“This font was inspired by Monica Lewinsky” —Paul Chan, “Wht is a book?”, the New Museum, 10 December, 2011
Blogging About Books on Christmas Eve (or, Catching Up on the Backlog While Home for the Holidaze)
+ Paul Chan’s new essay, A Lawless Proposition was published on e-flux following two recent talks at the New Museum, “Wht is Lawlessness?” and “Wht is a Book?”. While I missed the former, I was able to catch the latter, a relaxed, self-effacing account of Chan’s experiences as a newbie publisher that felt less like a lecture than a public conversation with lots of “chiming in” from the audience. Gratifying.
+ The Guggenheim is indeed the first museum to release a digital exhibition catalogue for Maurizio Cattelan: All (along with a slew of titles from its back catalogue). Am I experiencing a moment of good-natured professional jealousy? Why yes, in fact, I am. Related: Do recall the 54th La Biennale di Venezia iPad catalogue (2010) and Badlands Unlimited/Creative Time’s Waiting for Godot in New Orleans: a Field Guide (2011). Also, the Getty Foundation’s OSCI Project.
+ Take This Book is a Kickstarter-funded—seven more days to go—history-in-the-making of the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street, written by LadyJourno Melissa Gira Grant. A first excerpt from the project was recently published on Rhizome. Back that book up!
+ Bookish Things to See ASAP: At MoMA, Scenes from Zagreb: Artists’ Publications of the New Art Practice, organized by library Bibliographer David Senior (on view through February). Especially looking forward to the publications of Dimitrije Bašičević Mangalos, whose manifestos were some of my favorite works in the 2004-5 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, in Pittsburgh. (I was the curatorial assistant—the Wrangler of the Checklist never forgets!) The curator of that exhibition, now-MoMA curator Laura Hoptman, wrote a book that I suspect would make an apt companion to Senior’s presentation, Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s. It was published by MoMA in 2002, just as we began working on the International, and functioned as an English-language introduction to Eastern European practices of the late 20th century. Related: Projects by Grupa O.K. (a.k.a. Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska)
