In the 90s, ‘Customs’ was really on a crusade against LGBT bookstores. […] I did a drawing at that time for Kevin [Killian] and Dodie [Bellamy] of two women standing in front of a bookcase ‘Subversive Literature #4: Two Sixteen-Year-Old Girls Reading Books Seized at Canadian Customs, 1995’ that showed the spines of all the books that had been banned to date by Canada’s customs agency. I took it from a list that was made by (the anti-censorship) group called PEN international, who I unfortunately only discovered after my books had already been burned.
— GB Jones (In conversation with D St-Amour, Jun 29, 2022)

I think one of the reasons [that] G.B. Jones started J.D.s was to create a world that, sadly, didn’t exist.
— Johnny Noxzema

Kunstverein will begin the new year with the festive opening of the first European solo exhibition of punk polymath G.B. Jones (1965, Bowmanville, Canada). Please join us on January 20 between 5-8pm. Brace yourself… Here’s where we begin. 

In 1994, Feature Inc., a gallery in New York run by the gallerist known simply as “Hudson,” released G.B. Jones. This monograph of G.B. Jones’ work was doing triple duty as the 7th issue of Farm (Hudson’s publication for Feature) and the 8th issue of The Gentlewomen of California (Steve Lafreniere, the resident designer and collaborator at Feature Inc, his own publishing project). The monograph presented an extensive reproduction of her well known series of drawings collectively referred to as “Tom Girls”: originally published in Jones’ and Bruce LaBruce’s infamous zine J.D.s, (1985–1991). In these graphite  drawings, Jones replaced Tom of Finland’s iconic, “hyper-virile studs,” with equally horny, unrepentant leather dykes.Co-opting Finland’s objectified, male-on-male erotica, she presented a freeing world of sexually empowered female role models.

During that era (and more or less still to this day), under Tariff Code 9956 and Memorandum D9-1-1, Canadian customs officials held the power to exercise “prior restraint” of any book, magazine or picture they believed to be obscene. What constituted obscenity was ascertained through a quagmire of perplexing and recursive attributions that left Border Services agents primarily reliant on a system that was open to highly subjective interpretation—in short, Border Services agents were permitted to “use their own judgment”. As a result, anything attached to the LGBT community, regardless of their content, was targeted. So, when a short year later copies of G.B. Jones rocked up at a Canadian checkpoint, the artist received a notice from Canada’s Border Security Agency that the publication had been seized by customs officials and barred from entering the country. Finding herself already operating on a no-budget as filmmaker and with not a dime to spare, she was unable to secure legal counsel for the retrieval of the seized books, which consequently were burned by Customs agents. Despite tariff and language revisions, Canadian Border Services still retains many of the same rights as it did at the time, and Canada’s determination of “obscenity” remains just as ambiguous and subjective. The subjectivity of perversion doubled, the fantasy of power-play stripped to its very real reference point in this violent encounter with the state. 

Drawing out the moment around the publication of G.B. Jones’ monograph and its censorship in the mid-1990s, this exhibition will be both an earnest, admiring fan letter to G.B. Jones’ practice, and an homage to the perfectly vixen, queer world that Jones and her network conjured into being, via film, sound and Xerox. Importantly, it will also mark the belated, though no less significant, republishing and European launch of the censored monograph G.B. Jones. 

Within the framework of Jones’ exhibition, Kunstverein is happy to announce a series of events expanding on her practice. Jones is known for a variety of achievements, including the popularity of her post-punk band Fifth Column (1981-2002), the wide influence of the queer punk zines she co-authored, such as J.D.s, Double Bill, and Hide, the creation of the term “queercore,” and her prolific work as a “no-budget” filmmaker, scene photographer, and visual artist. As such, the public program will feature events that show the scope and influence of Jones’ varied practice both then and now. 

Kunstverein would like to thank the artist, Cooper Cole as well as Kara Hamilton and Kari Cwynar of Kunstverein Toronto who, in collaboration with D St-Amour, initiated this important retrospective of Jones’ art practice and the reprint. An additional thank you to Olivier Goethals for working with us on the scenography. We would also like to thank our members and Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst for their continued support, as well as Stadsdeel Zuid for their project specific contribution to this exhibition.

There is something exciting about a first draft – anarchic, scrappy, full of life, flawed. There is something in a first draft that a second does not. Our lives are full of misery, but what about the thrill of being here together, in this terrible time, knowing that life will not be so terrible once the next draft comes? – Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

Please join us at the bottom of a glass in celebration of Samantha McCulloch’s Lagoon: the first title of Kunstverein Publishing’s new series First Drafts. The launch will take place at lakeside distillery ’t Nieuwe Diep (Flevopark 13a, 1095 KE Amsterdam) on Wednesday June 29, from 6pm. McCulloch will give a reading from the book at 6:30 sharp and will take the form of a guided walk around the lake, through the bushes and in the grass.

Part prose poem, part reflection on the relations between writing and place, Lagoontells the story of the slow undoing of an idyll. In it the narrator walks for hours during long summer nights, gazing through the windows that line the streets. In between, she reflects on how she might write about the shifting space of the lagoon, where she spent summer holidays with her family years ago. In adolescence, the narrator watches quietly as her mother, father and sister go about building their holiday home. But she can sense something is awry, she just does not fully understand what.

It’s the perfect pocket sized book to grab before leaving town to various bodies of water, at just €18 (members enjoy a 50% discount).

Clara Amaral
She gave it to me I got it from her
On Location: Huis de Pinto (Sint Antoniesbreestraat 69, Amsterdam)
Launch: March 1,  7—9pm (free)
Performances: March 4—6, daily at 6pm, 7.30pm, 9pm (€12.5/ €8 for members)

She gave it to me I got it from her is a dormant performance in book form that skips through five generations of women in Clara Amaral’s family and hinges on the one in the middle—the last one in the sequence to not have been taught how to read or write. What at first sounds like some family trivia in actuality offers a glimpse into a deeply rooted sociocultural obstacle that many women in Portugal faced up until the 1950s, before the reform of the education system—which until then often excluded women on the basis of their gender or economic status. 

She gave it to me I got it from her is more than the sum of its pages. Of course, it can be read according to convention, from front to back, left to right, page one to page two, and so on. Most probably, in this case, the text will appear to be nonsensical. This stratagem is employed to underline the notion that the conventional isn’t necessarily right, while also emulating the frustration experienced by someone who is excluded from cracking the code of language. Alternatively, you can read the publication according to its score, which will reveal the path hidden in its pages. Better yet! You can let the author take you by the hand and lead you along this route with manual dexterity, ultimately ripping the structures it’s bound together by apart.

Attend the launch
For the occasion we have  organised a rare screening of Guy Sherwin’s film Messages (16mm, 35min), a diary-essay recording the development of language, in words and drawings, of his young daughter Maya which sits nicely in parallel to Amaral’s own practice. You’ll also have a chance to flip through the book, buy it on the spot and talk to Amaral in person. Please note that the launch on the 1st of March doesn’t include the performance by Amaral.

To join, simply show up. When we’ve reached full capacity we will adhere to a one-in, one-out policy. Please note that you will be asked to show your proof of vaccination, recovery certificate or a negative test when entering.

Attend a performance
Later that same week Amaral will activate the performance (60min) daily at 6, 7.30 and 9pm. Tickets to attend one of these moments on either March 4, 5 or 6 can be purchased via the website of our co-hosts Veem House for Performance. The audience for each performance is limited to a maximum of five.

First Drafts—Open Call
Deadline: October 30, 2021

A first draft is usually something a writer hopes never sees the light of day. It is often too rough and more likely to land on the bottom of a desk drawer rather than in the hands of a publisher. However, inspired by the freedom Anne Turyn gave the authors she worked with for Top Stories and in awe of the writers she managed to give their first publishing opportunity to, we concluded: this is a risk worth taking! With this new series we aim to focus on publishing the work of young writers whose work is simply too weird or experimental for commercial publishers.

Mind you though, when we say young we don’t mean young in age necessarily—we mean young in the form of writing you are taking up. Maybe the draft you submit is the first attempt you’ve made to ever write a narrative-based manuscript, but you’ve written more standard art criticism your whole life. Or maybe it’s the first time you’ve written at all, instead usually working in another medium altogether. This is fine by us!

For this inaugural Open Call are welcoming the submission of complete but not-yet finalised or published manuscripts of any kind. They can be written in any language, but must be accompanied by an English translation (to assist with the editorial process). Artists and writers based in the Netherlands will receive preferential treatment, however we also welcome anyone who truly feels addressed by this open call, the Netherlands aside. If all this sounds good then please submit to this open call by filling in this form before October 30.

The candidate we will go forward with will receive a fee of €2000 as well as ongoing editorial, production and promotional support from the team at Kunstverein. Your book will be printed in an edition of 200 copies and distributed worldwide with the help of our distributor Idea Books.

Lucy Lippard & Jerry Kearns
Tense (Book launch)
June 25, 8–9pm

Tense is a never-realised publication by Lucy Lippard and Jerry Kearns from 1984 that we’ve now released on our imprint Kunstverein Publishing in a very limited run. The release accompanies our current exhibition Top Stories by Anne Turyn, as it was originally intended to become a Top Stories issue of its own. It was only recently—during the making of our show—that it was retrieved from the editor’s archives and finally sent off to the printer. On June 25 between 8pm and 9pm we will celebrate the fruition of an old idea in a new jacket alongside a talk and a drink with the authors and editor.

Ginger&Piss#5: Audience
From Saturday November 28, 1pm onwards
Kunstverein, Hazenstraat 28, 1016SR Amsterdam

Usually, for Kunstverein’s sporadic in-house magazine Ginger&Piss, five specific people are invited to speak their mind or provide candid critique on art world customs and traditions under the somewhat-cowardice disguise of a nom de plume. However, for this fifth issue, guest editors Reinier Klok and Isabelle Sully took a slightly different approach and extended that invitation to you as well, our audience. Split across two formats—a preliminary online magazine-cum-survey and the usual printed one—this Ginger&Piss serves two aimes. On the one hand it provides unfabricated answers to questions about who Kunstverein’s audience really is (or is not, yet!) and on the other it attempts to bring to the surface the many factors that can complicate statistical reasoning in the first place—the very reasoning that is insisted upon by funding bodies and boards alike in order to measure the levels of engagement at various institutions.

As is customary, a new issue is supposed to be combined with a performance and a crowd, but with the absence of that for the foreseeable future we decided to circumvent the limits of our space by stretching out the launch itself, like a rubber band in time. Instead, we would like to offer you a drink on the house when you have the time. That can be next Saturday at 1pm, but it might also be in a month from now, or a year. While you serve us by continuing to show up in support of our program, we’ll thankfully serve you a liquid translation of the answers given to the survey question: ‘What type of audience member do you consider yourself to be in relation to us?’ It’s an interesting mix!

Ginger&Piss #5: Audience is for sale for €15. Members get 50% off!

Seth’s Books Bookshop
November 26 – December 23
Laughter, Columbusplein 233, 1057 TP Amsterdam
Open: Tue–Sat, 11am–5.30pm

Duane Michals, “Photograph of Seth Siegelaub,” (1969) Courtesy of the Artist and the Siegelaub Collection & Archives at the Stichting Egress Foundation, Amsterdam.

In 1969, when Seth Siegelaub set up the exhibition January 5–31, 1969 he left these typewritten instructions for his then secretary Adrian Piper:

1. Get keys
2. Answer phone “Seth Siegelaub”
3. Catalogs are available only at gallery – if any one wants extras we will mail them. (except for the press)
4. If someone is interested in purchasing work, call me.
5. My other phone is 288-5031.
6. Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 5:30.
7. Gallery will exist for this month only.
8. Every morning turn on both Robert Barry pieces.
9. Lawrence Weiner has one freehold piece (see catalog) – if anyone inquires about this – tell them they can own the piece by making arrangements with Mr. Weiner at GR7-4113.
10. Haved people sign guest book.
11. The tpyewritten Information sheet is for press only.
12. For the first six hours of the exhibition (sat.) take a polaroid photo every 1/2 hour of the Huebler sawdust (looking into the hall) and then place it on the wall (with scotch tape) near the type-written document. At the end of the 6 hours (5 PM Sat.) remove the sawdust and throw it away.

To celebrate the launch of Seth Siegelaub “Better Read than Dead”: Writings and Interviews 1964–2013 (in which the above note is included) Kunstverein will take a cue from Seth’s instructions and transform our second space, located at Columbusplein 233, into a Seth’s Books Bookshop for one month only. The arrival of this new publication, modestly financially supported by Kunstverein, is especially exciting for us since it marks the important moment that this inspirational material by the hand of our dear friend and former board member Seth Siegelaub is made available to a larger audience in one concise volume, a wonderful initiative from our current board member Marja Bloem. The Seth’s Books Bookshop set-up in celebration of this occasion will be exclusively devoted to selling books by and about Seth Siegelaub, all of which make for perfect Christmas presents. The shelves will be stocked with, among others: How To Read Donald Duck, rare books on the history of textiles, The Joke Book and of course this newest publication.

Spring arrives at the café (BLOOD book launch)
June 18, 6–8pm
Columbusplein 233, 1057 TX Amsterdam

This event marks the unveiling of BLOOD, the newest publication on our imprint, edited and designed by Line-Gry Hørup. BLOOD has been six years in the making. This long-awaited publication presents the first-ever translations of the fourteen (and only) poems written by the Danish art historian and publisher R. Broby-Johansen in 1922, for which he was sentenced to jail. In vivid and gory details, the poems depict the red-light district of Copenhagen’s underbelly. In them, he defends those subjected to misery and poverty, and comments on the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie responsible for their misery. The appendix of the book gives a unique insight into Broby-Johansen’s methodology, interests and life following the end of his career as a poet, through photographs taken by Johannes Schwartz and translations of the archive by Hørup.

Since a more traditional book launch is currently out of the question, we’re launching the book with a special vinyl by the editor/designer, installed on the front window of our *new* publishing-oriented location in Amsterdam-West. Simultaneously, from afar, you can enjoy a series of audio recordings of the poems from the book here.

For orders of the book, please contact us via email. Kunstverein members receive 50% off publications.

Never have I found myself dancing in a crowd—or at any event for that matter—looking around and dividing the people that surround me into categories and percentages: 20% native speakers, 15% students, 35% non-binary, 48% parents, 50% smokers, 79% drunk, 12% fun …

Talk about a mood kill!

But imagine, if only for the sake of conversation, it was in your interest to undertake such a task. How could you even begin to categorise and quantify the community around you? Who makes up that community? How do you reach out to them? With full understanding of the delusional validation the data of your answers might provide, rest assured that these exact questions will rear their head when writing funding applications—an unavoidable reality in the cultural field. And, while jumping through hoops and trying to stay true to the audience that you already serve (hoping to grant them the dignity of not becoming a stereotype) as well as those “potentially untapped” audiences you’re gently puppeteered toward by the political desires embedded in each application, what comes to mind above all is: what makes you stick to us? Or is it the other way around, as current events have provoked me to ask—have we, unknowingly but ever so gratefully, been sticking to you?

To better understand this conundrum we decided, at the start of 2020, to devote the fifth issue of our in-house magazine Ginger&Piss to this, aptly titled “Audience”. In no way imaginable could we have foreseen then how important its preliminary online format would become, now that one country after another has gone into lockdown, the whole apparatus of society has started to slow down, institutions across the world are hosting exhibitions that will never be physically visited, and many of us are haphazardly putting together an “online equivalent,” legitimising our efforts (and our paychecks) despite the absence of, well, you.

This issue of Ginger&Piss—part confession booth, part audience survey in disguise—serves two aims: first, it seeks to provide unfabricated answers to questions about who our audience is (or is not) and to qualify their engagement with us, and second, it attempts to bring to the surface the many factors that can complicate statistical reasoning. We, who are in the business of creative license after all, are strikingly aware that questions can be shaped to receive answers that shine a favourable light on this or that. A multiple choice question can be formalised in a way that no matter which option you select it will return the predicted outcome, an outcome that is often geared towards placating funding partners. Hard data that spells out a whiny “you see!”

While this strategy is our main reason for going against the usual practice of rendering a survey authorless by acknowledging our guest editors Isabelle Sully and Reinier Klok as its architects, you will also find a number of contributions dotted throughout the survey written under the guise of a pseudonym (offering our authors the—somewhat cowardly—liberty to speak to their own experiences with data politics and audience profiling in the artistic field without having to fear backlash). It goes without saying that the answers you provide, making you both a subject of and an accomplice to this issue of Ginger&Piss, enjoy the same anonymity.

It will only take, as the vague invocation goes, a minute of your time…

here

We invite you to attend the celebratory launch of Grace Crowley – the newest publication of Riet Wijnen on our imprint Kunstverein Publishing. This launch will take place within the exhibition Who’s Werner? on 24 November at 3pm with a reading by Riet Wijnen and Rindon Johnson.

Grace Crowley is a publication based on letters sent to the Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting Grace Crowley (1890–1979) by friends, family and colleagues. Parts of those letters, which are now housed in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the State Library of New South Wales archives in Sydney, were transcribed and categorized by Wijnen in subsections such as ‘Marital Status’, ‘Teaching’, ‘Hosting’, ‘Eurasia’, ‘X’, ‘Being A Woman’, ‘War’, ‘$’, and ‘Making Work’. The result is an alternative biography constructed solely through a living set of relations.

For the occasion Wijnen has invited writer and artist Rindon Johnson to read Conversation Six: Double Lines together. This fictional dialogue brings Grace Crowley and the British Constructivist Marlow Moss (1889–1958) together, which partly stems from Marlow Moss, a book by Wijnen previously published on our imprint in 2013. Through short monologues Moss and Crowley introduce us to important personal, professional and political relationships they maintained throughout their lives, and slowly parallels start to unfold between their two lives. Similarly to the book this conversation is also divided into subsections such as ‘Mentor’, ‘Lovers’ and ‘Gender’.

This publication was made possible with the support of Biennale of Sydney, Mondriaan Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, and Stichting Egress Foundation.

Dear all,

It’s been a year in the making! And now:

Join us on Saturday 25 May, between 5 and 7pm, for the launch of Ginger&Piss #4: The Intern!

Ginger&Piss is published whenever we see fit and its remit is simple: to provide a platform for candid critique but at the same time allow the AUTHOR to stay hidden. The concept dictates that each contributor writes under a pseudonym and is offered full anonymity by the editors. This use of pseudonyms can be considered an answer to the cowardice of the art world, albeit a somewhat hypocritical one. ‘Loud’, ‘Gay’ and ‘Private’ were the themes of number 1, 2 and 3 respectively; Ginger&Piss #4 is dedicated to ‘The Intern’.
The Intern is guest edited by our two long term ‘interns’, Claes Storm and Mark Emil Poulsen, and offers a voice to the sorrows and sighs of various interns within their network. But the magazine doesn’t only look at the issue from bottom up! It also contains the voices of those who have guided interns and have come to regret their efforts.

JUICY STUFF!

To give voice to the anonymous authors Gabriel Lester will read Re: Ginger&Piss #4 by ___________, Andrea Wiarda will read The Pencil Sharpener by Roxana Rosenthal, Chris Evans will read Doing Time by Mads-Egil Petersen – Interluded by – Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons’ intern – Sophie de Seriere reciting The Magic of The Assistant I, II & III by The Great Illusionist.

But the fun doesn’t stop there!

One week later on Friday 31 May at 7 pm, we invite you to join us for the launch of Octopus of Offshoots, a Werkplaats Typografie publication edited by the custodians of Speelplaats year 19 – Adriaan Van Leuven and Oliver Boulton. Together they proposed a way of working through imitation. Imitation, not so much in the aspect of ‘copying’, but in the idea of chewing, digesting and regurgitating an existing thing. The outcome of these exercises that took place at WT throughout 2018 will be presented along with new contributions to the publication: a series of readings written or composed by Adriaan Van Leuven, Line Gry Hørup, Mariana Lobão, Oliver Boulton, Robert Milne and Tabea Nixdorff.

2 notebooks
ca. 250 recipes
1 World War
1 prisoner of war and great-uncle, Giosué Fiorentino
1 artist and great-nephew, Leone Contini
1 keeper/transcriber and niece, Annarita Caputo
2 Kunstvereins, Amsterdam and Milano
1 graphic designer, Marc Hollenstein
1 launch

Please join us on February 28 at 7.30 pm for the launch of Kunstverein’s most recent publication, Riccetario Imaginato (The Imaginary Cookbook). The launch will be held at Mangiassai (Ruyschstraat 42, Amsterdam) and is accompanied by a 3 course dinner with custom wines. Places are limited, so please book your seat in advance via office@kunstverein.nl.

Riccetario Imaginato contains 250 regional Italian recipes drawn from two small handwritten notebooks, marked “B98” and “Ricettario Culinare n. 2” (“Culinary recipe book no. 2”). These notebooks once belonged to Giosué Fiorentino, and were compiled by him and other Italian war prisoners in a German prison camp. They had been brought there after having been captured by the Austro-Hungarian and German armies during the 12th, and last, Battle of the Isonzo (also known as the Battle of Caporetto or rather, the most disastrous defeat in Italian military history). Writing down these recipes and discussing the right way to prepare certain dishes became a survival strategy for this group of men who were succumb by hunger.
            It is the first time that the recipes from the notebooks have been published in both Italian and English, alongside the reproductions of the original pages of the notebooks.

            Simultaneously this book marks the end of a number of imaginary dinners organised by Kunstverein Milano and Amsterdam – with real food – that took place at several locations and were orchestrated, commented on, and hosted by the great-nephew of Giosué Fiorentino, Italian artist Leone Contini. This dinner and launch will be the final chapter.

The dinner includes a starter, a main and a dessert, 3 glasses of wine, coffee or tea and… a free book!

Price: €45 for members / €55 for non members.

Kunstverein wishes to thank our (Gold) members, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK) and Ammodo. A special thank you goes out to Stadsdeel Oost for their support to this project!

Yesterday I heard someone speak on a podcast about Roger Ailes, the sinister strategist behind the success of Fox News (and the comeback of Richard Nixon), saying that Ailes’ insight was that if you provide them with “emotion, drama, and conflict,” the “people” will be yours: create non-stop emotion, drama, and conflict, and the society will replicate your presence through obsessive fixation, whether as supporters or detractors. In this sense, I’ve surely done my part to perpetuate the current insanity. And I think the play that’s in the back of the book is about this.

– Angie Keefer, in an email sent to Kunstverein on November 7, 2018.

Second Thoughts by Angie Keefer
25 November, between 3–5 pm

Kunstverein Publishing is happy to announce a new book by Angie Keefer titled Second Thoughts: Selected Writings 2008–2018. This book follows up on Kunstverein’s earlier publication Paper Exhibition: Selected Writings by Raimundas Malašauskas and embodies the second chapter in a series of publications that focus on bringing together the writings of one extraordinary author whose work has never before been collected in a dedicated single object. During the event we will be staging What Is What – a roundtable discussion among four “characters”; an artist, a professor, a political scientist, and a marketing executive (played by Mark Buckeridge, Annie Goodner, Gerardo Madera, and Angie Keefer), and a dramatic side character (played by Richard John Jones). This reading will start at 3.30 pm.

Second Thoughts: Selected Writings 2008–2018 is (now, at this very moment) being designed by Scott Ponik and, although the book will not be present at the time of the event, its wonderful author will.

Dear People:

The following material is intended to help you to increase the quality of your life; some are funny, some are serious, some are tasteless, some are ridiculous, but they are, each in their way, helpful.

If you do not wish to continue to receive this stuff, too bad. Comments welcome, nevertheless. Please feel free to forward this.

Until then,
Seth.

The Joke Book: Collected by Seth Sieglaub, p. 13

Come test your smiles and Ha-Has, and join us for holiday drinks and jokes on Friday 15 December between 5 and 7 pm, for the official launch of The Joke Book: collected by Seth Siegelaub. The amazing (and funny) Marja Bloem will give an introduction to the publication.

The Joke Book is the first printed edition of the complete jokes & messages file that was found on Seth Siegelaub’s computer by his partner Marja Bloem. It contains jokes, quotes and pieces of advice, that Seth Siegelaub collected since 1999 and regularly redistributed via email amongst his friends.

With contributions by: Alex Alberto, John Baldessari, Marja Bloem, Myrna Bloom, Martin Browne, Alan Kennedy, David Kunzle, Joel Miller, Loren Miller, Kay Robertson, Laurent Sauerwein, Seth Siegelaub, Joan Simon, Kira Simon-Kennedy, Peter Sinclair, Steven Wright; and an introduction by Huan Hsu (written after a long conversation with Marja Bloem).

Please feel welcome to join us on Saturday 3 June, at 5pm for the launch of Kunstverein‘s sporadic in-house magazine Ginger&Piss. With a musical intermezzo by Smári Runar Róbertsson*

Serving: Highball

Kunstverein’s in house magazine is a cross between an academic journal and a darts club newsletter. Ginger&Piss (the name is a misquotation of Laurence Weiner) is published whenever we see fit, each issue containing a limited amount of contributions that vary in length according to the subject matter at hand. Loud and Gay where the themes of number 1 & 2, respectively; Ginger&Piss 3 is dedicated to Privacy.

The remit of Ginger&Piss is simple; to provide a platform for candid critique but at the same time allow the AUTHOR to stay hidden. The concept dictates that each contributor writes under a pseudonym; the use of pseudonyms can be considered an answer to the cowardice of the art world, albeit a somewhat hypocritical one.

*and one final installment to this Salon Hang by Nerijus Rimkus. We’re happy to announce that since our opening we have added works by the following members: Christine van Royen, Frits Bergsma, Angelo Tromp, Gijs Stork, and Maria Barnas.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Ammodo for their support.

Please join us for the book launch of Hand Reading Studies by Valentina Desideri, Friday May 19, from 5 pm onwards.

Hand Reading Studies is a collection of conversations, readings and writings that proliferated from A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff, an exhibition by Valentina Desideri that took place in Kunstverein, Amsterdam from 23 May to 25 June 2015.

For A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff Desideri transformed Kunstverein’s space at the Gerard Doustraat into a Studio – a place that generates knowledge through different modes of being together. Throughout the exhibition, Desideri invited participants as well as visitors to gather for readings and in study. The Studio – and its bar – were open for readings during Kunstverein’s regular opening hours and punctuated by weekly contributions to the study by the invited guests and artists.

The publication we are presenting now picks up where the project left off, bringing together a variety of materials and publications that were generated in or reverberated from the Studio, with contributions by Dr. Charlotte Wolff, Anthony Blunt, Céline Condorelli, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jessica Warboys, Jason Dodge, Mia You, Christian Hawkey, Annick Kleizen, and Valentina Desideri.

In the framework of Salon Hang Desideri will reactivate the Studio for the duration of one afternoon. Desideri will be joined by fellow readers Mia You and Annick Kleizen to provide readings and/or experiment on possible ways of reading whatever question, object, text or crisis anyone would need a reading for. You are equally welcome to join as a reader or to pose a question.

The readings begin at 5 pm and at 7 pm the book will be launched, with readings and drinks.

Reader,

Please join us for the launch of Reader, aantekeningen exemplaar, Werkplaats Typografie’s newest publication, on Saturday March 25 at 7pm. Along with the presentation of this new publication, seven special annotated versions with personal revisions and notes by Wigger Bierma, Malin Gewinner, Marijke Hoogenboom, Koen Kleijn, Andrea di Serego, Riet Wijnen and the editors themselves, will be introduced during the evening. Serving: Chameleons.

As part of Speelplaats, a parallel program of Werkplaats Typografie, participants challenged what was being offered in the school’s curriculum by introducing improvements or suggesting alternatives. Reader, aantekeningen exemplaar brings together these contributions made to the Speelplaats program alongside other like-minded initiatives by participants, guests and tutors in the shape of examples as well as reference texts and other materials. The reader borrows its title from an annotated copy of the catalogue Ruimtelijk Werk (1983), found in the library of Werkplaats Typografie, in which Wigger Bierma had penciled down what could have been done more consistently or what was lacking in his original design.

The reader was edited and designed by Nerijus Rimkus and Ronja Andersen with the support of Maxine Kopsa and contributions by Ronja Andersen, Danielle Aubert, Joel Colover, Valentina Desideri, Jason Dodge, Olya Domoradova, Paul Elliman, Rosie Eveleigh, Eloise Harris, Sarah Käsmayr, Maxine Kopsa, Raimundas Malašauskas, Robert Milne, Josse Pyl, Nerijus Rimkus, Charlotte Taillet, Maud Vervenne and Caroline Wolewinski.

The Werkplaats Typografie (WT) is part of the ArtEZ University of the Arts.

Kunstverein is extremely thankful for the support of its (Gold) members and the support of AFK and Ammodo.

Thursday 23 April, 7:00 pm
Mime Radio (notes for chapter I to XII)
Until 2 May

Thursday 30 April, 7:00–10:00 pm
Mime Radio, the launch

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.
Each live chapter of the novel made use of props, models, costumes, music and sound effects. For the first time, Mime radio (notes for chapter I to XII) presents all the models employed as part of these performances. This series of notes draws a mental landscape of the story told in Mime Radio.

The exhibition Mime radio (notes for chapter I to XII) is on view from Thursday 23 April until Saturday 2 May. On 30 April, a special evening and launch is planned that celebrates Mime Radio in its entirety. Expect music and stories.

Mime Radio by Benjamin Seror is Edited by <o> future <o> and published by: Bat; Adéra; CRAC Alsace; Kunstverein, Amsterdam; and Sternberg Press.

ISBN 978-3-95679-151-2
€ 20

Please join us for the launch and presentation of:

Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Seven Work Ballets

A lecture by Mierle Laderman Ukeles followed by a conversation between the artist and editor Kari Conte.

Monday 23 March, 19.30
Goethe Institut, Herengracht 470, Amsterdam

For reservations please contact the Goethe Institut:
Tel. 020 531 2900
info@amsterdam.goethe.org
Entrance: € 5; for Kunstverein members: € 3; Students: free

Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s 1969 manifesto “Maintenance Art: Proposal for an Exhibition” was a major intervention in feminist performance practices and public art. The proposition argued for the intimate relationship between creative production in the public sphere and domestic labor – a relationship whose intricacies Ukeles has been unraveling, ever since. Starting in 1977, she became an unsalaried artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, a position that enabled her to introduce radical public art as mainstream culture into an urban system serving and owned by the municipal population.

Through archival research, this monographic publication focuses on Ukeles’s work ballets – a series of large-scale collaborative performances involving workers, trucks, barges, and hundreds of tons of recyclables – which took place between 1983 and 2012 in Givors, Echigo-Tsumari, New York, Pittsburgh, and Rotterdam.

Edited by Kari Conte
Contributions by Kari Conte, Krist Gruijthuijsen; with 7 chapters written by Mierle Laderman Ukeles; a conversation with Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Tom Finkelpearl, Shannon Jackson

Co-published by Kunstverein Publishing, Grazer Kunstverein and Sternberg Press in collaboration Arnolfini, Bristol, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and Marabouparken, Stockholm. Design by Marc Hollenstein

Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Ukeles completed an undergraduate degree in history and international studies at Barnard and an MA in Interrelated Arts at NYU in 1973. Ukeles’ early work was experimental, and visually and symbolically conveyed the social unrest surrounding events such as the women’s movement and the Vietnam War. Since the 1970s, she has exhibited and performed widely, among others in C7500, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, USA (1973); Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists, Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1980, both curated by Lucy Lippard); Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York (1998), WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; MoMa PS1, New York (2007–2008); Maintenance Art Works 1969–1980, Arnolfini, Bristol, and Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (both 2013). Ukeles is currently completing a permanent environmental public art commission for Freshkills Park in NYC, formerly the largest municipal landfill in the world, that will be completed in 2016–2017.
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Kari Conte is a New York-based curator and writer. She is the editor and an author for Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Seven Work Ballets, published by Sternberg Press, Grazer Kunstverein and Kunstverein Publishing. Since 2010, she has been the Director of Programs and Exhibitions at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP). At ISCP, she leads residencies, exhibitions, and public programs in which she collaborates with more than a hundred artists each year. Previously, she worked at Whitechapel Gallery, London and received an MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art. She has curated or organized over thirty international exhibitions, site-specific commissions and performances including contributions to the Aichi Triennale and Performa Biennial. She has given recent talks at institutions including Art in General, Bard College, Creative Time, Goethe-Institut, Independent Curators International (ICI), Ludwig Museum, Purchase College, and Sharjah Art Foundation.

Will Holder and Alex Waterman read Robert Ashley
Will Holder and Alex Waterman will be reading an hour of duets from Robert Ashley’s opera’s “Dust” and “Celestial Excursions” as part of the reading tour of YES, BUT IS IT EDIBLE? The music of Robert Ashley, for two or more voices.
Edited by Will Holder and Alex Waterman. Published by New Documents, 2014

Location: Theater de Roode Bioscoop, Haarlemmerplein 7
Doors open at 7 p.m. performance starts at 8 p.m.
Tickets €11 and €6 for members (bring you membership card) via www.roodebioscoop.nl or reserve via office@kunstverein.nl

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Dear Participant,

Kunstverein has been interested in the work of Paul Ryan since the summer of 2012. We’ve decided to introduce you to his work via live workshops on Threeing and an eclectic, investigative source book.

Paul Ryan (1943–2013), was a pioneering video artist, writer, teacher and theoretician who worked and lived in New York City. Ryan’s work appeared in the groundbreaking exhibition TV as a Creative Medium at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1969, and he was a member of the Raindance media collective as well as contributor to its seminal video journal Radical Software. Much of Ryan’s theoretical work focuses on triadic behavior – the interrelation of three units or persons – codified by Ryan into the concept of “threeing” as well as the Earthscore Notational System which draws upon video to address issues of ecological sustainability. Paul participated in Documenta 13 with Threeing live sessions. “Paul Ryan’s Threeing is comprised of situations in which three or more people create sustainable, collaborative relationships.”

Kunstverein has invited Sevanne Kassarjian, a professional workshop leader who studied under Paul Ryan, to facilitate a number of sessions on Threeing. Sevanne Kassarjian: “The workshops will introduce you to the collaborative practice of Threeing and invite you to generate ways to make Threeing operative in your work and play. The workshops will combine theory and practice, communication and creativity. Participants will be expected to work with both abstract concepts and the embodiment of those concepts and learn to practice Threeing in both its verbal and nonverbal versions.”

The various workshops/sessions on Threeing will be focused on movement, another on words and another on making a mark. On Sunday 15 March Sevanne will be holding sessions all day, as well as on Monday 16 March. There will be approximately 4 sessions held per day and one session that will take place on Friday 20 March, in the evening, at Galerie Juliette Jongma.

We invite artists, educators, theorists and everyone interested in exploring knew ways to collaborate. Please send an email to office@kunstverein.nl to show your interest in participating and your preferred day and time (feel free to choose more than one session):

March 15: sessions at 12:00; 16:00. Location: Ruyschstraat 4 III
March 16: sessions at 11:00; 14:00; 17:00. Location: Ruyschstraat 4 III
March 20: session starts at 19:00. Location: Galerie Juliette Jongma

On Saturday March 28 there will be a live talk with Berlin based artist Luis Berríos-Negrón, a core collaborator of Paul Ryan’s Threeing at Documenta 13. His Threeing rugs, developed together with Paul, will be used and on view throughout the project. Information here: www.luisberriosnegron.org/ThreeingShedRugs.

More information from Paul’s site: www.earthscore.org/themes
As well on the site, there is the entire lesson plan for how to participate and generate Threeing. Everything is open source and the idea is, once the parameters are understood, that people can interpret and take things where they want them to go.

Sevanne Kassarjian specializes in theatre based education and communication, surfacing opportunities in every interaction. Bringing the tools of improvisation and 20 years on the professional stage to bear on a wide range of themes, including cross-cultural communication, managing uncertainty, and creating learning organizations, Sevanne designs and conducts experiential education programs for corporate and non-profit organizations, supporting clients to expand their repertoire. She has worked with hundreds of independent clients and developed and delivered programs for organizations including the US Olympic Committee, Price Waterhouse Coopers, The House of Chanel, Coca-Cola, Miraval Resort, Global Business Network and the San Diego Police Department. She is the in-house coach in numerous organizations as diverse as American Express, the David Zwirner Gallery and Idealist.org. Sevanne holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego.

Sevanne Kassarjian and Paul Ryan met because of Paul’s interest in the work of Gregory Bateson, Sevanne’s grandfather. They discovered a mutual interest in re-examining the landscape of our interactions and began a long friendship in which Sevanne supports the spread of Paul’s work on triadic relationships. Paul asked Sevanne to train the 23 people at Documenta 13 who would man Paul’s installation for the entire summer exhibit.

Mime Radio, The Final Chapters
Mime Radio is an orally written novel by Benjamin Seror.

“This is the story of an ancient voice. This is the story of how Marsyas, poor Marsyas recovered his voice millions of years after having lost it.”

Chapter X
Wednesday, 11 June 2014
Doors open at 7 pm, performance starts at 7.30pm

Chapter XI
Friday, 20 June 2014
Doors open at 7 pm, performance starts at 7.30pm

Chapter XII
Thursday, *26 June 2014
*Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Teijin Auditorium
Performance starts at 8pm

The story begins in a bar located in Los Angeles, the Tiki Coco. The bar is the center of the story where every night, a group of people attend the “Challenging Reality Open Mic” during which the audience is invited to take the microphone to present some new tools, techniques or ideas that could extend reality or at least shake at it a bit. This meeting will see the growing friendship between four characters, Angie, Bernhard, Benjamin and David, who move together to the Solog House built by one of them in the Hudson River Valley. This is also where they discover they have been followed by Marsyas, a character from ancient Greek mythology that lost his body after being defeated in a music contest against the god Apollo. The characters proceed to help Marsyas to recover his voice, his very ancient voice, without knowing what disaster this recovery could unleash.

Each chapter of the novel had been relayed orally through a cycle of improvised performances that are then transcribed to be later published in their entirety. One of the main concerns of this project is the use of a public event as a possible writing technique. Mime Radio follows on the principles of Cinema Vérité as described by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin when collaborating on Chroniques d’un été (1960), a film about the impact of different camera movements on a given situation. In this and other Cinema Vérité films, the audience replaces the camera and the central question becomes: What would change for an author if s/he were to write a story directly addressed to a particular audience?

The core subject of this novel is language itself: What are the possibilities of words, and how can they be used in the most efficient ways to make things happen? The question is also paramount to all the different protagonists of the story who come together at the Tiki Coco. At this bar, they organize nightly events where they stretch the limits of language to describe tools that challenge reality. Most of the characters that appear in the novel come from other novels such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as well as living artists with whom Seror is in dialogue.

Please make your reservations up until one day before each performance via office@kunstverein.nl. Please note that members have priority.

Fellow Traveler

31 May – 22 June 2014

Opening: 30 May 7–10 pm

From 31 May until 22 June a selection of publications by Kunstverein Publishing will be on display at Zirkumflex, Berlin, organised in collaboration with Kunstverein Milano.

The selection of publications, will include our latest releases, ‘The LIP Anthology’ and ‘The Correspondence Book’.

Zirkumflex Fontanestraße 25 12049 Berlin –

More information you find here or at http://www.zirkumflex.com.

Launch Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif (reprint and translation)

Kunstverein presents on 4 September – in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam – a reading by Will Holder on the occasion of the reprint of Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif, with the first full translation of the material in English.

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Between 1932 and 1936 five edition of the cahier Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif was published in Paris by the eponymous association, uniting all movements who worked abstractly. The magazine not only formalised a new tendency for language in visual art, but also became a form of explicit self-promotion and opposition against the growing force of figurative Surrealism, led by André Breton. Two minimal yet clear criteria needed to be fulfilled to become a member of the association: you had to be an artist and work non-figuratively. This resulted in a list of members of long-forgotten artists mingled with names such as Kandinsky, Mondrian, Calder, Delaunay, Van Doesburg and Brancusi.
A year after the establishment of the association the first issue of the cahier Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif was published. Most of the members handed in documentation of work along with self-written texts. Those writings were visions about their own work, detailed explanations of the documentation, short viewing instructions, epistles about the true meaning of abstract art, essays on the relation between abstract art and evolution, straight forward explanations why a locomotive is not a work of art, and a poem about God being a copycat.

During the launch in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Will Holder will lead a small audience through the Museum’s galleries, stopping to read writings from Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif to paintings and sculpture by their authors.

The publication is an initiative of Riet Wijnen and published by Kunstverein Publishing.

The readings will take place on 4 September at 7 – 7.30 pm, 8 – 8.30 pm, and 9 – 9.30 pm at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Reservation is required. Please send an e-mail to reservations@stedelijk.nl, including your preferred time slot.

Afterwards there will be drinks at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stichting Stokroos and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.