This volume both gathers and expands on the results of the research project “Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions” held at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, and proposes to draft a history of exhibitions sourced from a wide corpus reaching beyond the framework of art institutions.

The second in a series on intersubjectivity, this collection of essays considers the relationship between performance, subjectivity, and human agency. Contributions explore the ways in which performance is decoupled from human embodiment via forms of mediation, mechanical reproduction, or simulation. 

In the style of a catalogue raisonné, Reto Pulfer’s comprehensive monograph, Zustandskatalog, follows the artist’s work over the past fifteen years. Excerpts from the artist’s novels as well as insightful texts by Anselm Franke and Benoît Maire are juxtaposed with 475 documentary photographs of Pulfer’s technical drawings, exhibitions, large-scale installations, and performances.

For the 1st Asia Biennial/5th Guangzhou Triennial, artist Sara van der Heide converted a public library in Guangzhou, China, into a restaging of the Goethe-Institut’s German Library and Information Centre of Pyongyang, which operated from 2004 to 2009. Van der Heide’s German Library was to offer a set of public cultural programs: a group exhibition, video program, performances, and seminar.

Performing Change, a collection of interviews by artist Mathilde ter Heijne, explores the idea of open-ended, collaborative art processes and their transformative potential beyond the confines of art. Designed as an artist’s book, the book shows handwritten revisions, annotations, and drawings from contributors.

Slow Narration Moving Still takes Florian Zeyfang’s eponymous exhibition at the Bildmuseet Umeå as its starting point and ends with the artist’s newest works, shown at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. The arrested film, the silent video still, the rhythm of the slide projector—along the lines laid out by the experimental film, Zeyfang’s works express, in the language of the “minor medium,” a politics of form.

This book excavates the notion of forensis (Latin for “pertaining to the forum”) to designate the role of material forensics in articulating new notions of public truth. The condition of forensis is one in which aesthetic practices, new technologies, and architectural research methodologies bear upon the legal implications of political struggle, violent conflict, and climate change.

The exhibition “The Whole Earth” is an essay composed of cultural-historical materials and artistic positions that critically address the rise of the image of “One Earth” and the ecological paradigm associated with it. The accompanying publication includes image-rich visual essays that explore key themes: “Universalism,” “Whole Systems,” “Boundless Interior,” and “Apocalypse, Babylon, Simulation,” among others.

The Human Snapshot draws upon a 2011 conference of the same name. The conference contributions and subsequent essays examine contemporary forms of humanism and universalism as they circulate and are produced in art and photography. The look toward these two terms stems from theorist Ariella Azoulay’s research on the seminal exhibition “The Family of Man,” first installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955.

Poor Man’s Expression examines the relationship between film, video, technology, and art, with a particular focus on the reciprocal influences between conceptual art and experimental film.

For the last decade, Markus Weisbeck has been redefining the prevailing client-designer relationship and subsequently challenging what constitutes a graphic design practice today. This pocket book presents a selection of seminal graphic design projects developed by Weisbeck and his firm, Surface, over the last ten years.

An Exhibition—Another Exhibition is the first monograph of the work of Belgian artist Valérie Mannaerts. The book catalogues two solo exhibitions that took place in 2010—“Blood Flow” at Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen, and “Diamond Dancer” at de Appel arts centre.

The publication Animism (Volume I) brings together theoretical and artistic reflections on the history and contemporary relevance of animism.

Since the early 1980s, Friedl has written on a variety of subjects. The book Secret Modernity: Selected Writings and Interviews 1981–2009 compiles for the first time a representative selection of his (partly unpublished) texts, along with a series of interviews.

Voice Over examines staging, theatricality, and performative strategies in contemporary art practices. With contributions by the artists Miriam Bäckström, Goldin+Senneby, Saskia Holmkvist, Fia-Stina Sandlund, and Geist magazine, an essay by curator and writer Anselm Franke, and an introduction by Cecilia Widenheim.

1,2,3… Avant-Gardes is dedicated to the ongoing history of the experiment in film and art. This book describes and analyses the works of filmmakers and artists, defining two decades of experiments in Polish avant-garde film, and juxtaposes their work with contributions by international artists, who started to work during the last fifteen years.