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

Photograph by Michael Wells

Municipal de Fútbol is distributed by D.A.P.

by Leslie Kaufman

PALM DESERT, Calif. — Rick Clark’s garage is loaded with fast toys for playing in the sun. He has a buggy for racing on sand dunes, two sleek power boats for pulling water skiers, and a new favorite: 48 solar panels that send his energy meter whirring backward.

Bronzed and deeply lined from decades of life in the desert sun, Mr. Clark is not one to worry about global warming. He suspects that if the planet’s climate is getting hotter, it is part of a natural cycle and will probably correct itself. “Experts have been wrong before,” he said.

But late last year, Mr. Clark decided to install a $62,000 solar power system because of a new municipal financing program that lent him the money and allows him to pay it back with interest over 20 years as part of his property taxes. In so doing, he joined the vanguard of a social experiment that is blossoming in California and a dozen other states.

The goal behind municipal financing is to eliminate perhaps the largest disincentive to installing solar power systems: the enormous initial cost. Although private financing is available through solar companies, homeowners often balk because they worry that they will not stay in the house long enough to have the investment — which runs about $48,000 for an average home and tens of thousands of dollars more for a larger home in a hot climate — pay off.

But cities like Palm Desert lobbied to change state laws so that solar power systems could be financed like gas lines or water lines, covered by a loan from the city and secured by property taxes. The advantage of this system over private borrowing is that any local homeowners are eligible (not just those with good credit), and the obligation to pay the loan attaches to the house and would pass to any future buyers.

The idea of public financing for home solar systems began two years ago in Berkeley. While it took months to untangle the legislative knots at the state level and get banks lined up to back the project, the concept took on a life of it own.

Cisco DeVries, who developed the program for Berkeley but has since moved on to a company that administers and finances similar programs for many towns, said: “I’ve never been part of something like this where the power of an idea has grabbed so many people so quickly. It is viral.”

In California, about a half-dozen cities including San Francisco and San Diego are already committed to their own solar programs. And outside of California, at least a half-dozen states, including Arizona, Texas and Virginia, have introduced bills to allow municipal financing. Colorado has already passed a version of the law, and the City of Boulder is on the verge of beginning a program.

Municipal financing comes on top of other government supports. California residents receive a straight rebate for about 20 percent of the cost of a solar power system. In addition, a federal income tax credit for 30 percent of the cost of installing solar panels was extended to participants in the municipal loan programs as part of the economic stimulus bill passed by Congress. And there are efforts to change the federal tax code further so that cities can borrow the money to lend tax free.

But public financing of solar power also has critics, who say government is essentially subsidizing and encouraging a form of energy production that would otherwise not be cost effective. Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley, who is concerned about the proliferation of the programs, said, “It would be better for local governments to do energy efficiency and skip the solar panels.

“If you count the full-interest cost without the tax subsidy, residential solar panels never pay for themselves,” he said. “We shouldn’t be making it a major public priority.”

However, cities, which are charging 7 percent for the guaranteed loans, do not have the same financial risk as the consumers. And for cities like those in California that are required by state laws to reduce their carbon emissions, officials have to make calculations other than costs and are going ahead anyway.

No city is as far along as Palm Desert.

Instead of waiting to get financing through third parties as other cities have done, Palm Desert tapped into $7.5 million of its own reserves to run a pilot program. In what is widely seen as a measure of public demand, the program was almost immediately fully subscribed. Already, nearly 100 households have been approved for solar panels, and about half of those have already installed them and have a system up and running, according to Patrick Conlon, director of the city office of energy management.

From its arid climate to its conservative politics, Palm Desert could not be more different from Berkeley. But with 350 days of sun, the city is making a calculation that has nothing to do with saving the Earth.

“We live in a severe climate,” Mr. Conlon said. “To cool our buildings, we have to be energy gluttons. So renewable energy is important here as an economic choice. It’s bigger than politics.”

For Mr. Clark, that is certainly the case. His monthly energy bill for a 3,400-square-foot home and a guest house routinely surpassed $1,400 in summer months when the air conditioning ran all the time. Now his solar panels are producing more than enough energy in the daytime to power his home. The additional power is sent back to the grid and is credited on his utility bill against night and summer hours, when he might consume more power than he produces.

Mr. Clark estimates that at the rate he is going, his power bill will be at most $500 for this year. The savings will be great enough that, taking into account his investment, he will still save $3,000 a year or more.

The blue panels above his garage and his meter — which also tells him how much of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide he has avoided creating since the panels were installed (over 2,200 pounds) — have in fact had a kind of viral marketing effect in his upper-middle-class neighborhood. Homes here run well above $1 million, yet solar power was a rarity until the city program started.

“It can seem like a large and intimidating task,” said Valerie Van Winkle, a bank manager and a friend of Mr. Clark, who persuaded him and three other neighbors to take the solar plunge.

Ms. Van Winkle said the environmental cachet has also been fun. “I don’t even know anybody who voted for Obama,” she said.

Still she has become a proselytizer for solar power. “It just makes so much sense,” she said. “And, you know, I am happy it’s also good for the environment.”

Down the street, Debbie and Chris McNicol have a different take. Mr. McNicol used to be part of a professional drag racing crew and still races as a hobby on weekends. Their garage houses its own set of speed mobiles, including a 24-foot-long purple-and-yellow gas-guzzling dragster that goes up to 180 miles an hour. After installing solar panels, their first monthly energy bill dropped to $1.89.

Mr. McNicol is elated: “We can use the money we’ve saved to race new toys.”

The artist Shannon Ebner is perhaps best known for her photographic and sculptural works that investigate language and its meaning. Ebner’s The Sun as Error, a book published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, coordinated by Dexter Sinister, and distributed by RAM Publishers, will have its New York launch at White Columns on March 6.

COSMIC WONDER Light Source 3
Light Streams

Launch party for Light Streams, a photo book published by Nieves

Wear 2008, the journal of Elaine W. Ho/Homeshop, Beijing is now available.

Wear is a new independent artist-run publication from Beijing. In part a documentation of a series of public activities, discussions and interventions organised at HomeShop space during the 2008 Olympic Games, the first issue of Wear also serves as a broader platform to invite other artists, writers and contributors to reflect upon — from the point of view of a small alleyway in the centre of Beijing — a spectacular everyday amidst broader contemporary urban sociopolitics.

Wear is distributed in North America by Textfield or contact your local bookshop.

Paperback (London), issue 2 out now!

Paperback is now distributed in North America by Textfield or contact your local bookshop.

The Distribution to Underserved Communities Library Program (DUC) distributes books on contemporary art and culture free of charge to rural and inner-city libraries, schools and alternative reading centers nationwide.

The program aims to actively further a more egalitarian access to contemporary art, and is committed to fostering partnerships between publishers, non-profit organizations, librarians and readers to enrich and diversify library collections. The program offers well over 490 titles by more than 90 different publishers. The program reaches readers in all 50 states and has placed over 200,000 free books in public libraries, schools, and alternative pedagogical venues.

The DUC is a program of Art Resources Transfer, Inc., a non profit organization founded in 1987, that is committed to documenting and supporting artists’ voices and work, and making these voices accessible to the broadest possible audience.

Textfield Distribution is proud to announce its participation in the DUC Program.

The International Institute of Social History (Dutch: Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, abbreviation: IISG) is a historical research institute in Amsterdam. It was founded in 1935 by Nicolaas Posthumus. The IISG is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

032c, 16th Issue — Post-America

“A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed.” John Gray tells Hans Ulrich Obrist about the political and financial unrest in the “Post American Age;” Steven Meisel reveals fashion’s cruel and beautiful in a rare interview (plus a seven-page foldout madness of all his Vogue Italia covers); Wes Jones illustrates Dubai and the effects of superabundance; artist Sturtevant tackles copy, copyright, and the ready-made; architect Jürgen Mayer H., and artists Ralf Ziervogel and Roth Stauffenberg form a cluster of 3-4 Fantastic Germans (with 032c’s Architectural Digest visit to Mozambique’s Grand Hotel gone bad); Photographers Max Farago and Alasdair McLellan bring on “The Nudes;” and so much more on 246 pages.

032c, 16th Issue now available through Textfield Distribution or contact your local bookshop.

Mariana Castillo Deball, Faux Visage, 2008. Microperforated poster, 64 × 60 cm

Fillip is a publication of art, culture and ideas released three times a year by the Projectile Publishing Society from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Mariana Castillo Deball’s contribution to Fillip is part of Master Humphrey’s Clock (2008), a project that examines the intersections between storytelling and circulation through a series of art exhibitions, publications, and events. The project is curated by Yulia Aksenova, Jesse Birch, Sarah Farrar, Inti Guerrero, and Virginija Januskeviciute, the participants in de Appel arts centre’s 2007/08 curatorial program, Amsterdam.

Fillip is available from Textfield Distribution or contact your local bookshop.

Manuel Raeder, A La Cach Cachi Porra
Agenda/Calendar/File Folders ($40 USD)
1 year (2009), perfect bound, 120 pp., offset 4/1, 17 x 24 cm
Edition of 500, each copy has a unique color scale iris print

An agenda/calendar for 2009 which is explores the possibilities of being a time storage device in a book format. Each month has a french fold pocket to store documents and ephemera from that month, temporarily or to archive.

A La Cach Cachi Porra is available through Textfield Distribution or contact your local bookshop.

Illicit Haul: Colombian soldiers guard a semi-submersible captured last month with 1.6 tons of cocaine

by Chris Kraul

Reporting from Tumaco, Colombia — Squat, bull-necked and sullen-looking, Enrique Portocarrero hardly seems a dashing character out of a Jules Verne science fiction novel.

But law enforcement officers here have dubbed him “Captain Nemo,” after the dark genius of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” They say the 45-year-old has designed and built as many as 20 fiberglass submarines, strange vessels with the look of sea creatures, for drug traffickers to haul cocaine from this area of southern Colombia to Central America and Mexico.

Capping a three-year investigation that involved U.S. and British counter-narcotics agents, Colombia’s FBI equivalent, the Department of Administrative Security, arrested Portocarrero last month in the violent port city of Buenaventura, where he allegedly led a double life as a shrimp fisherman. (continued)

Thank Michael Jonathan· 12/14/08

Pantheon of Broken Men and Women poster. A tribute to those individuals who have been shattered by a certain suspension of disbelief. As Pantheons are more often than not dedicated to the victors (whether during their lifetime or via history), this is an inverted Pantheon, dedicated to the defeated. Produced in collaboration with Fillip, Slavs and Tatars, and Stand Up Comedy.

Motto Distribution launches Motto Shop in Berlin — opens Tuesday.

Textfield V is now distributed in Switzerland by Motto Distribution.

Zürcher Zine Sezession
One-day Independent Publishers Fair

Nieves and Rollo Press are proud to announce that over 40 independent publishers from around the world are participating in the first Zürich Zine Sezession.

Perla-Mode
Langstrasse 84 / Brauerstrasse 37
8004 Zurich, Switzerland
+41 44 240 04 80
free admission

Fairy Tale
Architecture and Interieur
Winter 2008
published by Vier5

FT Architecture and Interieur is available through Textfield Distribution or contact your local bookshop.

We’ve opened up our Cybershop for the holidays — assorted sizes from our backlist are now available for purchase through our site between today and the New Year. All designs are short sleeve t-shirts, regular-fit, off-white or black, sizes S, M, L and Womens (M). Oh, and they’re all on sale, 25% off.

— Jonathan and Rafaël

Backgammon, Couch Potato, Egg In Cup, Hourglass, Jellyfish, Moon, No Book and Paper Bag. Also available for wholesale order through Textfield Distribution or contact your local retailer.

Peter Piller, Deko+Munition

Textfield is pleased to announce the arrival of 5 new titles from Nieves; Klaus Born, Valentin Hauri and Oliver Krähenbühl, Because her Beauty is Raw and Wild; Taro Hirano, Foreclosure; Yuka Katagri, Domicile Conjugal; Taylor McKimens, This Kind of Livin’ and Peter Piller, Deko+Munition.

Textfield· 12/02/08

COINS is a project dedicated to the making of albums in various formats. Playing with the popular 19th century idea of an album being a handsomely printed book that contains images accompanied by short text, Album 1 creates a lyrical, snapshot composition designed to evoke the humidity and memories of summers long gone.

COINS, Album 1 is now available through Textfield Distribution or contact your local bookshop.

Capricious is very proud to present the first in a new line of limited edition artist books. The Known World is a vivid, full color book documenting the span of a romantic relationship between photographers Anne Hall and Sophie Mörner.

“For three months or so, Anne and I escaped the city, as much as we possibly could, and found the forest wrapping around us”, says Mörner. The women traveled from New Hampshire to the Catskills, to the woods of northern Florida, and back again.

The images and texts included in The Known World are candid relics, remembrances and reimagined fantasies of the magic that occurred during the months Hall and Mörner spent together. With a host of lush, large format photos of flora and fauna, and arrestingly handsome portraits of the two women, the book illustrates a tale of escape from the clamor of daily life into the wilderness. It is a visual history of freed hearts, as seen through the lens of hindsight, a nostalgic glimpse back in time to a place without hurt, regret or misunderstanding.

Though it was not conceived as a challenging or political piece, The Known World is a “potentially seminal work” in the realm of contemporary lesbian and feminist art and documentation, according to Jessica Gysel. In its sunny, tender beauty, this book provides a fresh perspective. Unlike necessarily aggressive, activist artworks of the past, the success of The Known World lies in its freedom to simply and authentically depict rather than protest.

Hassla Books is an independent publishing company with a focus on art and photography. They specialize in publishing small, low-run artist books that feature the work of both emerging and established artists, always working one-on-one with the artists to create a publication that evokes the very essence of the artist’s focus. This intimate process, coupled with Hassla’s simple aesthetic, allows for an interior view into the artist’s work.

Hassla Books are now available through Textfield Distribution or contact your local bookshop.

Textfield, Inc. is an independent publisher and distributor of art books, catalogues, editions, monographs and periodicals. We specialize in the distribution of quality publications from publishers in North America and Europe, to libraries, book shops, galleries and museums.

Publishers: 032c, Capricious, Christoph Keller Editions, David Kordansky Gallery, I-20 Gallery, Laura Bartlett Gallery, Nieves, Onestar Press, Peres Projects, Slavs and Tatars, Textfield, Vier5, and Wallspace.