Books & Magazines
A selection of books and magazines you can view and purchase at Callirrhoë.
Arts of the Working Class #9: Who Cares
Our method of argumentation within this issue— bridging winter and the new year— longingly asks: Who Cares? Observations from around the world evolved into a general search for care that transcends a discourse and empowers the very selves that we are. Poetically, and politically speaking.
Arts of the Working Class is a collective tool that re-thinks, re-understands and re-defines aspects of art workers’ social lives. From the (art world's) care crisis over the use of creativity and imagination for collective care towards conserving, restoring, (an)archiving neglected histories, taking the labour of love to the streets, acting upon the term care as a social concept, breaking with capitalism’s utilisation & abuse of the ideas and processes of care, well-being and awareness. Here these issues are considered with an eye on class, race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and other aspects of identity.
But be cognizant: This place is an ambivalent one. A dangerous one, as we can’t fulfill everyone’s needs, wishes, desires and demands. A self-destructive one, as we declare ourselves against the system we work within. This issue about caring beyond the ruling ideology of consumerism, is, as ever, in different languages.
64 pages, Newspaper, 26 × 35 × 0.3 cm; Turkish, Spanish, German, English, Romanian
Arts of the Working Class #14: Being Safe Is Scary
Almost 80 million people worldwide are directly affected by forced displacement. Simultaneously cities are facing an unprecedented eviction crisis. The fear of displacement doesn't only affect residents of war zones. It is the ground (mostly European and American) on which radicalization, xenophobia and conspiracy theories are currently flourishing.
Art has long been an accomplice in the gentrification of cities and the resulting segmentation of society. How can art improve our lives, without selling our souls to the 1%? How can it provide autonomy and independence from investment schemes of the world’s landlords? How can we re-evaluate the wealth of the world and re-ignite our collective imagination?
What Has Left Since We Left. Six takes on Europe
“What has left since we left” articulates the fictional end of Europe with the language of love and separation. Likening the political bonds that tie together European countries to the fluctuations of romance and desire, the book unpacks the complexities of the European relationship by touching on ideas of identity, collapse, migration, conflict and hope.
The book features contributions by Ayşe Zarakol, Marwan Moujaes, Federico Lodoli, Marina Lalovic and Erica Petrillo. Together, these texts complement and expand on the script for the film “What has left since we left” - directed by Giulio Squillacciotti and written with Daan Milius and Huib Haye van der Werf - which fictionalises the current European dystopia by re-enacting and problematizing the rituals of kinship and relational struggles. Backstage images and film stills from this production, along with a European timeline from World War II up until Brexit compiled by Enrico De Gasperis, provide a specific overview to the entire project.
Edited by Giulio Squillacciotti; Onomatopee 182, 2020; 112 pages, 145 mm × 235 mm
Plasticity of the Planet: On Environmental Challenge for Art and Its Institutions
Can plastic planetarism replace neoliberal globalization? This publication is informed by Catherine Malabou’s conception of destructive plasticity—an irreversible destruction of form that makes it possible for new phenomena to emerge. Here, the idea provides a framework for reflecting on an environmental crisis that is turning into an increasingly serious social crisis before our very eyes. This is a challenge to which neither contemporary art nor its institutions can remain indifferent; they must urgently develop their responses to it. The theoretical essays contained in this publication shed light on the nature and consequences of the destructive changes taking place in the natural/social environment. They are juxtaposed with artists’, curators’, and art researchers’ comments on more specific practices, protocols, and formats of reaction, with the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art serving as a particular case study. In a conversation conducted specially for the book, Malabou speaks of the consequences of man’s destructive activities and introduces the notion of ecological plasticity.
Edited by Magdalena Ziółkowska; texts by Defne Ayas, Viviana Checchia, Grzegorz Czemiel, Daniel Falb, Cathy Fitzgerald, Mira Gakjina, Alexander Hope, Anne Szefer Karlsen, Jarosław Lubiak, Małgorzata Ludwisiak, Ewa Majewska, Catharine Malabou, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Małgorzata Sugiera, and Magdalena Ziółkowska; Mousse Publishing, 2019; 488 pages, 14.8 × 22 cm; English
1 Million Roses for Angela Davis
“And if we believe that revolutions are possible, then we have to be able to imagine different modes of being, different ways of existing in society, different social relations. In this sense art is crucial. Art is at the forefront of social change. Art often allows us to grasp what we cannot yet understand.” —Angela Davis
“A Million Roses for Angela Davis” was the motto of a 1970–72 solidarity campaign in East Germany in support of US philosopher, Communist, and Black Power revolutionary Angela Davis, who at the time was being held on terrorism charges in California. The large-scale movement firmly anchored the “heroine of the other America” within the cultural memory of a now-vanished social utopia, which after her acquittal welcomed her as a state guest. For her part, Davis had hoped for an internationalist movement promoting a socialist, feminist, and non-racist democracy—the antithesis of her experiences of violence and oppression as a Black woman in the United States. This moment of hope provides the historical starting point for the exhibition at the Albertinum in Dresden. The group show features archival materials, historical portraits of Davis by state painters of the GDR, new commissions, and other works by an array of contemporary artists focusing on the issues that the now emeritus professor campaigned for at the time, which are still pressing today. In aspires to initiate discussion on the background, flaws, and unfulfilled potential of the unusual relationship between Davis and the GDR. The contributions in this accompanying reader unfold how Davis’s iconic image came to be inscribed within a global history of resistance, and introduce all of the participating artists with short texts.
Edited by Kathleen Reinhardt; texts by Nikita Dhawan, Kata Krasznahorkai, Sophie Lorenz, Doreen Mende, Peggy Piesche, Kathleen Reinhardt, Maria Schubert, Hilke Wagner, and Jamele Watkins, and a new interview with Angela Davis; Mousse Publishing, 2020; 272 pages, 17 × 24.5 cm; German/English
Hypothetical Death of the Exarchian Alpha
The book Hypothetical Death of the Exarchian Alpha is an invitation to read the sociological, historical and political upheavals of a country, Greece, through the epigraphy on the walls of a neighborhood of the capital, which happens to be the center of the anarchist movement. This book is made up of four parts: the author’s logbook and how she immerses herself in her study, the collection of photographs of letters Alpha found on the walls of Exarchia the different Alphas isolated from their context to keep only their shape and their typographical elements in relation to their hypothetical death (disappearance) and a sequence of mini-scenarios of disappearance.
The study revolves around the idea of the disappearance of the letter Alpha from the district of Exarchia as well as the way an object of observation gets transformed by the eye of the observer. Thus, it ends up as a graphic design and anthropological crime fiction novel, the narrative of which reveals in between the many faces of everyday life along with the destiny of the ideas we encounter on the walls of the city. By focusing on the microscale of an Athenian neighbourhood, the research of the Hypothetical Death of the Alpha, unveils the turmoil and rapid changes taking place not only on a wall or in a small country but across the entire Europe.
Research by Ella Villaumié, Art Direction and contribution by Typical. Organization for standards & order; co-publishing: DOLCE, sun/sun, 406 pages, 2020, 11 × 18 cm, b/w, soft cover, language: English