Books and Magazines


2004 release. Special edition of Sacred Bordello (originally published by Black Dog Publishing) bundled with a limited edition CD released by Alga Marghen. As one of the most influential figures of experimental music and performance, Charlemagne Palestine has remained an enigma. Unlike his illustrious contemporaries Terry Riley, John Cale, Steve Reich, and Phillip Glass, little has been written on Palestine and his continuing influence. In his own right, he was and remains today a pivotal personality whose research in musical composition and performance has been characterized over the years by its incantatory repetitiveness, its flamboyance, and its mysticism, but also by its violence. Born in Brooklyn in 1947, his first musical experiences were as a cantorial singer in the synagogues of New York. Through his contact with Tony Conrad, Palestine was soon introduced to the thriving experimental art scene of the late 1960s. The circles around Andy Warhol and La Monte Young provided a crucial backdrop for Palestine's work, which increasingly extended beyond the scope of music. His groundbreaking appearances, which combined violent piano playing, performance, video, and installation, were considered to be amongst the most radical musical experiences, leaving a lasting impression on followers such as Arto Lindsay, Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and the Sex Pistols, as well as Tintin creator Hergé. Palestine's epic durations, microtonal trembles, and dense overtones are reoccurring features in contemporary industrial and electronic music. Sacred Bordello is a flexi-cover sewn, full color, 192-page, 11" x 9" book that includes essays, scores, and original photos of performances and installations, providing the most complete documentation of Charlemagne Palestine's art. The included CD features an hour-long recording of a lecture that Palestine gave on March 7th, 1975 at the ArtNow Centre in Canada. Following the performance of a strumming music concert, Palestine freely speaks about his music and philosophy, involving the students in some kind of magic ritual. Starting as a question-and-answer conversation, the lecture develops into an intimate speech in which particularly private subjects are discussed. The CD also includes a previously unreleased multi-layer voice study from the early 1960s.

Charlemagne Palestine – Sacred Bordello

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Publisher: ‎Broecking Verlag Language: ‎EnglishPaperback: ‎472 pagesDimensions: ‎7.44 x 0.95 x 9.69 inchesIn this detailed biography Schweizer is honored not only as a central figure in the development of European free jazz, but also as a committed pioneer for the equality of women in art and society. In her early years, for example, she stood up for the artistic and economic autonomy of artists and fought against discrimination against people on the basis of gender, origin or sexual orientation. The German critic Christian Broecking, who sadly passed away this year, has created an elaborate, diligent work with lots of case studies. What is more, the book consists of many interviews with Schweizer and over 60 contemporary witnesses, which turn out to be insightful as to her life's work. Chronologically, the biography begins with Schweizer’s youth. She grew up in a pub owner’s family in Schaffhausen and after her first attempts on the accordion she discovered the piano and joined the Crazy Stokers, a Dixieland band, at the age of 16. In 1957, that alone was a sensation. Shortly after that she landed in the top ranks at the Zurich Amateur Jazz Festival playing soul jazz and hardbop. The prize was a man’s shirt and a pack of cigarettes - no one could imagine that a woman would be able to win the first prize. Broecking’s biography is diligently and thoroughly researched, it is at its best when it tells anecdotes. One chapter addresses the chronic underpayment of jazz musicians, one deals with "Knitting as Provocation." Time and again, the author inserts digressions to explain a fact even more explicitly and places it in a social context. As a result of Schweizer’s consistent advocacy against apartheid (she has had very good connections to the South African expats in London) and for women's rights, she was part of the so-called Fichen scandal, in which she was surveilled by the Swiss secret service. --- ‎Broecking Verlag, 2021

Christian Broecking – This Uncontainable Feeling of Freedom: Irène Schweizer - European Jazz and the Politics of Improvisation

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"Grundy has produced a notable contribution to the field of American literary and cultural studies not only in its attention to Umbra, but also in its attention to the complexities of how we approach and understand literary movements." - Journal of Beat Studies "Grundy (Univ. of Cambridge, UK) chronicles the Umbra poets, historical moments (for instance the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965), and the rise of black nationalism, investigating them-and the literature that came out of this period of awakening-with equal thoroughness ... Grundy is also an excellent close reader of poetry. Though Grundy is an academic, there is no academic jargon in this well-researched, clearly presented study. He does an excellent job of dealing with the complexities of this history and how it informed the period." - ChoiceA vital hub of poetry readings, performance, publications and radical politics in 1960s New York, the Umbra Workshop was a cornerstone of the African American avant-garde.Bringing together new archival research and detailed close readings of poetry, A Black Arts Poetry Machine is a groundbreaking study of this important but neglected group of poets. David Grundy explores the work of such poets as Amiri Baraka, Lorenzo Thomas and Calvin Hernton and how their innovative poetic forms engaged with radical political responses to state violence and urban insurrection. Through this examination, the book highlights the continuing relevance of the work of the Umbra Workshop today and is essential reading for anyone interested in 20th-century American poetry.

David Grundy – A Black Arts Poetry Machine - Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets

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Edited by: Alejandra Luciana Cárdenas. Contributions by: Alexandre Herbetta, Ana Ruiz Valencia, D’Andrade, Daniela Avellar, Fabián Ávila Elizalde, Paulo Antonio Kalankó, Reiko Yamada, Rui Chaves, Nora Castrejón, Teresa Díaz de Cossio, Vered Engelhard. This book was published within the framework of the third edition of the festival Radical Sounds Latin America. English / Spanish 224 pages19.5 x 13 x 2.5 cmHardcoverISBN: ‎ 978-3000704116This second volume of Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal was published within the framework of the third edition of the festival Radical Sounds Latin America. The nine essays presented here articulate and explore soundscapes and sonic stories from Latin American, but also multispecies, intersectional approaches, indigenous ontologies and positions that contend with the Western vocabulary, while also engaging with the ethical dilemmas of our age.  -Daniela Avellar “An Amplified Echo, a Carbonated Resonance”-Vered Engelhard “Sonic Cartography in the Rímac Watershed: On the Contemporaneity of a Pre-Columbian Acoustic Ecology”-Ana Ruiz Valencia “Resounding Epistemologies of Conflict: Auralities in Colombia’s Historical Memory”-Nora Castrejón/Fabián Avila Elizalde “¿Un arte sonoro menor?: Dosis de escucha (2018) y El aula de los ruidos (2019)”-Alexandre Herbetta/Paulo Antonio Kalankó “Indigenous and Anticapitalist Sounds: Musical Practices to Pollinate the Brazilian Caatinga”-Rui Chaves “32 instrucciones para escuchar con/en una epidemia global”-Teresa Díaz de Cossio “Listening for Alida Vázquez: A Life in Electronic Music between Migration, Race and Gender”-Reiko Yamada “On Temperament and Tempering”-D’Andrade “Noise Vivarium: Spectral Radicalism”

Volume 2, 2021 – Border Listening - Escucha liminal

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210 x 290mm, 56 pages, Colour printing, Coil bound, Softcover, 2024 published by Errant Bodies A zine and exercise book about the applied art of questioning, by the writer Cordula Daus and the choreographer Charlotta Ruth.This is the age of the answering machine. Of infinite input fields, of prompts and problem solving, of algorithmic feeding frenzy. But wait. Who/what is behind this text? Have you been reading these lines for real? Are you here?Since 2019 the writer Cordula Daus and the choreographer Charlotta Ruth have explored and trained what might be the last genuinely human quality: how to question, how to make oneself response-able. Together they have created environments, performances, writing exercises and live situations where ideas become material to be touched and processed between people.Questionology – Are you here? is a zine and exercise book for all those who'd like to know more about the applied art of questioning. Unfolding across three conversations, the zine recombines tricks and moves from midwives, Socratic maieutics, witchcraft and malfunctioning technology. In the opening text an anonymous author-mechanism lures the reader into a series of questions trying to grasp what reading is. Secondly, Daus & Ruth meet the sound artist and editor Brandon LaBelle to reactivate elements of the participatory work Questionology – Program for Applied Questioning (co-produced by brut Vienna, 2021). Equipped with new vegetable names and a towel, the three try out different selves and stances including one of the most complicated ones: listening. Thirdly, the artist Erik Valentin Berg joins the conversation to examine the field of artistic research. Together they defend each others' titles, fight over 'useless art' and get caught in a failed thesis scandal. Hope to meet you there!

Cordula Daus & Charlotta Ruth – Questionology - Are you here?

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Sound American is a journal founded in 2012 by Nate Wooley, providing in-depth interviews and essays, Sound American starts from a simple desire to open the doors of experimental music to a wider audience. Sound American believes that music is for everyone and should be shared on the most basic human level. Sound American aims to accomplish this by creating a direct intellectual, social, and emotional bridge that links audiences and artists. Advisory board: David Grubbs, Rebekah Heller, Taylor Ho Bynum, Zeena Parkins, Matana Roberts, and Ken Vandermark.Sound American is also an editorial platform for other print or music projects. Roscoe Mitchell (born 1940 in Chicago) is an American jazz saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Co-founder of the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), he is an emblematic figure of free jazz and experimental jazz, at the junction of American free jazz and contemporary European jazz.Sound American #29 celebrates Art Ensemble of Chicago founder and American iconoclast, Roscoe Mitchell. "This special issue is an appreciation of Mitchell's career as an improvisor, instrumentalist, composer, painter, and educator as told by the musicians whom he has affected and through his own words. The issue starts with a rigorously researched and beautifully written overview of the saxophonist's career by Brooklyn-based saxophonist Sam Weinberg. As the reader continues, they will then find insights into Mitchell's work and working methods from a group of future iconoclasts, such as Tyshawn Sorey, Darius Jones, Ken Vandermark, James Fei. Throughout the issue, composer and improvising harpist Zeena Parkins explores Mitchell's work as an educator through a series of interviews with former Mills College students, all of were collaborators in orchestrating and arranging Mitchell's recent works for large ensembles. But the real glory of this issue, one of the half-dozen "artist portraits" that SA has produced over its ten-year history, is the sheer weight of the artist in his own words. For the first time ever, an issue features four interviews with its subject: a previously published conversation on music and saxophone with Bay-Area stalwart, Phillip Greenlief; a talk about living the musician's life with cellist Tomeka Reid and architecture scholar David Brown; a friendly talk on all things saxophone with the radical contrabass clarinetist John McCowen; and a revelatory talk about Mitchell's visual art practice with Chicago writer and gallery owner John Corbett. This last chat leads us into a very special double gatefold color reproduction of some of Mitchell's paintings in celebration and anticipation of his first solo show at the Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery in early 2024. Although we've done away with our usual recurring articles for this issue—Sites of Formation, People Doing Things, etc.—we had to retain the Exquisite Corpse series, so beautifully developed by Jules Gimbrone and Ka Baird in the last two issues. Afro-futurist conceptualist and composer Jessie Cox rounds this series out with a nod to the previous composers, an homage to the issue's theme, and an eye toward outer space. This is a very special issue, one that is long overdue in celebrating the work of a musician's musician, an artist's artist, a thinker's thinker, and a true cultural treasure."

Sound American - The Roscoe Mitchell Edition

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Contributions by ROSA AIELLO, GERRY BIBBY, COLEMAN COLLINS, AYANNA DOZIER, ANNIE ERNAUX, AMELIA GROOM, MICHÈLE GRAF & SELINA GRÜTER, MONILOLA OLAYEMI ILUPEJU, ELLEN YEON KIM, BITSY KNOX, DAN KWON, ERIKA LANDSTRÖM, ENAD MAROUF, KATRIN MAYER, AISLINN MCNAMARA, KAMILA & JASMINA METWALY, LUZIE MEYER, VERA PALME, THERESA PATZSCHKE, GEORGIA SAGRI, MAHSA SALOOR, ELIF SAYDAM, MARK VON SCHLEGELL, SIMON SPEISER, ELAINE TAM, C.S. TOLAN, MIKHAIL WASSMER, ANNA ZACHAROFFSibyl's Mouths is the most recent in a series of publications by Pure Fiction, a writing and performance group with shifting members active since 2011. From February 12 to March 6, 2022, Pure Fiction presented an exhibition and performance program at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne titled “Shifting Theater: Sibyl's Mouths”. The starting point was a collective reading of Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man, in which the narrator discovers a collection of scribbled oak leaves scattered in a cave outside Naples. Alleged prophecies of the Cumean Sibyl, the textual fragments inscribed on the leaves foretell the story of an epidemic that ravages the globe in the 2100's—a period where solitude, intimacy, and the perception of time is radically renegotiated. Through a multiplicity of textual genres and writerly approaches, contributors examine the questions and forms that emerge from prophecy: the role of the voice in text, writing and performance; fragmentary heterogeneous narratives. The mouth is consulted, not only as a mouthpiece or as a cavernous instrument for vocalization but as an essential part of the digestive tract. Processes in the gut, such as assimilation, excretion, and regurgitation involve multiple temporal directionalities, and may function as metaphorical gateways to intuitive truths.

a pure fiction publication, edited by Rosa Aiello, Ellen Yeon Kim, Erika Landström, Luzie Meyer, Mark Von Schlegell – Sibyl's Mouths

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CONTRIBUTORS: Jay Cantor, Robert Gardener, Patricia Hampl, Maureen Howard, Susan Howe, Helene Keyssar, Phillip Lopatte, Vlada Petric, William Rothman, Charles Warren, Eliot Weinberger.  Critics and writers consider nonfiction film both as document and as creative work with strong artistic, political, and moral implications.  In essays by eleven of America's foremost writers, critics, and filmmakers, Beyond Document explores the full spectrum of nonfiction film and its creative possibilities. In addition to Charles Warren's broad introductory history of the genre, the book takes a close look at ethnographic films, cinema-verité, memoir and autobiography, docudramas, essay films, and newsreels, from classics like Night and Fog and Nanook of the North to more recent important work like Film about a Woman Who. . ., Harlan County, U.S.A., Sans Soleil, and Forest of Bliss. Representations of reality are increasingly contested, in courtrooms and in Congress, as well as in art. Asking what the art of film can achieve, Helene Keyssar considers the history of nonfiction films by women; Jay Cantor discusses film investigations of the Holocaust; Patricia Hampl looks at how autobiographical films render experience into narrative; Robert Gardner questions the filmmaker's "impulse to preserve" ; and poet Susan Howe explores structures of mourning in several filmmakers. All the book's essays provide deeply felt understanding of documentary film, and of how we live with, an d within, images.

edited by Charles Warren – Beyond Document - Essays on nonfiction film

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