The Book Trust Prospectus examined new possibilities for funding, trade value, and distribution by attaching a different kind of significance to the object, thus short-circuiting the expected monetary transaction. Production of the Prospectus, however, relied on labor-intensive methods that required hours of input for a relatively small output. With the Futures newsletter, IFS, Ltd. has hybridized the positive aspects of large-scale corporate publishing — economies of scale or large print-runs, distribution of labor, and maximum efficiency — with the dictatorial authorship afforded by self-publishing. This new model maximizes potential as authors and designers while minimizing the opportunity cost of production and distribution.

Within the logic of IFS, Ltd. Futures will also act as a form of currency: readers can use their copy of the newsletter to trade for a copy of the Book Trust Prospectus (see: the Prospectus, left). These recirculated copies of Futures will then be re-made available as a way to generate revenue for a future, freely distributed, as-yet-undefined project thus continuing the self-sustaining eco-system of publishing and distribution, one in which readers and producers collaborate to generate and circulate content outside of the cost-prohibitive channels of traditional publishing.

The IFS, Ltd. Futures Newsletter is, in non-equal parts: a corporate bulletin, a speculative trading instrument, an experiment in memetic and symbiotic publishing, an internal-external analysis of company performance (B. Critton, H. Gassel, B. Griffiths, Z. Klauck, M. Nguyen), a proposal for an allegorical Escape Act (S. Dockray), a bid for a series of six activities (D. Horvitz), an abridged catalogue of semi-fictional gemstones (L. Francescone), a profile of independent art book distributor (Textfield, Inc.), and a self-reflexive / -reflective cartoon caption contest (R. Rozendaal).

Pals (full title: Pals for Life / Life for Pals) is a teleplay about the dialectics of friendships under the strain of artistic endeavor. Shot principally in January 2011 at the Actual Size gallery in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, the approx. 34-minute video — told from the point of view of a traditional studio audience television program — revels in the angst and emotion of 4 friends/lovers who must install their respective art works in the presence of frenemies large and small. Each Pal is named after a specific human being, though the story implies that these pals are simple archetypes from a vast universe of narcissistic micro-movements.

PALS — “They came for the fame and stayed for the spectacles.”
Opening January 15, 2011
Actual Size
741 New High St
Los Angeles CA 90012

Marc Hundley book launch this Saturday at Ooga Booga; artist and publishers (Rainoff Books) in attendance. Saturday 20 November 5-7pm — also check out The City Proper from 3-5pm.

Ooga Booga
943 N Broadway
Los Angeles CA 90012

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

Wallis Annenberg Photography Department Book Launch
Reception and Conversation
Sunday, May 23, 4-6pm
Art Catalogues at LACMA

Art Catalogues at LACMA is located in the Ahmanson Building near the Tony Smith sculpture Smoke.

Printed Matter is pleased to host a book launch and signing for Four Over One by Phil Chang.

Saturday, May 15, 2010
5:00pm-7:00pm
Printed Matter
195 Tenth Ave
New York, NY 10011

In Four Over One, the Los Angeles based artist Phil Chang employs the format of an artists book to explore ideas of economy and obsolescence. In collaboration with designer Jonathan Maghen, Four Over One is structured around Chang’s interest in how new outcomes arise from an antagonism between perceived and actual forms of value. The photographs that appear in the book were created using expired photographic materials exposed by an archival book scanner. Through a sparse display of color, black and white, and half-tone photographs, in conjunction with a restrained typographic treatment, Four Over One employs an economy of scale in order to consider the roles of abstraction, methods of art production, and modes of distribution in our contemporary culture.

Published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department , in association with Textfield, Inc.

Distributed by RAM Publications

Eva Weinmayr, Art in Ruins and Unknown Stranger, London 1994, an unpublished project for Frieze
Softcover, 16 pp., mimeograph/laser 1/1, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 300
ISBN 978-0-9562605-2-9
Published by Occasional Papers and FormContent

This booklet is published as part of I Wonder What The Silence is About, a body of work, speculating on the (temporary?) disappearance of Art In Ruins. This English collaborative art practice was formed in 1984 and created a radical stance towards the art world, based on critical post-modern thinking. They have been for a short period omnipresent in the London/Berlin art scene before they fell silent in 2001. I contacted Art In Ruins and asked for permission to reprint one of their publications as part of my project. This they rejected but suggested to publish this interview instead, which was initially written for Frieze Magazine in 1994. It has not been printed until today.

—Eva Weinmayr

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

The Entryway is an online project created by two aspiring journalists — “maybe the whitest people we know” — who move into a crowded immigrant household in Los Angeles to learn Spanish, so that they can, eventually, better report on their city. It’s getting wonderfully fawning feedback so far, and hopes to raise $3,240 to keep going.

Kara Mears takes photos and Devin Browne writes and designs the entries, which are published sort of like a diary, with words and phrases alternating between large and small typeface. The first thing we learn about the young women, in their opening entry, is that they chose their family after an apparently grueling two years of searching because — unlike other houses in MacArthur Park, I guess — “This family cares about cleanliness. They cannot live with bedbugs.”

continue reading…

Traducing Ruddle is the fifth in a series of “fake” newspapers by Dutch artist Mark Manders. Using a nonsensical combination of English words, Traducing Ruddle creates a pretense of legibility that dissolves upon closer inspection. The newspaper is supplemented by Two Connected Houses, a 48 page insert developed in conjunction with the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum.

Sheets from Manders’ Traducing Ruddle form the central element of the artist’s Window with Fake Newspapers project, a site-specific public work on view through March 28th.

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, The Form of the Book Book
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 2/1, 140 x 230 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9562605-1-2
Published by Occasional Papers

A collection of essays on book design by Catherine de Smet, James Goggin Jenni Eneqvist, Roland Früh, Corina Neuenschwander, Sarah Gottlieb, Richard Hollis, Chrissie Charlton, Armand Mevis.

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

38th Street, Alex Klein, Alex Olson, Alice Konitz, Amy Yao, Andrea Longacre-White, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Apartamento, Art Since Summer of ’69, Arthure Ou, Asher Penn, B’Ling, Barry Johnston, Becca Albee, Benjamin Trogdon, Black Dog Publishing, Bookworks, Brian Kennon, Claudine Auguste, Cynthia Connolly, Cynthia Leung, David Benjamin Sherry, Dexter Sinister, Dorothee Perret, Drag City, Duncan Hamilton, Ethan Swan, Eva Svennung, Fillip, Form Content, Free Association Press, FR David, Frances Stark, Gloria Pedemonte, Goodiepal, Greene Naftali, Hanne Mugaas, Harsh Patel, Ingo Giezendanner, Isabel Asha Penzlien, Jim Drain, Joseph Mosconi, JRP, K8 Hardy, Leif Goldberg, Leopard Press, Lisa Farjam, Margaret Lee, Matt Wobensmith, Megawords, Melissa Ip, Michael & Lucena Valle-Rey, Mylinh Trieu Nguyen, Nick Relph + Oliver Payne, Nieves, Oliver Payne, Ooga Booga, Paige Johnston, Peres Projects, Picturebox, Phil Chang, Poppy Books, Primary Information, RE/Search publications, Semiotext(e), Slavs and Tatars, Sumi Ink Club, Taro Nettleton, Textfield, Ugly Duckling Presse, Wendy Yao, William E. Jones, and White Columns.

Swiss Institute
Ooga Booga Reading Room
1 December — 13 February 2010

Keith Bormuth’s The Occasion of Fracture traces the notion that media fulfills itself in a phatic relationship to knowledge. Following a ghost image of Reyner Banham’s seminal text on Los Angeles, Bormuth melds the on-screen laughter of the 1940s Hollywood star Irene Dunne with the show Gossip Girl, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s posthumously published The Crack Up, and the cameo appearance by Georges Bataille as a priest in Jean Renoir’s film Partie de Campagne. Composed in 11 themes, the text seeks to fracture the semblance images have as things.

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

Nakako Hayashi writes: “There are various lives, various moments and various emotions. I wish to capture the ripples of emotion in our daily lives as seeds, right before they turn into fluff and float away. I wish to keep observing what grows from there. I guess this may be what I want to do with Here and There.”

Nakako Hayashi, Here and There 9
Softcover, 56 pp., offset 4/duotone, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-3-905714-69-2
Published by Nieves

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

Our knowledge of images is my material,” says artist THOMAS DEMAND in part of our 40-page Demand Dossier featuring interviews with filmmaker Todd Solondz, architect Adam Caruso, museum director Udo Kittelmann, and more; meanwhile Nike CEO MARK PARKER discusses creativity, commerce, and charity; Design Director at BMW ADRIAN VAN HOOYDONK tells Konstantin Grcic about the future of the driving experience; the MONTANA Club seduces Paris night life all over again; artist LUCAS SAMARAS pulls back the curtain on his prophetic creative vision; SLAVS & TATARS conjures ghosts of COMMUNISM past the 20th anniversary of its fall; photographer ALASDAIR MCLELLAN captures supermodel Trish Goff in a Big Sur splash; DANKO STEINER sets a new New York standard with CHLOË, MISSY, LIZZI, and NATASA in “Alphabet City”; the 032c SELECT premieres with 30-plus brand new pages of material culture.

Distributed in the United States by Textfield, Inc.

16Beaver Group
Talk, Screenings, Book Launch and Discussion
Thursday, November 12, 7pm
16 Beaver St, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10004
Free and open to all

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

I like your work: art and etiquette
Softcover, 56 pp., offset 1/1, 4.25 x 8.5 inches
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-0-9797575-2-5
Published by Paper Monument

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement (1971)
Seth Siegelaub

Introduction to the Agreement made by Siegelaub in Leonardo, vol. 6, 1973.

1. The Agreement
The three-page Agreement on the following pages has been drafted by Bob Projansky, a New York lawyer, after my extensive discussions and correspondence with over 500 artists, dealers, collectors, museum people, critics and others involved in the day-to-day workings of the international art world.

The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists’ lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it.

The Agreement form has been written with special awareness of the current ordinary practices and economic realities of the art world particularly its private, cash and informal nature, with careful regard for the interests and motives of all concerned.
It is expected to be the standard form for all transfer and sale of all contemporary art and has been made as fair, simple and useful as possible. It can be used either as presented here or slightly altered to fit your specific situation. If you have questions as regards any part of the agreement, you should consult your attorney.

2. Enforcement
First, let us put this question in perspective: most people will honor the Agreement because most people honor agreements. Those few people who will try to cheat you are likely to be the same kinds who will give you a hard time about signing the Agreement in the first place. Later owners will be more likely to try to cheat you than the first owner, with whom you or your dealer have had some face-to-face contact but there are strong reasons why both first and future owners should fulfill the contract’s terms.

What happens if owner No. 2 sells your work to owner No. 3 and does not send you the transfer form? (He is not sending you the money, either.) Nothing happens. (You do not know about it yet.)

Sooner or later you do find out about it because it takes a lot of effort to conceal such sales and the ‘grapevine’ will get the news to you (or your dealer) anyway. To conceal the sale, owner No. 3 has to conceal the work and he is not going to hide a good and valuable work just to save a little money. And if he ever wants to sell it, repair it, appraise it or authenticate it, he MUST come to you (or your dealer). When you do find out about such a transaction-and you will-you sue owner No. 2, who will owe you 15% of the increase based on the price to owner No. 3 or on the value at the time you find out about it, which may be higher. Clearly, a seller (in this case No. 2) would be extremely foolish to take this chance, to risk having to pay a lot of money, just to save a little money.

As to falsifying values reported to the artist, there will be as much pressure from the new owner to put a falsely high value as from the old owner to put in a low value. There are real difficulties inherent in getting two people to lie in unison, especially if it only benefits one of them-the seller. In 95% of the cases the amount of money to be paid to the artist will not be enough to compel the collectors to lie to you.

You will note that in the event you have to sue to enforce any of your rights under the Agreement, article 19 gives you the right to recover reasonable attorney’s fees in addition to whatever else you may be entitled to.

3. Summation
We realize that this Agreement is essentially unprecedented in the art world and that it just may cause a little rumbling and trembling; on the other hand, the ills it remedies are universally acknowledged to exist and no other practical way has ever been devised to cure them.

Whether or not, you, the artist, use it, is of course up to you; what we have given you is a legal tool that you can use yourself to establish ongoing rights when you transfer your work. This is a substitute for what has existed before-nothing.

We have done this for no recompense, for just the pleasure and challenge of the problem, feeling that should there ever be a questions about artists’ rights in reference to their art, the artist is more right than anyone else.

-Seth Siegelaub, 1973.

The Agreements and the corresponding statement appear courtesy of The Siegelaub Collection & Archives at the Stichting Egress Foundation, Amsterdam.