides a glimpse behind the scenes and demonstrates the inherent performativity and narrative
of all of Lesters artworks, affecting their creation, result, and the ultimate experience.
Forced Perspectives is Lesters second monograph. It is designed by acclaimed graphic designer
Irma Boom and contains essays by Philippe Pirotte, director of the Stdelschule and Portikus in
Frankfurt am Main; Lee Ambrozy, art historian and editor of artforum.com.cn; and Vivian Sky
Rehberg, historian, art critic, and course director of the Master of Fine Art at the Piet Zwart
Institute, Rotterdam.

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World of Matter
Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956790836 Acqn 25026
Pb 26x21cm 192pp col ills 25
Contributions by Nabil Ahmed, Inke Arns, Mabe Bethnico, Ursula Biemann, Gavin Bridge,
Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, T. J. Demos, Elaine Gan, Uwe H. Martin & Frauke
Huber, Peter Mrtenbck & Helge Mooshammer, Timothy Morton, Emily Eliza Scott, Paulo
Tavares
World of Matter is an international project investigating raw materials and the complex ecologies
of which they are a part. In light of the acute problems resulting from human-induced
transformation of the earth and its systems, it is tempting to strike a dramatic tone. However, the
perspective of crisis also calls upon us to reconsiderat a fundamental level, and in slow, subtle,
and unspectacular wayshow we understand and interact with the world of things. The
investigations presented in this book, undertaken in many world regions and post-national
spaces, propose a wide range of aesthetic and ethical approaches to the handling of resources,
while challenging the capitalistic assumption that the planets materials are primarily for human
consumption. By drawing connections between works that derive from artistic practice,
journalism, philosophy, activism, and other realms of research, World of Matter provides a place
of commonality for eco-logical imaginaries.
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Filip Markiewicz - Paradiso Lussemburgo

Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956791338 Acqn 25043
Hb 17x24cm 102ills 61col 14.50
Edited by Paul Ardenne
Contributions by Paul Ardenne, Jose Hansen, Ingo Niermann
In spaces designed for fusions of dance, performance, film, karaoke, and reading, visitors to the
Luxembourg Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale enter into the collaged headspace of artist Filip
MarkiewiczParadiso Lussemburgo. An artist whose subject is often the various projected and
historical realities of Luxembourg itself, Markiewicz is well prepared to present viewers with a
space to sieve through layers of projected labels (such as tax haven) and waves of immigration to
speak to a blended sense of European nationality that also deftly uses the specific stage of
Venice.
This reader continues, in the words of the artist, this new contemporary mythology of
Luxembourg, with a bilingual layering of drawings, text and analysis, exhibition views, an
interview, and a film script. Paradiso Lussemburgo, a project proposed by Markiewicz and art
critic Paul Ardenne, creates an active theatre, which the reader continues and further opens for
participation.

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Jutta Koether - f.
Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956790058 Acqn 25044
Pb 12x19cm 130pp 4ills 8.95
Edited by Isabelle Graw, Daniel Birnbaum, Institut fr Kunstkritik, Frankfurt am Main
First published in German in 1987, this is artist and writer Jutta Koethers meditation on painting.
In novella form, f. follows several disembodied female characters as they consider velvet, coral,
the curtain, money, colour, red. These objects, these things, help the narrator and other
characters come into being, but it is paintings that embody who the narrator really is: Even if Im
their hostage when I look at them, Im not inferior to them. I lie down, stand, or sit in front of them
and, in this moment, Im everything they affect in me. Unlike people, paintings are fixed, explicit
with their intentions and challengesin the end they will still be here, outlasting those who made
them or who looked at them. A facsimile of the original German publication is included in this
volume.
Translated from the German by Nick Mauss and Michael Sanchez

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Jaanus Samma - Not Suitable for Work. A Chairman's Tale

Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956791451 Acqn 25086
Pb 17x22cm 272pp 45ills 1col 21.95
Edited by Eugenio Viola, Rebeka Pldsam, and Martin Rnk
Contributions by Maria Arusoo, Kevin Moss, Maarja Kangro, Slava Mogutin, Rebeka Pldsam
and Riikka Taavetti, Eugenio Viola
Jaanus Sammas exhibition Not Suitable for Work. A Chairmans Tale, conceived for the
Estonian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, tells the story of the former collective farm chairman
Juhan Ojaste (19211990), a war hero and family man, who was declared not suitable for work.
He was found guilty after being subjected to humiliating criminal trials in the 1960s for his
involvement in homosexual acts in Soviet Estonia. He lost his job and was abandoned by his
family. After spending a year and a half in a corrective labour camp, Ojaste moved to Tartu where
he became a local legend, notorious for his active gay life. In 1990 a Russian soldier and male
prostitute allegedly murdered Ojaste in his home.
This clothbound two-volume publication draws on political history in attempt to create counternarratives that recognize the inclusion of suppressed histories, communities, and identities. Not
Suitable for Work. A Chairmans Tale is telling a story of discrimination against homosexuality,
and raises questions about power, violence, persecution, and powerlessness of an individual in
authoritarian political regimes that curtail human rights.
An essay by Eugenio Viola offers different perspectives on social restriction issues and the LGBT
community's problem in eastern Europe. Kevin Moss writes about male homosexuality in the
Soviet Union from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. Maarja Kangro composed an
aria based on the chairmans police file, and Slava Mogutin tells his own story of homophobic
persecution and his eventual exile from Russia in 1995. Rebeka Pldsam and Riikka Taavetti
discuss LGBT histories in Baltic region.

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Realism Materialism Art

Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956791260 Acqn 25090
Pb 18x27cm 408pp 42ills 23col 18
Realism Materialism Art (RMA) introduces a diverse selection of new realist and materialist
philosophies and examines their ramifications on the arts. Encompassing neo-materialist
theories, object-oriented ontologies, and neo-rationalist philosophies, RMA serves as a primer on
speculative realism, considering its conceptual innovations as spurs to artistic thinking and
practice and beyond. Despite their differences, these philosophical positions propose that thought
can and does think outside itself, and that reality can be known without its being shaped by and
for human comprehension. Todays realisms and materialisms explicitly challenge many of the
dominant assumptions of cultural practice and theoretical inquiry, opening up new domains of
research and artistic inquiry.
Cutting across diverse thematic interests and modes of investigation, the thirty-five essays in
RMA offer a snapshot of the emerging and rapidly changing set of ideas and practices proposed
by contemporary realisms and materialisms. The book demonstrates the broad challenge of
realist and materialist approaches to received disciplinary categories and forms of practice,
capturing their nascent reworking of art, philosophy, culture, theory, and science, among other
fields. As such, RMA expands beyond the primarily philosophical context in which realism and
materialism have developed.
With a collection of images curated by Jenny Jaskey and Alicia Ritson
Contributions by Armen Avanessian, Elie Ayache, Amanda Beech, Ray Brassier, Mikko Canini,
Diana Coole, Christoph Cox, Manuel DeLanda, Diedrich Diederichsen, Tristan Garcia, Iain
Hamilton Grant, Elizabeth Grosz, Boris Groys, Graham Harman, Terry Horgan, Jenny Jaskey,
Katerina Kolozova, James Ladyman, Franois Laruelle, Nathan Lee, Suhail Malik, Quentin
Meillassoux, Reza Negarestani, John Maoilearca, Trevor Paglen, Luciana Parisi, Matthew
Poole, Matja Potr, Joo Ribas, Matthew Ritchie, Alicia Ritson, Susan Schuppli, Steven Shaviro,
Nick Srnicek, Achim Szepanski, Eugene Thacker, McKenzie Wark, Andy Weir.

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Benjamin Seror - Mime Radio

Sternberg Press 2015 2015 ISBN 9783956791512 Acqn 25076
Hb 14x22cm 14.50
Mime Radio was performed and written orally by French artist Benjamin Seror at a series of
events over a two-year period, then transcribed and edited into a novel. The story revolves
around a cast of eccentric characters, who meet at the Tiki Coco, a bar in Los Angeles that holds
Challenging Reality Open Mic nights for amateur inventors and performers. Eventually, the
protagonists get caught up in trying to help Marsyas, a character from ancient Greek mythology
that lost his body after being defeated in a music contest against the god Apollo, to recover his
voice, his very ancient voice. Unbeknownst to them, this recovery unleashes a disaster Mime
Radio is a novel about how language and perception can be one and the same.

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Mario Pfeifer - Approximation In The Digital Age For A Humanity Condemned To Disappear
Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956790881 Acqn 25077
Pb 23x27cm 200pp 80ills 50col 25
Edited by Ronald Kay, Hugo Palmerola, Mario Pfeifer
Contributions by Rodolfo Andaur, Patricio Muoz Zrate, Marisol Palma, Justo Pastor Mellado, et
al.
Approximation in the digital age for a humanity condemned to disappear is Mario Pfeifers latest
project, which he developed in Puerto Williams, the southernmost settlement in the world located
on the southern archipelagos of Patagonia on Chiles territory bordering Argentina. The
publication documents his multiple-screen video installation and production process as well as his
researches in archives of the Martin Gusinde estate at Anthropos Institut Sankt Augustin and in
the ethnomusicology department of Berlin-Dahlems Museum of Ethnography. Designed equally
as an artists book and critical reader by Markus Weisbeck, the publication engages through
essays and conversations on discourses of cultural production from an anthropological-artistic
approach toward complex issues of indigenous representation, territorial politics in the
postcolonial age, and the remains of German missionary and anthropologist Martin Gusinde in
Terra del Fuego and beyond. A special edition LP will be released with the bilingual publication
on the occasion of Pfeifers first institutional solo exhibition in Latin America and further
presentations in Europe in 2015.

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Approximation - Mario Pfeifer, Kamran Sadeghi LP

Sternberg Press 2015 no ISBN Acqn 25075
LP 31x31cm 18
Kamran Sadeghi, New York-based musician and member of the Soundwalk Collective,
contributed the musical score for Mario Pfeifers video installation Approximation in the digital age
for a humanity condemned to disappear (2014). For his digital compositions Sadeghi, in dialogue
with Pfeifer, took the field recordings made by missionary and anthropologist Martin Gusinde in
1923 of Yaghan chants in Bahia Mejillones as point of departure and reference. The chantsone
of which is digitally reproduced on the LPare the only documents of their kind of the religious
ceremonies and rites of the Yaghans, who have inhabited the southernmost parts of the world for
more than 6,500 years and were, at that time, living on Shunuko, an island today known as Isla
Navarino, in Tierra del Fuego. The original field recordings were made on wax cylinders, which
are housed today at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin where they were digitalized.
The artwork for the LP was created by Markus Weisbeck, who also designed the accompanying
publication, Friendly Approximation. The design is based on photographs and video stills of
Approximation as well as reproductions from the Anthropos Institute in Sankt Augustin, Germany,
which hosts Gusindes estate.
The publication and LP are published on the occasion of solo exhibitions at Museo Nacional de
Bellas Artes Museo sin Muros, Santiago, Chile (2014), KOW, Berlin (2015), and CIRCA
Projects, Newcastle upon Tyne (2015). They also serves as an appendix to the multichannel
video installation produced by Mario Pfeifer on Tierra del Fuego, Chile, which was nominated for
the German Competition at the 61st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2015) and had
its world premiere at Migrating Forms, New York (2014). The publication Friendly Approximation
will be available in summer 2015.
12-inch LP
Musical score written and produced by Kamran Sadeghi, commissioned by Mario Pfeifer for the
multichannel video installation Approximation in the digital age for a humanity condemned to
disappear.
Artwork by Markus Weisbeck, photographs and video stills by Mario Pfeifer.
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Jens Hoffmann - Theater of Exhibitions

Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956790874 Acqn 25099
Pb 13x19cm 88pp 8ills 11.95
Theater of Exhibitions analyzes art after the end of art, questioning whether inherited
frameworks of making, theorizing, and exhibiting art still apply to contemporary practice. The
book also considers the current commodification of the art industry and the distribution of images
in the digital age. Drawing from his formation in theater and his own curatorial work, Jens
Hoffmann reflects on the spaces of contemporary artthe gallery, the institution, the biennial
and ultimately positions the discipline of curating in the context of a larger cultural sphere shaped
by the political, social, and economic conditions of its time, while demanding new attitudes and
new thinking. Hoffmanns theater posits the exhibition as an anthropological endeavour, and the
curator as its agent.
Jens Hoffmann inventively connects the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator with
the most recent developments in curatorial practice in a book that flows forcefully with the insights
gained from his extensive and remarkable curatorial experience.
Jessica Morgan
Do curators today possess their own radical concepts of freedom? Jens Hoffmanns answer to
this question is yes. Walter Benjamin would have admired his description of the reality of the
work. John Dewey would have praised him for living forward. Curators will find worlds of use for
Theater of Exhibitions.
Molly Nesbit
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Sculpture Unlimited 2 - Materiality In Times Of Immateriality

Sternberg Press 2015 ISBN 9783956791024 Acqn 25100
Pb 14x20cm 148pp 25col ills 11.95
Contributions by Aleksandra Domanovi, Mark Fisher, Nathalie Heinich, Mark Leckey, JeanFranois Lyotard and Bernard Blistne, Jussi Parikka, Christiane Sauer, Timotheus Vermeulen
While the first volume Sculpture Unlimited (2011) dealt with the question of how the contemporary
field of sculpture can be defined in a useful and stimulating manner against its long history, the
second volume looks at the present and future. Once again edited by Eva Grubinger and Jrg
Heiser, with contributions by internationally reputed artists and scholars, this volume poses the
following question: If we assume that computers and algorithms increasingly control our lives, that
they not only regulate social and communicative traffic but also produce new materials and
things, does this increase or decrease the space for artistic imagination and innovation? Where is
the place of art and sculpture, provided we dont want art to resort to merely maintaining aesthetic
traditions?
With sculpture as a leading reference, the contributions address theory, aesthetics, and
technology: Do current philosophical movements such as new materialism and object-oriented
ontology affect our notion of the art object? Does so-called post-Internet art have a future? And
how does the Internet of Things relate to objects and things in art?

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