Recommended Reading: A Book List on Performance Art

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  Performa Publications Performa 09: Back to Futurism Written and edited by legendary performance art historian RoseLee Goldberg, Performa 09: Back to Futurism is the definitive document of the unforgettable Performa 2009 biennial. It is the third volume to draw content and inspiration from the world-renowned Performa biennials, and features creative documentation by the 150 artists who made Performa 09 so extraordinary--among them Guy Ben-Ner, Candice Breitz, Omer Fast, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mike Kelley, Arto Lindsay, Wangechi Mutu, Christian Tomaszewski and Yeondoo Jung (all of whom presented special Performa Commissions) and Keren Cytter, Tacita Dean, Alicia Framis, Loris Greaud, William Kentridge and Joan Jonas (who brought US premieres to the biennial). Photographs of each artist's performance and texts contributed by curators and critics provide accounts of every show, as well as an understanding of the importance of each work within the artist's individual career and in relation to larger artistic trends. Taking place at over 80 of New York's most . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Roselee Goldberg, Lana Wilson. Introduction by RoseLee Goldberg. Foreword by Hal Foster. Text by RoseLee Goldberg, Defne Ayas, Mark Beasley, Lana Wilson, Tairone Bastien, Esa Nickle, Claire Bishop, Linda Yablonsky, Emily Braun. Pbk, 7 x 9 in. / 400 pgs / 300 color. Publication Date: 7/31/2011 List Price: US $39.95

  Hatje Cantz ASCO: Elite of the Obscure A Retrospective 1972-1987 ASCO: Elite of the Obscure is the first comprehensive monograph to survey the wide-ranging activities of the Chicano performance and conceptual art group ASCO. Active between 1972 and 1987, ASCO began as a tight-knit core of artists from east Los Angeles: Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie Herrón and Patssi Valdez. Taking their name from the Spanish idiomatic word for disgust and nausea, ASCO launched their response to turbulent socio-political conditions in Los Angeles and the larger international context through performance, public art and multimedia. Geographically and culturally segregated from the then-nascent Los Angeles contemporary art scene, and aesthetically at odds with the emerging Chicano art movement, ASCO united to explore and exploit what they saw as the unlimited media of the conceptual. ASCO: Elite of the Obscure includes reproductions of previously unpublished works and reprinted historical documents, along with new critical essays. . . . . [see book details]

  Text by C. Ondine Chavoya, Rita Gonzalez, David E. James, Amelia Jones, Chon A. Noriega, Jesse Lerner, Deborah Cullen, Maris Bustamante, Colin Gunckel, David Román, Raúl Homero Villa, Josh Kun, Tere Romo, Mario Ontiveros, Ramón García, Michelle Habell-Pallán. Hbk, 7.75 x 9.5 in. / 432 pgs / 250 color. Publication Date: 11/30/2011 List Price: US $60.00

  Independent Curators International Martha Wilson Sourcebook 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces Martha Wilson's career encapsulates the contestations of feminist and socially engaged art. In her work and throughout her life, Wilson has explored how identity and positioning are not merely given, self-defined or projected, but also negotiated. The complex nature of her work encompasses conceptually-based performances, videos and photo-text compositions since the early 1970s. Martha Wilson Sourcebook is a collection of primary research materials consisting of rare archival documents and excerpts of landmark publications that influenced Wilson, such as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and Susan Sontag's On Photography. This unique selection of materials documents Wilson's actions and work, reveals her interest in fellow artists such as Vito Acconci, Carolee Scheemann, Nancy Spero and Lynda Benglis and includes in its entirety Lucy Lippard's exhibition catalogue for C. 7,500, the groundbreaking 1973 exhibition of women Conceptual artists, which first declared the significance of . . . . [see book details]

  Foreword by Kate Fowle. Introduction by Moira Roth. Text by Martha Wilson. Pbk, 8.5 x 11 in. / 256 pgs / 200 b&w. Publication Date: 10/31/2011 List Price: US $25.00

  Silvana Editoriale Regina José Galindo Since 1999, the Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo (born 1974) has drawn attention to her native country's oppression of women and the poor by activating her body as a site for collective inscription. Several of her performances are extreme exercises in the deprivation of dignity: she has been publicly stunned with an electroshock gun and cleansed” with a power hose; she once commissioned a plastic surgeon to locate the imperfections on her naked body in public with a marker. In Guatemala, these actions are not so easily assigned to the symbolic realm: in a 2005 interview Galindo said, As Guatemalans, we know how to decipher any image of pain, because we have seen it all up close.” This volume surveys all of Regina José Galindo's works in performance and video from 2006 to 2010. . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Rosina Cazali, Fernando Castro Flórez, Eugenio Viola, Clare Carolin. Pbk, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 400 pgs / 200 color. Publication Date: 10/31/2011 List Price: US $45.00

  JRP|Ringier Tris Vonna-Michell The British performance artist Tris Vonna-Michell (born 1982) utilizes projections, texts and antiquated technologies as theatrical props for his wild, often autobiographical stories. This artist's book elaborates on these narratives, many of which have been in development for nearly a decade, in which reality and fiction seamlessly merge. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Eva Birkenstock, Rahel Blättler, Hannes Loichinger, Beatrix Ruf. Pbk, 8.25 x 10.25 in. / 80 pgs / 15 color / 19 b&w. Publication Date: 11/30/2011 List Price: US $39.95

  Walther König, Köln Valie Export: Time and Countertime Having quickly tired of life as an editor and extra in the Austrian film industry, in 1967 Waltraud Hollinger changed her name to Valie Export and plunged into the violent and often blood-soaked world of Viennese performance art and the extremist "Actions" of Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Like them, Export subjected her body to pain, but where their work was inevitably drawn towards a religious idea of catharsis, Export politicized the inscription of women's bodies in terms of media representation, declaring her project as explicitly feminist. Export soon turned to video to record her performances and began to remove her person from her work, as in her now-famous 1971 video "Facing a Family." Today, across more than four decades of activity, Export has built a large and rigorous oeuvre comprising performance, photography, film and media installations. This volume surveys her career. . . . . [see book details]

  Foreword by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Stella Rollig. Introduction by Angelika Nollert. Texts by Sabeth Buchmann, Yilmaz Dziewior, Elke Krasny, Hanne Loreck, Maren Lübbke-Tidow, Letizia Ragaglia, Brigitte Reutner, Johanna Schwanberg, Berta M. Sichel. Hbk, 9.75 x 13 in. / 304 pgs / 278 color. Publication Date: 4/30/2011 List Price: US $59.95

  Walker Art Center Eiko & Koma: Time Is Not Even, Space Is Not Empty Operating at the intersections of dance, art and performance for nearly 40 years, acclaimed Japanese movement/performance artists Eiko & Koma have built up an enormously influential body of movement-theater productions, including theatrically staged performances, site works, dance videos, gallery-based performance installations and collaborations with leading music, dance and visual artists. Time Is Not Even, Space Is Not Empty presents a complete, illustrated catalogue of their dance works, alongside editor's and choreographer's notes, reprints of primary source and other archival material, and a series of newly commissioned written responses by Anna Halprin, Dean Otto, Sam Miller, Peter Taub and others. A distinguished group of scholars from the dance and visual arts fields offer interpretations of the artists' work, including a history of the artists' relationship with the institution by Walker curator Philip Bither; an in-depth overview by Suzanne Carbonneau, Professor of Performance at George Mason University and Director of the Institute for . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Joan Rothfuss. Text by Suzanne Carbonneau, André Lepecki, Doryun Chong, Philip Bither, Forrest Gander. Photo-essays by Philip Trager, Jan Henle. Pbk, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 288 pgs / 80 color / 170 b&w. Publication Date: 6/30/2011 List Price: US $35.00

  Contemporary Arts Museum Houston John Wood & Paul Harrison: Answers to Questions John Wood (born 1969) and Paul Harrison (born 1966) fuse their aesthetic research with existential slapstick comedy. Working together since 1993, the British duo use a wide variety of props, including furniture, household utensils and their own bodies, setting up comical interactions with objects that they record in austere video works. Describing themselves as performance artists and sculptors whose audience is the video camera, Wood and Harrison are heirs to silent film comics Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and to uniquely British comedy troupes like Monty Python. Through their efforts, no matter how absurd, Sisyphean or masochistic, Wood and Harrison reveal the potential for inventive play in all scenarios. Grounded in the joys and pratfalls of the everyday, Wood and Harrison's blend of high and low, philosophical and funny, captures both a sense of wonder and the thrill of genuine experimentation. . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Toby Kamps. Flexi, 8.5 x 11.5 in. / 120 pgs / 60 color / 20 b&w. Publication Date: 5/31/2011 List Price: US $24.95

  JRP|Ringier Between Zones Between Zones explores the possibilities of documenting time-based works. Examining the intersection of disciplines such as sculpture and installation, or reproducible media, such as film and photography, with the fields of dance, music and performance art, this publication outlines the theoretical underpinnings of these relationships. Based on her own practice as a documenter of the Judson Dance Theater, Babette Mangolte examines the relationship between movement and speed in the filming of performative processes; Raphael Gygax posits the notion that performances, their installation venues and the objects involved may be read as rituals, places of ritual and relics; and Verena Kuni investigates themes of temporality and transience in art, sound and music. These represent just a sampling of the diverse essays included in this book, by a range of scholars and practitioners in the performance fields. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder. Text by Verena Kuni, Philip Auslander, Kristina Köhler. Hbk, 5.75 x 9.25 in. / 352 pgs / 19 color / 69 b&w. Publication Date: 1/31/2011 List Price: US $45.00

  The Museum of Modern Art, New York Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present Since the beginning of her career, in Belgrade in the late 1960s, Marina Abramovic has been a pioneer of performance art, creating some of the most important works in the field. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art that documents approximately 50 of the artist's ephemeral time- and media-based works from throughout her career. The book also discusses a unique element of the Museum's retrospective, live performance: a new work created for the occasion, and performed by Abramovic herself; and re-creations of the artist's works by other performers—the first such to be undertaken in a museum setting. The book spans over four decades of Abramovic's early interventions and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances and collaborative performances made with the Dutch artist Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). Essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator of Media and performance art at MoMA, and four distinguished . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Klaus Biesenbach. Text by Arthur C. Danto, Chrissie Iles, Nancy Spector, Jovana Stokic. Hbk, 9.5 x 12 in. / 224 pgs / 375 color / Audio CD. Publication Date: 4/30/2010 List Price: US $50.00

  JRP|Ringier Not to Play with Dead Things From its Futurist and Dadaist origins to the body art of the 1970s and more recent developments in the genre, the history of Performance art is oriented around a fairly consistent set of elements: movements, speech, the body, impermanence, audience participation. But artists have also produced installations and performative objects for their performances, whose status becomes ambiguous once the action is over. Not to Play with Dead Things pays overdue attention to these frequently orphaned props of performance art, documenting works from the 1960s to the present by artists as diverse as Richard Jackson, Paul McCarthy, Roman Signer, Mike Kelley, Franz West, Jim Shaw, Guy de Cointet, John Bock, Spartacus Chetwynd, Catherine Sullivan and Erwin Wurm. Not to Play with Dead Things asks: are these objects relics of their own making? And is their hybridity a kind of resistance to the streamlining of art? . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Marie de Brugerolle. Text by Catherine Wood, Patricia Brignone, Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux. Flexi, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 176 pgs / 79 color. Publication Date: 3/31/2010 List Price: US $35.00

  MIT List Visual Arts Center 9 Evenings Reconsidered Art, Theater, and Engineering, 1966 In 1966, a Bell Laboratories physicist brought a group of avant-garde artists together with 10 open-minded members of the science and technology fields for 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, a series of investigatory Happenings which took place at the 69th Regiment Armory and were duly noted by critics Lucy Lippard and Brian O'Doherty. The resulting seminal performances included John Cage's Variations VII, in which 30 photocells were mounted around the performance space, activating a variety of sound sources--including a blender, 20 radio channels and two Geiger counters--as the performers moved around. Other contributors included Lucinda Childs, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman. The events were photographed by Peter Moore, whose pictures, many never before been published, are featured here. Also included are Lippard and O'Doherty's original reviews; new scholarship by Clarisse Bardiot, Michelle Kuo and Catherine Morris; and an interview . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Catherine Morris. Essays by Clarisse Bardiot and Michelle Kuo. Texts by Lucy Lippard and Brian O'Doherty. Introduction by Jane Farver. Paperback, 8.25 x 13 in. / 88 pgs / 4 color and 60 duotones. Publication Date: 8/15/2006 List Price: US $25.00

  Poligrafa An Art of Limina: Gary Hill's Works and Writings Gary Hill is one of the most influential contemporary artists to investigate the myriad relationships between words and electronic images. His inquiries into linguistics and consciousness offer resonant philosophical and poetic insights, as he explores the formal conjunctions of electronic visual and audio elements with the body and the self. With experimental rigor, conceptual precision and imaginative leaps of discovery, Hill's work in video is about, and is, a new form of writing. In this substantial volume, George Quasha and Charles Stein analyze the artist's entire career, paying particular attention to the single-channel video works. Covering Hill's oeuvre, this highly readable monograph features a comprehensive chronology of his work, including important production details. A careful selection of key writings by the artist is also included. With 640 pages and more than 900 illustrations, it is the most comprehensive and in-depth treatment of Gary Hill's work to date, written in close connection . . . . [see book details]

  Foreword by Lynne Cooke. Text by George Quasha, Charles Stein. Hardcover, 8.5 x 10.25 in. / 640 pgs / illustrated throughout. Publication Date: 6/30/2009 List Price: US $75.00

  Gregory R. Miller & Co. Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects is a major new publication of the work of one of today's most important and influential artists. The book is a comprehensive catalogue of Hamilton's object-based work from 1984 to 2006. The more than 130 color plates document photographs, sculpture, video, audio and language pieces (both unique and editioned), as well as multiples and prints. Many of the objects relate to the large-scale installations for which Hamilton is internationally known. Each object in the inventory is accompanied by a text by Joan Simon, who also contributes a significant new essay setting Hamilton's objects in critical context. The complete inventory of Hamilton's objects made over the past 20-plus years is reproduced in this essential publication, which also contains an extensive biography, bibliography and index. The book, designed by the Swedish designer Hans Cogne in conversation with Ann Hamilton, is a beautiful object in its own right . . . . [see book details]

  Essay by Joan Simon. Hardcover, 7 x 10.5 in. / 312 pgs / 150 color and 80 b&w. Publication Date: 11/15/2006 List Price: US $60.00

  JRP|Ringier Catherine Sullivan and Co: Film and Theatre Works 2002-2004 The geographic range of Catherine Sullivan's imagination extends from Chechnya to Hollywood and wanders even further afield psychologically In her theatrical video projections, sometimes entailing as many as five screens, Sullivan explores the principles of dramatic convention and the mechanics of expression, with a particular interest in doubling, repetition, and site specificity in performance as a way of cracking open meaning. Brechtian stylization combined with mysterious choreography and props give her work a look and tension distinctive in contemporary art. This monograph includes both large video works like Five Economies (big hunt/ little hunt) (about Helen Keller, among many more things) as well as sculpture, film stills and single-channel works. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Beatrix Ruf. Essays by Sebastian Egenhofer, Karola Grässlin and Susanne Titz. Paperback, 9.5 x 11.25 in. / 192 pgs /90 color. Publication Date: 9/15/2005 List Price: US $45.00

  Locus + Publishing Ltd. Chris Burden This comprehensive overview, the first to appear in almost a decade, examines an artistic career, that now must be viewed as one of the most fascinating in the history of contemporary art. From his highly controversial and seminal performance works of the early 1970s, to his complex, imaginative installations and monumental sculptures, the art of Chris Burden uniquely informs as well as incorporates the major artistic undercurrents of the last three decades. Not only has the artist made a major contribution to the history of body-related performance art, but the artist's fascination with systems of power, societal organization, architectural structure and technological systems, have resulted in an extraordinary body of sculptural objects and environmental installations over the last 35 years. In compiling this publication the artist has worked closely with curator and long time associate Fred Hoffman, taking this opportunity to re-examine his work afresh and revealing images that are unpublished . . . . [see book details]

  Essays by Fred Hoffman, Paul Schimmel, Kristine Stiles and Robert Storr. Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.5 in. / 256 pgs / illustrated throughout. Publication Date: 11/15/2005 List Price: US $85.00

  Los Angeles County Museum of Art Eleanor Antin . . . . [see book details]

  Artwork by Eleanor Antin. Contributions by Lisa Bloom. Text by Graham Beal, Howard Fox. Paperback, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 264 pgs / 60 color / 100 b&w. Publication Date: 5/2/1999 List Price: US $24.95

  Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation: The Rape of the Sabine Women Brooklyn-based Eve Sussman founded the Rufus Corporation, an ad hoc group of artists, dancers, actors and musicians who create videos, photographs and live events, in 2003. This volume compiles film stills from two works for which Sussman and her collaborators are most known. "89 Seconds at Alcázar" (2004) is a high-definition video tableau inspired by Diego Velázquez's painting "Las Meninas" (1656). The piece focuses on the 89 seconds when the Spanish royal family and their courtiers would have been in the exact configuration portrayed in the painting. The Rape of the Sabine Women--featuring a mesmerizing score composed by Jonathan Bepler--is an allegorical video that conflates the myth of Romulus' founding of Rome with David's painting "Intervention of the Sabine Women" (1796-99). It is set in an idealized, cinematic version of the 1960s that includes G-men and a decadent party in a chic International Style summer home. . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Helle Crenzien, Michael Juul Holm. Flexi, 8 x 10 in. / 116 pgs / 83 color / 11 b&w. Publication Date: 9/30/2009 List Price: US $40.00

  Art Gallery of York University Fiona Tan: Disassembling the Archive Exceptionally well designed, engaging and mysterious, Disassembling the Archive is a quasi-fictional correspondence with the Amsterdam-based, Indonesia-born artist Fiona Tan. It departs from interpretations of postcolonial identity issues in Tan's work to trace the implications of the archival housing of photographs and moving images. By way of a detour through Siegfried Kracrauer's writing on photography and Jacques Derrida's writing on the Freudian impression, we witness--right before our eyes--the disintegrative and destructive effect of photography on the archive. This volume is printed on several papers and features full bleed video stills, mesmerizing archival portraits of young Asian girls in identical uniforms and a long text in the form of philosophical letters "from" Philip Monk--who curated the 2006 exhibition at Toronto's Art Gallery of York University on which this volume is based. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Michael Maranda. Text by Philip Monk. Hardback, 6 x 9 in. / 232 pgs / 29 color / 99 b&w. Publication Date: 7/1/2008 List Price: US $25.00

  Charta/ Gagosian Gallery Francesco Vezzoli: Right You Are (If You Think You Are) Throughout his career, Francesco Vezzoli has focused on people’s fascination with celebrity. At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on October 27, 2007, he restaged Right You Are (If You Think You Are), the renowned play by Italian Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello that examines the fundamental ambiguity of truth. Vezzoli assembled an extraordinary cast of top-billed actors, implicating his audience in an investigation of rumor and celebrity mongering as substitutes for a deeper understanding of the individual. Pirandello, like Vezzoli in his own art, points to these empty distractions as a means of drawing attention to existential and humanist concerns. Vezzoli’s visionary approach to Pirandello’s jewel of a work playfully exposes the relativity of truth, the necessity of illusion, and the instability of the human persona. Co-produced by the Gagosian Gallery of New York, the staging is fully documented in this book in which you can literally be reflected as in a . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Herbert Muschamp, RoseLee Goldberg, Francesco Vezzoli, Nancy Spector, Michael Schulman. Paperback 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 128 pgs / 48 color / 11 b&w. Publication Date: 3/4/2009 List Price: US $39.95

  Kunsthaus Bregenz Gelitin: Chinese Synthese Leberkase The "Good Bad Boys" of international art met as kids at camp and have been playing and working together ever since. They're best known for dramatic performances and installations-- in 2005 alone their relentlessly physical work included Hase, a gigantic pink stuffed rabbit installed on a hill above Turin and scheduled to stay there for 20 years; Sweatwat, a chaotic spa-themed open-house; and The Tantamounter, an ersatz copy machine that turned out, in half an hour or less, handmade replicas of whatever object was dropped down its hatch. Their first large-scale museum exhibit, documented here, offered unprecedented opportunities to spread out and take over a traditional venue. Their installations included a public restroom and a movie theater, and their opening was a two-day performance event that combined film, happening, performance art and rock-and-roll show. With large-format photographs and insightful text. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited and Foreword by Eckhard Schneider. Essay by Iara Boubnova. Hardcover, 8.75 x 10 in. / 64 pgs / 50 color. Publication Date: 8/15/2006 List Price: US $35.00

  JRP|Ringier Interviews By Mike Kelley: 1986-2004 What do Mike Kelley and his cronies and sometime collaborators Jim Shaw, Paul McCarthy and Tony Oursler talk about when they talk about art? You'll have to crack this book to find out, but expect a heady mix of pop culture, sex, violence, politics and, as always, a strong dose of humor. This volume brings together for the first time Kelley's major interviews with those artists and others over the past 18 years. Kelley is naturally a provocative commentator on his own work and the work of others, but he's also an informed and serious student of his interviewees' oeuvres and asks questions that explore the soul of artistic imagination. Surrealism, the 1960s and institutional cowardice provide fodder for these fascinating conversations. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by John C. Welchman. Paperback, 6 x 8.5 in. / 160 pgs / 16 b&w. Publication Date: 8/15/2005 List Price: US $22.00

  Charta Joan Jonas Born in New York in 1936, Joan Jonas has been a towering figure in postwar Conceptual and experimental Performance art since the 1960s, when she began her pioneering exploration of gender and identity through a combination of myth, choreography and new media. In 2007, she was a visiting professor at the world-famous Ratti Foundation in Como, Italy. While there, she turned to a text by art historian Aby Warburg (whose writings on Hopi imagery and ritual inspired Jonas’ 2005 performance The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things”) to create The Hand Reverts to Its Own Movement…,” a solo performance centered on the act of drawing. This substantial new monograph spans 40 years of the artist’s groundbreaking output and introduces her new performance on the occasion of its world premiere in Como. . . . . [see book details]

  Foreword by Annie Ratti, Fabio Cavallucci. Text by Marina Warner, Joan Jonas, Anna Daneri, Roberto Pinto, Cristina Natalicchio, Andrea Mattiello. Paperback, 5.75 x 8.5 in. / 136 pgs / 46 color / 19 b&w. Publication Date: 3/1/2008 List Price: US $34.95

  Walther König, Köln John Bock: Films John Bock, the German sculptor and performance artist, born in 1965, is known for his spectacular, comically grotesque action art, which comments energetically on everything from aesthetics and politics to society and pseudo-science. His work has been compared to the post-war, post-Dada Theater of the Absurd of the 1940s, 50s and 60s--an avant garde movement that attempted to shock its audiences into facing life’s ultimate, bleak reality by creating independent meaning in the face of the apparent, inherent lack thereof. It only makes sense that Bock has increasingly turned towards film in recent years. This special edition artist’s book, with its exposed, sewn binding and enigmatic white cover, provides an overview of Bock’s first short videos alongside his longer narrative films, featuring real actors and sets. Collectively, the film work is considered both technically and aesthetically, from art historical and cinematographic perspectives. Film stills, set photography and texts illustrate the individual . . . . [see book details]

  Foreword by Max Hollein. Text by Joachim Jäger, Robin Curtis, Massimiliano Gioni. Paperback, 8.25 x 10.5 in. / 176 pgs / 217 color. Publication Date: 1/15/2008 List Price: US $54.00

  Violette Editions Joseph Beuys: We Go This Way . . . . [see book details]

  By Caroline Tisdall. Artwork by Joseph Beuys. Hardcover, 8.5 x 11.75 in. / 416 pgs / 416 b&w. Publication Date: 1/2/2000 List Price: US $65.00

  Walther König, Köln Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint Vol. 5 Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint series imagines mythic interactions and subtle energy currents that meld legend and technology in dark, non-allegorical fairytales. In the film Drawing Restraint 9, the tension is strung between creative discipline (restraint, orderliness, pattern) and protean creativity (oceanic chaos)--a theme that is symbolically enacted in the construction and transformation of a vast sculpture of liquid Vaseline called "The Field." Over the course of the film, "The Field" is molded, poured, bisected and re-formed on the deck of a whaling ship. These shifts in the sculpture's state are then echoed in the tale of The Guests, two visitors to the ship (played by Barney and Björk) who, locked in a lover's embrace and breathing through blowhole orifices in the back of their necks, cut away each other's feet and thighs with flensing knives to reveal nascent whale tails. In conjunction with the Serpentine Gallery's 2007 exhibition, this catalogue for . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Matthew Barney, Neville Wakefield. Paperback, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 233 pgs / 137 color / 10 b&w. Publication Date: 3/1/2008 List Price: US $65.00

  The Blanton Museum of Art Mike's World: Michael Smith & Joshua White (And Other Collaborators) Mike's World takes a tightly focused view of a single Michael Smith performance persona, "Mike," as it has developed over the course of many years and through innumerable presentation formats. The character Mike functions metaphorically as a kind of ever-hopeful Candide, adrift in a world of rapid technological advances that he seems incapable of fully comprehending, and stymied by the depersonalization and isolation that have accompanied late twentieth-century life. Ironic in its sharp personification of failure, but also hilarious and poignant, Smith's work mirrors our most human concerns about competency and comfort. Underscoring the hybrid nature of Smith's art, the works reproduced in this colorful paperback book also highlight his last decade of video and installation collaborations with artist-director Joshua White. With contributions by Michael Smith, Jay Sanders, Mike Kelley, Ingrid Schaffner and Regine Basha. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi. Introduction by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi. Text by Michael Smith, Mike Kelley, Jay Sanders, Ingrid Schaffner, Regine Basha. Paperback, 8.5 x 10.5 in. / 140 pgs/ illustrated throughout. Publication Date: 2/1/2008 List Price: US $30.00

  Walther König Nam June Paik: Exposition of Music, Electronic Television, Revisited In 1963, Nam June Paik created a new genre of exhibition with his first solo show, The Exposition of Electronic Music-Electronic Television at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, West Germany. Fresh from his studies with John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and already a Fluxus veteran, Paik created a disorienting environment that foreshadowed much of what was to come in the 1960s: visitors, greeted at the entrance by a freshly slaughtered ox head, were not only confronted with the newness of the electronic image in Paik's TV monitors, but also found themselves integrated into a Dadaistic installation that included prepared pianos, mechanical sound objects, record players and audio tape installations. Exposition reconstructs this landmark show. . . . . [see book details]

  Foreword by Edelbert Koeb. Introduction by Susanne Neuburger. Text by Manuela Ammer, Justin Hoffmann, Manfred Montwé. Pbk, 7 x 9.75 in. / 244 pgs / 82 color / 168 b&w. Publication Date: 8/31/2009 List Price: US $39.95

  Walther König, Köln Paul McCarthy: Videos 1970-1997 In his performances, installations, videos and sculptures, Paul McCarthy has deconstructed, muddied, insulted and made a very deliberate mess of American mythology, from Heidi and Pinocchio to Santa Claus and Rocky. His videos, represented here through annotation and stills, are an indispensable documentary element of his performances. Over 50 works are included, plus a biography, bibliography and selected exhibition list. . . . . [see book details]

  Essays by Yilmaz Dziewior, Ulrike Groos, Johann Lothar Schröder and Kathrin Sauerländer. Paperback, 6.5 x 9.75 in. / 96 pgs / 192 color. Publication Date: 1/2/2004 List Price: US $30.00

  Performa Performa RoseLee Goldberg amazed with PERFORMA 05, billed as the city's first biennial of 'visual art performance.' Working with a tiny staff, a shoestring budget and no institutional affiliation, Ms. Goldberg put together a program that covered a lot of aesthetic bases--old school, just out of school, high-tech, no-tech--and encompassed more than 60 scheduled events… all of which makes the prospect of PERFORMA 07 shine with promise. --Roberta Smith, the New York Times This volume is the first in a series of important publications drawing content and inspiration from the PERFORMA biennial. Featuring inventive documentation by the 100 artists who made the first PERFORMA so extraordinary, it offers an exhilarating view into contemporary visual art performance and "performs" as a collective artists' journal might. Vibrant photographs of each artist's performance are accompanied by their scripts, sketches and storyboards, providing unique insight into process and upending conventions around archiving performance. Lively interviews with . . . . [see book details]

  By RoseLee Goldberg. Photos by Paula Court. Introduction by RoseLee Goldberg. Edited by Jennifer Liese. Text by RoseLee Goldberg, Defne Ayas, Lia Gangitano, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Anthony Huberman, Lyra Kilston, Andrew Lampert, Christian Rattemeyer. Paperback, 7 x 9.5 in. / 272 pgs / 215 color / 50 b&w. Publication Date: 6/1/2007 List Price: US $39.95

  JRP|Ringier Performa 07: Everywhere and All at Once An Anthology of Writings Assembled by the pioneering scholar of performance art, RoseLee Goldberg, this volume documents new performances by some of the world's most exciting visual artists, focusing on the relationship between contemporary dance and visual art, the ongoing legacy of "Happenings" inventor Allan Kaprow and the recent explosion of performance in China. Photographs, artists' scripts, sketches, journals and storyboards are complemented by writings from prominent curators and critics, as well as interviews with Paul McCarthy, Dan Graham, Isaac Julien, Yvonne Rainer, Nathalie Djurberg, Jérôme Bel and others. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by RoseLee Goldberg. Text by RoseLee Goldberg. Contributions by Catherine Wood, Jay Sanders, Anthony Huberman, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Pbk, 6.5 x 9 in. / 340 pgs / 150 color. Publication Date: 1/31/2010 List Price: US $45.00

  Timezone 8 Performance Art in China Performance Art in China takes as its subject one of the most dynamic and controversial areas of experimental art practice in China. In his comprehensive study, Sydney-based theorist and art historian Thomas J. Berghuis introduces and investigates the idea of the "role of the mediated subject of the acting body in art," a notion grounded in the realization that the body is always present in art practice, as well as its subsequent, secondary representations. Through a series of in-depth case studies, Berghuis reveals how, during the past 25 years, Chinese performance artists have "acted out" their art, often in opposition to the principles governing correct behavior in the public domain. In addition to a 25-year chronology of events, a systematic index of places, names and key terms, as well as a bibliography and a glossary in English and Chinese, this study also offers the reader numerous previously unpublished photos and documents. . . . . [see book details]

  By Thomas J. Berghuis. Hardcover, 8.5 x 10.75 in. / 320 pgs / 200 b&w. Publication Date: 7/1/2007 List Price: US $40.00

  JRP|Ringier Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija thrives on the interactions between himself and strangers, friends new and old that he encounters on his travels. He insists that art should provide an occasion for geniality and sociability, an insistence that has enriched the environments he has traversed. Conceived as an artist's book, Rirkrit Tiravanija is also the artist's first monograph. It is constructed as a "storyboard" comprised of images from every work produced between 1989 and the present day. In collaboration with the great Paris designers M/M, Tiravanija offers us the most complete evaluation of his work to date, using as narrative backbone his numerous international retrospective exhibitions of 2004 and 2005 (at the Chiang Mai University Art Museum in Thailand, the Munich Kunstverein, the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Serpentine Gallery in London). As documentation, this book is an unsurpassed survey that demonstrates . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Francesca Grassi. Text by Gridthiya Gaweewong, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rochelle Steiner, Philippe Parreno, Bruce Sterling. Hardcover, 9.5 x 12.5 in. / 218 pgs / 1000 color. Publication Date: 9/1/2007 List Price: US $75.00

  Dia Art Foundation Robert Whitman One of the pioneers of performance and multimedia work, constantly cited as key to the burgeoning postwar genres now considered standard fare in art galleries and museums, Robert Whitman's work of the 1960s and 1970s has long been inaccessible because of its ephemeral nature. This publication and the exhibition it accompanies are the first to reexamine his seminal early work, begun under the influence of Allan Kaprow in the late 1950s. Early performances, in conjunction with fellow artists Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg, paralleled exhibitions in some of the more influential experimental galleries of the time, including Hansa, Reuben and Martha Jackson. The 1960s saw Whitman become highly interested in multimedia projections, which he incorporated into installations as well as into his increasingly elaborate performances. Together with Robert Rauschenberg, Billy Klüver and others, Whitman later spearheaded the collaborations between artists and scientists that resulted in such landmark exhibitions as Art & . . . . [see book details]

  Artwork by Robert Whitman. Edited by Bettina Funcke, Karen Kelly. Text by David Joselit, George Baker, Ben Portis, Lynne Cooke. Hardcover, 9 x 12 in. / 206 pgs / 30 color / 28 b&w. Publication Date: 10/2/2003 List Price: US $45.00

  Charta/MUSAC Shirin Neshat: The Last Word The first monograph to thoroughly document Shirin Neshat's video production, The Last Word provides both a beautiful reminder of her work's color and intensity and a crucial tool for her increasing number of fans and scholars. Neshat, who studied in the United States and has lived in New York for many years, found international success following the explosive release of her images of Muslim women wrapped in chadors with verses by rebel Persian poetesses traced on their faces, hands and feet. She became renowned when her short film Turbulent was awarded the Leone d'Oro at the 1999 Venice Biennale. With her camera persistently focused on the veiled women of the Muslim world, Neshat has continued to make striking and courageous work of rare beauty and intensity, and has presented it to continuing acclaim. She goes fearlessly into the widening gulf between conformism and revolt, submission and compliance, that characterizes the women . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Octavio Zaya. Essays by Hamid Dabashi and Octavio Zaya. Clothbound, 11 x 11 in. / 252 pgs / 67 color / 47 duotone. Publication Date: 1/1/2006 List Price: US $75.00

  D.A.P./Violette Editions Sophie Calle: Double Game The original edition of Double Game, published by Violette Editions in 1999, was the first important book by Sophie Calle to be published in English and earned fervent international praise for its concept, content and stunning design. Writing for Bookforum, Barry Schwabsky called "this elegant, ribbon-wrapped compendium My vote for the most beautiful art book of 1999." And Eye magazine judged it, "That rare thing, an artist's monograph that is actually a work of art in and of itself, a furthering of Calle's vision." That edition quickly sold out and has since been out of print. This new edition, published to coincide with the 2007 Venice Biennale, at which Calle represented France, is identical in content to the first, and reprises all of the cherished qualities of the original in a smaller hardback format--including the signature ribbon around its middle. The story begins with Maria, the fictional character in Paul Auster's novel, . . . . [see book details]

  With the participation of Paul Auster. Hardback, 5.5 x 7.5 in. / 296 pgs / 85 color / 373 b&w Publication Date: 9/1/2007 List Price: US $39.95

  JRP|Ringier Spartacus Chetwynd The UK-based artist Spartacus Chetwynd is known for her baroque, surreal performances that humorously bring together multiple visual references from art history and pop culture. One of Chetwynd's 2007 site-specific performances, sponsored by New York's Creative Time, was titled: "Soylent Green, King Kong, Kasuma & Paul Auster Improvs." She liberally mixes references like Yves Klein's Anthropometries and Hieronymous Bosch characters with heavy metal and Michael Jackson's Thriller, somehow producing a unified whole that is evocative of how our culture disseminates information. As well as performances, Chetwynd who graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MFA in painting, produced a series of small canvases in 2004 and 2005 entitled Bat Opera. They also quote pop culture, while featuring obscure bits of Romanticism gleaned from art history and literature. A well-designed introduction to this emerging artist’s work, this volume is printed on 12 differently colored papers. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder. Paperback, 7.75 x 10.75 in. / 296 pgs / 195 color / 146 b&w. Publication Date: 3/1/2008 List Price: US $65.00

  JRP|Ringier/ BDV Bureau des videos The Secret Files of Gilbert & George For the last 40 years Gilbert & George have united and divided the international art scene with equal parts insolence and elegance. Their oeuvre, with its repeating figures and reprising themes of shit, piss, blood, tears, nudity, sperm, alcohol and drugs, overturned the conventions of the twentieth century and helped to set the agenda for the twenty-first. This 35-minute film produced, hosted and edited by the influential international curator Hans Ulrich Obrist is the first documentary to follow Gilbert & George inside their creative process, and into their archives and collection. Obrist discovers the couple's intimate life within the interior of their London house, a veritable museum of obsessions. Beyond good and bad, beyond appearances and objects (negatives, books, press cuttings… ), viewers are offered unprecedented insight into the artists' methods and the forms of thinking and categorizing that make up their philosophy on art and life. Gilbert & George met . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Nicolas Tremblay. By Hans Ulrich Obrist. DVD video, PAL Multizone, 5.5 x 7.5 in. Publication Date: 7/1/2007 List Price: US $32.00

  Charta Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body 1969 -1973 Between 1969 and 1973, Vito Acconci's creative output was focused on body pieces and performances, many of them seminal works now firmly lodged in the art historical canon of the time. Whether he was transforming space by masturbating under a platform extension of the gallery floor or transforming the body by tucking his genitals between his legs, Acconci promoted a radical, corporeal method of working with the human presence that has remained relevant in these less performative times. This publication traces the development of Acconci's early work through his own writings and documentations from that time. Rather than a critical study, it offers invaluable primary source materials: For each of the approximately 200 performances/works included, Acconci drafted meticulous notes, mapping out his ideas and describing the specifications of each piece. Many of the artist's works were ephemeral performances and actions, and these primary source materials are now the only extant artifacts . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Gregory Volk, Vito Acconci. Paperback, 8.25 x 11 in. / 396 pgs / 1450 b&w. Publication Date: 8/2/2004 List Price: US $69.95

  Poligrafa Vito Acconci: Writings, Works, Projects The work of Vito Acconci is among the most influential of the last 30 years. His adventures in performance, audio and video, sculpture, writing and architecture, from the late 1960s through the present have provided countless milestone works for younger artists. The overriding concerns throughout his work have been self-analysis and interpersonal relationships, themes he has explored in many different ways. This monograph will be the most complete publication available on this vital American artist, and will include both extensive visual documentation from throughout his career and a wide selection of his writings. . . . . [see book details]

  Essays by Vito Acconci and Gloria Moure. Hardcover, 8.5 x 10.25 in. / 432 pgs / 146 color / 172 b&w. Publication Date: 8/2/2001 List Price: US $60.00