Novel issue 3

Novel issue 3

Novel Launch Berlin, a set on Flickr.

Novel at Archive Kabinett, 2010
Dieffenbachstraße 31. 10967 Berlin, Germany

Archive Kabinett, Berlin

Novel and Something Blue at Archive Kabinett, July 20 2010

Archive Kabinett is the headquarter of Archive Books and Archive Journal. Devoted to research and reflection on artistic, social, and political practices, Archive Kabinett aims to translate, organize and circulate theoretical and critical materials.

Novel (Issues 1 & 2) edited by Alun Rowlands & Matt Williams, designed by James Langdon

Novel draws together artists writing, texts and poetry that oscillate between modes of fiction and speculation. Here artists’ writing is an apparatus for knowledge capture, informed by theory, film, politics and storytelling.

Contributors include a.o. (Issue 1) Mark von Schlegell, Michael Krebber, Josef Strau, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Barry MacGregor Johnston, Alastair MacKinven, Michael Stevenson / Jan Verwoet, Ei Arakawa, RH Quaytman and Steven Claydon; (Issue 2) Nicholas Byrne, Stephen G Rhodes, Karolin Meunier, Cyprien Gaillard, Mark Leckey, Emilly Wardill, Paul Chan, Karl Holmqvist, Michaela Eichwald, Melanie Gilligan, Oscar Tuazon and Christoph Buchel.

With additional contributions by Ed Aktins and Edwin Burdis / Johnny Woo

Something Blue (Pilot Issue)
edited and designed by Galerie Neue Alte Brücke / Mark Dickenson

Something Blue is a new publication situated within the blurred territories of contemporary art and erotica. Existing as a single unique copy the pilot issue includes specially produced contributions by Ed Atkins, Thomas Bayrle, Will Benedict, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Tim Davies, Simon Denny, Simon Fujiwara, Lena Henke, Yngve Holen, Morag Keil, Fiona Mackay, Tobias Madison, Patrizio Di Massimo, Ruairiadh O’Connell, Seth Pick, Claus Rasmussen, Dan Rees, Florian Roithmayr, Cally Spooner, Lucie Stahl and Iori Wallace.

‘Declare Independence’, Karl Holmqvist (2009) read and performed by Edwin Burdiss and Johnny Woo; recorded at International Project Space, Birmingham

CERITH WYN EVANS

‘Degrees of Blindness’, 1987 
With Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, Tilda Swinton. 19 mins

What is it to see, to be seen, to be looked at? This remarkable film, inspired by a poem by William Blake, explores the desire at the root of vision, from the reading of a Braille map by a blind child to the newest forms of visual representation.

Novel 2
Johnny Woo reading Karl Holmqvist Declare Independence (2009)

Emily Wardill ‘Split the screen in two’ (2009) on Flickr.

Novel 2, a set on Flickr.

Novel 2
Events, Readings, Screenings

Karl Holmqvist Declare Independence (2009)

STAN VANDERBEEK and KENNETH KNOWLTON
Poemfield # 2
1966 USA 6 min

‘All of the Poemfield films explore variations of poems, computer graphics, and in some cases combine live action images and animation collage; all are geometric and fast moving and in colour. As samples of the art of the future all the films explore variations of abstract geometric forms and words. In effect these works could be compared to the illuminated manuscripts of an earlier age. Now typography and design are created at speeds of 100.000 decisions per second, set in motion a step away from mental movies.’ - Stan VanDerBeek

Events, Readings, Screenings

Events, Readings, Screenings

Owen Land

‘Undesirables (Work-In-Progress)’, 1999
16mm original, transferred to vhs video, tansferred to DVD, b/w, sound, 12 mins

‘The idea started with a casual comment made by Stan Brakhage, must have been way back in the early 1970s. It stuck in my mind. Now that I think about it, Brakhage may have meant this as a joke. He said, “Someday Hollywood will probably make a film about us,” ‘us’ meaning the experimental filmmakers “and I wonder which actors will play us?” Think about that first of all: the idea that Hollywood would make a film about experimental filmmakers is totally ridiculous. The fact that one would think about which actor was going to play me at some time in the future, I think that’s very funny. Eventually it germinated in my mind and I thought it was an interesting idea… A film about experimental filmmakers, especially in the very formative period, approximately 1968 to 1972. The movement went from a high point where there was a lot of publicity generated in the media, and seemed to peter out shortly after that. At a certain time, I guess it was in the 1980s, there was some discussion in film circles about the decline of the experimental film and people were theorising about why it happened and some people suggested maybe because of video, and I guess there were other theories too. So I thought, “Why not come up with a fantastic theory about why that happened?” a fictional theory and put that into a film?’
(Owen Land, interviewed by Mark Webber, 2004)

Barry MacGregor Johnston & Stephen G.Rhodes By and By (2009)

“The fear of failing to reach the other, the failure of writing as well as the hope that the reading implies an understanding, that the meaning is conveyed to the other are characteristic for the process of writing letters. The choice of this communication media evokes memories of the past, when humans had to rely on it if they wanted to get in touch with a remote person. However, unlike one might assume, the letter does not constitute a particular special case of communication. With regard to the constellation of those involved in the communication process, a letter can be seen as an example of communication itself, if it is assumed that one structural characteristic of any message is the need to cover a distance. What is evident here is the way from one to the other as well as the delayed arrival, which, in terms of an awareness of distances and of the relationship from the time of writing to the spatial absence of the addressee, is intrinsic to the moment of writing. Thus, the following considerations also deal with language as a means of exchange – and with the process of exchange itself, if one examines the situation of the sender with regard to the uncertainty if his words will be received and understood. The letter gives an idea how this situation can be handled using an active approach, instead of perceiving the absence of the addressee as a deficiency. In fact, it is this particular experience of emptiness that gives cause to write and provides space for indeterminate movement. The notion of a simple sending and arrival is replaced by the idea of a bi-directional process, which makes it difficult to ascertain where dialogue begins or where it is prevented. As a figure of thought, correspondence is thus not a strategy to solve the tension between presence and absence but a tool to make the incongruity of this tension visible.”

— Karolin Meunier The Act of Corresponding (2009)

Ed Atkins The Radical Dilettante (2008)