My friend Anna Sew Hoy and I are working on a new artists book — contribute to the project if you can.

“A DESIRE TO LEARN ESPERANTO:
HAVING A THING to do with Esperanto, Ballantine Beer, both or neither”

Nancy Lupo for works sited

August 30 - September 30, 2010

“Imagine that you are on a train car sitting next to a Russian gentleman with whom you wish to speak. You have brought with you a key to Esperanto in Russian. On the back of the key is written (in Russian), “Everything written in Esperanto can be translated by the help of this vocabulary.” You give the gentleman a sentence written in Esperanto, and he will be able to make out your sentence in a very short time by using the key. As an example Dr. Zamenhof gives the following sentence: Mi ne sci’as kie mi las’is la baston’o'n: Cxu vi gxi’n ne vid’is?”

The Wallis Annenberg Photography Department is pleased to celebrate new and recent publications including Bananas for Moholy-Nagy by Patterson Beckwith, Four Over One by Phil Chang, the Aperture edition of Words Without Pictures edited by Alex Klein, and the limited edition of The Sun as Error by Shannon Ebner. A conversation moderated by Britt Salvesen, Curator, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, with artists Patterson Beckwith and Phil Chang will begin promptly at 4:20 pm. Reception to follow. Light refreshments will be served. Signed books will be available for purchase.

Mark Manders, Traducing Ruddle
Newspaper, 16 pp., web offset 1/1, 350 x 480 mm
Insert, 48 pp., offset 1/1, 215 x 280 mm
Edition of 3000
ISBN 978-0-9738133-7-1
Published by Fillip Editions, Roma Publications

above: 1:1 scale, Waste Bookmark

Jonathan Maghen, Waste Bookmark
Bookmark, offset 1/0, 2 x 5.5 inches
Edition of 11 + 2 proofs, unnumbered
Published by Textfield

Card used by Pressman to indicate any waste, errors, bad sheets, etc., on a printed job to the Bindery; typically made from the waste sheets of other printed jobs. Re-reused as a bookmark; part of an unfinished book, used to bookmark the pages of a finished book.

“I really just don’t think imagery should be owned, including my own. If it’s part of our world…– it’s like owning words…how can you own words? It’s stuff to use!”

Slavs and Tatars & Ooga Booga present the west coast debut of Kidnapping Mountains. Featuring a selection and sale of Slavs and Tatars posters, editions, and printed matter.

Ooga Booga
943 N Broadway #203
Los Angeles CA 90012
14 January — 7 February 2010

Ooga Booga is a concept shop vital to the creative life-blood of Los Angeles. It gathers an eclectic range of products. Spearheaded by Wendy Yao, Ooga Booga fosters a vibrant community of independent producers. For Swiss Institute, Yao installs a lounge in which one may read over 300 titles — from self to professionally published. The room contains contributions by:

Bookshop now open — email your order (or order online) and receive 15% off all books, catalogs, editions, magazines, monographs, multiples, and videos, between November 24, 2009 and January 1, 2010. All orders placed by December 11th, will be delivered by December 24th. Orders placed online will receive a 15% refund. Happy Holidays!

Publishers
032c, A&R Press, Bas Morsch, Book Works, Capricious, Charlie White, Christoph Keller Editions, C Magazine, Coins, David Kordansky Gallery, Fillip, FormContent, Four Corners Books, Glen Cummings, Adam Michaels, Harsh Patel, Hassla Books, Hunter and Cook, Hypen Press, JRP|Ringier, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Laura Bartlett Gallery, Laura Palmer Foundation, Manuel Raeder, Mono.Kultur, Museum Paper, Nieves, OK-RM, onestar press, Paperback, Paper Monument, Passenger Books, Peres Projects, Seems, Primary Information, Semiotexte, Slavs and Tatars, Steidl, Textfield, The Power Plant,Tramnesia, True True True, Turner, Vier5, Walker Art Center, Wallspace, Walther König, Wear, and more.

Keith Bormuth, The Occasion of Fracture
Softcover, 28 pp., offset 1/1, 160 x 240 mm
Edition of 500
Published by Keith Bormuth

The theme of the nineth issue of Here and There is HER LIFE. It deals with the various factors that make up the many waves in a woman’s life, such as working, becoming pregnant, giving birth. The colorful stories told by Elein Fleiss, Laetitia Bena, Yurie Nagashima, Miranda July, Midori Araki and Aiko Yamada, reflect each of their lives.

032c 18, Thomas Demand
Softcover, 272 pp. + Thomas Demand dossier, offset 4/1, 20 x 27 cm
Edition of 2000
Published by 032c

Laura Palmer Foundation, Stadium X — A Place That Never Was offers a selection of texts presenting a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its existence as a ‘city within a city’ and also documents the series of live art projects. The Stadium and its parasites functions, which are now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.

3. The music comes directly from the artist.
Most of Rinse’s output is sourced directly from producers. Tracks are played as soon as possible, often without anyone but the DJ and producer knowing the credits and dropped before they risk becoming stale or come close to getting a release. As funky crew Circle said in response to someone asking for one particular track to be identified on an internet forum: “Tracklist? You’ll be lucky”.

Trim (above) on Rinse, 2004. This set on Deja Vu 92.3 was my intro to grime.

The art world is now both socially professional and professionally social. Curators visit artists’ studios; collectors, dealers, and journalists assemble for a reception and reconvene later for dinner; everyone goes to parties. We exchange introductions and small talk; art is bought and sold; careers (and friendships) brighten or fade. In each situation, certain behaviors are expected while others are silently discouraged. Sometimes, what’s appropriate in the real world would be catastrophic in the art world, and vice versa.

Making these distinctions on the spot can be nerve-wracking and disastrous. So we asked ourselves: What is the place of etiquette in art? How do social mores establish our communities, mediate our critical discussions, and frame our experience of art? If we were to transcribe these unspoken laws, what would they look like? What happens when the rules are broken? Since we didn’t have all the answers, we politely asked our friends for some help.

Textfield, Inc. is an independent publisher and distributor of artists books, catalogs, editions, monographs, multiples, and periodicals. We specialize in the distribution of quality publications from publishers in North America and Europe, to libraries, bookshops, galleries, and museums.

The focus of our publishing catalog involves the development of close working relationships with artists, galleries, museums, universities, and institutions to design and publish books and other printed matter.

Publishers: 032c, Capricious, Christoph Keller Editions, C Magazine, Coins, David Kordansky Gallery, Fillip, FormContent, Harsh Patel, Hassla Books, I-20 Gallery, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Laura Bartlett Gallery, Manuel Raeder, Mono.Kultur, Museum Paper, Nieves, OK-RM, onestar press, Paperback, Peres Projects, Seems, Slavs and Tatars, Textfield, True True True, Vier5, Wallspace, Wear.

Allan Kaprow, How to Make a Happening, Audio CD, 24:43 Minutes

Book launch & reception

Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Director’s Roundtable Garden | LACMA

Please join the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department to celebrate the release of the WORDS WITHOUT PICTURES publication, meet some of the authors, and start your own discussions.

Books will be available for purchase at the special discount price of $25 (plus tax).

www.wordswithoutpictures.org

Story

by Martin Fackler

HIME ISLAND, Japan — If Marxism had ever produced a functional, prosperous society, it might have looked something like this tiny southern Japanese island.

At first glance, there is little to set Hime (pronounced HEE-may) apart from the hundreds of other small inhabited islands that dot the coasts of Japan’s main isles. The 2,519 mostly graying islanders subsist on fishing and shrimp farming, and every summer hold a Shinto religious festival featuring dancers dressed as foxes.

But once off the ferry, the island’s sole public transportation link to the outside, visitors are greeted by an unusual sight: a tall, bronze statue of Hime’s previous mayor, rare in a country that typically shuns such political aggrandizement. Rarer still is that the statue was erected by his son, who is the island’s current mayor.

In fact, the father, who died in 1984, and the son, who succeeded him, have won every mayoral election in Himeshima, the island’s village, for 49 years — without once being challenged by a rival candidate.

And it is not just the cult-of-personality politics that smack of a latter-day workers’ paradise. This sleepy island, just off Japan’s main southern island, Kyushu, has recently come under unaccustomed national media attention for a very different reason: it invented its own version of work-sharing four decades before the current economic crisis popularized the term.

Under Hime’s system, village employees earn about a third less pay than public servants elsewhere in Japan, though they work the same hours. This has allowed the village to create more jobs: it now directly or indirectly employs a fifth of all working islanders. Most of the rest are engaged in fishing, also government-subsidized. In fact, village officials say, there are few fully private-sector jobs on the island.

Islanders admit to the socialist parallels, even while proclaiming themselves political conservatives who vote for the governing right-wing Liberal Democratic Party. Some jokingly take the analogy a step further, comparing themselves to a much more repressive family-run regime in Japan’s geopolitical neighborhood.

“Hime Island is North Korea, just a livable version,” Naokazu Koiwa said with a laugh. Mr. Koiwa, 32, repairs fishing boats.

Unsurprisingly, the current mayor, Akio Fujimoto, flatly rejects the North Korean comparison. Rather, he and most other islanders call Hime a repository for traditional Japanese values, like economic egalitarianism and social harmony. They say the rest of the nation has lost these in an embrace of more competitive capitalism, especially under the prime ministership of Junichiro Koizumi from 2001-6.

“Our thinking is, ‘let’s all share the economic pie and get along, instead of giving all of it to the rich,’ ” said Mr. Fujimoto, whose father, Kumao Fujimoto, devised the work-sharing system in the 1960s. “Avoiding competition is the traditional Japanese way.”

Now, with the current crisis causing a national questioning of American-style laissez-faire economics, and business leaders and unions seeking alternatives to widespread job cuts, Hime’s work-sharing scheme is suddenly being held up as a new model. Islanders call it ironic that the current crisis has made traditional values appear progressive, even utopian.

Nor does the island’s penchant for equality stop at work-sharing. At an annual village ceremony to mark the coming of age of 20-year-old islanders, women are forbidden to wear traditional kimonos for fear the differences in quality could reveal their households’ economic status.

Dismayed by the inconsistent television reception across this mountainous island about half the size of Key West, the current mayor installed a free cable TV system that now reaches 97 percent of homes.

Even by clannish Japan’s standards, the island seems a friendly, close-knit place. Islanders cheerfully greet passing strangers. Roads, parks and even public toilets are immaculate. Doors are left unlocked, and the island has only one policeman.

Mr. Fujimoto also cites traditional attitudes to explain his own political longevity, a claim most islanders seem to accept. He says islanders shun public elections because of a deep-rooted abhorrence of confrontation. He said the last time the village held a mayoral election, in 1955, it split the island, creating ill feelings that took a generation to heal.

To avoid a repeat of such trauma, he said, the island decided to choose mayors by consensus, finding someone on whom everyone could agree beforehand. Last year, Mr. Fujimoto won his seventh straight four-year term, once again by default in an uncontested election.

“My job is to prevent elections by keeping everyone equal, and thus happy,” said Mr. Fujimoto, 65, sitting in a modest office in the village hall. His only visible sign of authority was a buzzer on his desk that he pushed to summon an assistant.

Mr. Fujimoto said he would resign immediately if a serious rival appeared in an election. “That would be a sign the village has lost confidence in me,” he said.

Many islanders say Mr. Fujimoto is able to stay in office partly because of the reverence still felt here for his father, who lifted Hime from postwar poverty by turning it into a loyal source of votes for the Liberal Democratic Party, which rewarded the island with generous public works.

“We have our own little personality cult,” said Shokai Dozono, a Buddhist monk who runs one of the island’s two temples.

The island and its mayor also have outside critics. Keizo Nagai, the ombudsman for Oita prefecture, which includes Hime, calls the island the least transparent local government in the prefecture. He criticized it for refusing to make information like detailed budget records available to non-islanders, which he attributed to a closed local culture rather than to a cover-up of wrongdoing.

“Hime Island acts like an independent kingdom,” Mr. Nagai said.

Many islanders say they accept the status quo simply because life here is comfortable. They say rocking the boat would only ostracize them on an island where everyone knows one another.

“Everyone is basically satisfied,” said Shusaku Akaishi, 29, who works at his family’s gas station. “This is a conservative place.”

That conservatism is strong enough at times to annoy even Mr. Fujimoto. His biggest complaint is that traditional attitudes prevent him from extending family control of the mayor’s office for another generation, because he has only a daughter.

“Hime Island can’t be run by a woman,” he sighed. “This place is too medieval for that.”

via South Willard