Books and Magazines


Paperback, 120x210mm, 38 pp Veer2 Publication 006, June 2021. 'In Mudchute, the difficult structures of language are carefully treated. Infancy, attachment, ambivalence and loss are disassembled and reconfigured amidst gaunt hedgerows, fuel farm repositories, the bouncy castle and the DLR as Betteridge’s lyric voice navigates the edge of fragmentation. Deeply felt and experimental, apprehensive of and devoted to both the unbearable and the comic aspects of experience and memory, these poems perform the difficult bonds of social life even as they resist them: ‘you cannot live in the house that you are / with everyone’.'  (Helen Charman)'The poems assembled in Mudchute survive the disciplinary function of close reading in demanding and often beautiful ways. They are resistant objects, made to be held in the mouth and turned until the edges of the terms are worn. Across the collection, this Winnicottian regress to 'barest idiom' encounters a forensic vocabulary for ‘all the mute sparkplugs of accreted / emotional and physical violence’ that imprint our lived environments, developmental experiences, and the muddied recesses of generational memory. Torqued between the nuclear family, the experiential group, and the enervated provision of state institutions, the daily work of care becomes at once ‘the poverty of administered / atomized / gapping’ and the intimate horizon of a ‘grazed / lip- / stirred in the face of group kindness.’ It is a horizon we have called communism and reparative reading and family abolition. In Betteridge's work, it is the minimum.' (Fred Carter)     This is part of a series of works organised by Robert Kiely for Veer2, produced and published jointly in the University of Surrey and the CPRC, Birkbeck College.

tom betteridge – mudchute

Veer2 Publication 034, December 2023 Softcover, 13x26cm, 44 pages £1 from the sale of each copy of this book will be donated to Palestine Action's legal defence funds www.palestineaction.org‘Picture a pencil curved, implausibly, parabolically. An implement bending back on itself (core straining) so as to be drawing the surest line, even as its eraser-end is simultaneously rubbing that graphite out. What remains almost never was: mark as memorial to foreclosure. Examined from a certain angle, the un-line flickers in and out of thereness. On registration, it lives, it goes forth. Sub rosa, it knows never to clear its throat. It has learnt to calibrate its signature; it can evade infra-red. Propelling itself through the narrowest channels, it proceeds with resolve, flayingly. Mattar’s And most of all I would miss the shadows of the tree’s own leaves cast upon its trunk by the orange streetlight in the sweet blue darks of spring is taut as writing can be. The tone she makes sound is singular and desperately (gloriously) intent.'- Sarah Hayden‘Piercing and lucid in its exposition of atmospheric violence and total erasure, Mira Mattar gets to the grain of how the languages of selfhood, mediated but also inhibited by the force of the ‘un-universal’, become complicit in forming the sovereign imperative to self-determination, ‘oh arrogant ambition / to transform / you & keep myself / plumed’, through the reproduction of a ‘contested field / of meaning’, one both marked by the lure and ruse of psychic stability as the real fantasy of occupation, and immanent to concrete, unknown modes of personal resistance and collective recovery thread like a ‘rope / in a knot in a line / of knots’, an inherited ‘excess of memory / mostly portal.’ Mattar carefully gleans in its undecidability, given over to moments of precarious decision without ties or duplicity.'- James GoodwinThis is part of a series of works organised by Robert Kiely for Veer2, produced and published jointly in the University of Surrey and the CPRC, Birkbeck College.

and most of all i would miss the shadows of the tree's own leaves cast upon its trunk by the orange streetlight in the sweet blue darks of spring – mira mattar

paper 7.25 × 9.75 in.364 pages, over 100 color and 100 bw978-1-938221-20-0Siglio press, 2018There are few art-world figures as influential—and as little known—as Dick Higgins (1938–1998), co-founder of Fluxus, “polyartist,” poet, scholar, theorist, composer, performer and, not least, the publisher of the Something Else Press. In 1965 he restored the term “intermedia” to the English language, giving it new dimension to recognize the dissolution of boundaries, the expansion of liminal spaces between traditional modes of art making, and the open field for new forms that cannot be compartmentalized. His own contributions to intermedia are many—as a participant and instigator of Happenings, as writer and composer straddling traditional and vanguard forms, among others—but it was the Something Else Press (1963–1974) that redefined how “the book” could inhabit that energized, in-between space. Something Else Press was as much a critical statement and radical experiment as it was a collection of books by some of the most luminary artists and writers of the twentieth century: Gertrude Stein, John Cage, Ray Johnson, Dieter Roth, Bern Porter, Emmett Williams, Robert Filliou, George Brecht, among many others. Along with his Great Bear pamphlet series and the Something Else Press newsletter, Higgins exploited and subverted conventional book production and marketing strategies to get unconventional and avant-garde works into the hands of new and often unsuspecting readers. Edited by Granary Books publisher Steve Clay and Fluxus artist Ken Friedman, this judiciously curated and indispensable compendium of essays, theoretical writings and narrative prose by Higgins dives deep into the ever-influential ideas that he explored in theory and practice. (It also includes a substantial, highly illustrated Something Else Press checklist including Higgins’ jacket and catalog copy about the books he published.) Clay and Friedman have chosen works that illuminate his voracious intellectual appetite, encyclopedic body of knowledge, and playful yet rigorous experimentation in a selection that includes many writings long out-of-print or difficult to find.

selected writings by dick higgins – intermedia, fluxus and the something else press

Sofcover, 384pp, 2nd edition, 100 copy run Aum Fidelity/ Centering, New York, 2025 6 x 9", 384 pg, perfect-bound, 2nd edition, 2nd printing of 100 copies, April 2025William Parker's Observations presents the most expansive overview of his prolific, diverse, and illuminating writings yet. Drawn from over a 50+ year span (1967-2023), it collects an array of works that include liner notes, remembrances, essays, lyrics, concert programs, book forewords, plays, & transcriptions of recitations. Nearly 400 pages & over 100,000 words, it includes many pieces not previously published or anthologized. In its pages, one can trace the evolution & refinement of core philosophies that Parker came to conceive & embrace from first immersing himself in music, film, poetry, art, & grassroots movements. Liner notes often go far beyond descriptions of the music, providing an outlet to present the broader foundations of his art, visions for a better world, & evocative tales about old friends & colleagues, many of whom are unlikely to be documented in "official" history books. Observations is published on Parker's Centering imprint. The first edition of 50 copies was sold at the 2024 Vision Festival. This second edition, first print run of 100 copies (February 2025), adds a foreword by the late Dr. E. Pelikan Chalto, aka Carl Lombard, an important early influence on WP, who has described him as "a shaman, teacher, painter, poet, & musician ... one of the heaviest spirits on the scene."   William Parker was born in the Bronx, NY, in 1952. At a young age, he realized that art & community would guide his life's path. This led him to move to the Lower East Side of New York City, where he has lived since the early 1970s. Inspirations for his work include peace, compassion, self-determination, nature, freedom, music of Indigenous peoples, and the relationships between improvisation, composition, sound, & silence. These themes & others converge in his concept of Universal Tonality, which he explores as a musician, poet, visual artist, philosopher, historian, organizer, educator, & activist.

William Parker – Observations: Selected Works 1967 - 2023

Softcover, 335pp Wolke Verlag/ MusikTexte, Cologne, 2025Sven-Åke Johansson defies categorization. Oscillating between Free Music, Swing Jazz, composition, performance, music theater, vocal art, and visual experimentation, his work inhabits a space where genres dissolve and new forms emerge. This book is the most comprehensive collection of Johansson’s compositions, realized and unrealized concepts, alongside his distinctive drawings, sketches, and textual explorations. Just as his music shifts fluidly between acoustic ready-mades, bruitism, solo works, free ensembles, jazz combos, and theatrical experiments, his writing resists fixed identities. Texts explaining compositions double as poetic structures, aphorisms transform into song lyrics, and vocal declamations spill from Instant Composing into the realm of literature. Rather than imposing a historical framework, this book presents a vivid collage of materials, arranged in thematic constellations that reflect Johansson’s own artistic logic. At once an artist’s book and a curated volume, it offers deep insight into his creative practice. A series of interviews further illuminates his singular way of thinking and speaking, providing multiple entry points into the world of one of the most unclassifiable figures in contemporary music and art. Thomas Groetz and Bastian Zimmermann prepared the materials for this volume. Translated by Daniel Ryan Albertson.

Sven-Åke Johansson – Dynamic Vibrations - Played with Hands and Feet

Jean-Christophe Thomas (born 1959), trained at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMP) electroacoustic composition class, is research associate at the Ina-GRM with François Delalande (perceptive analysis in music), in particular in charge of studying approaches in composition. His musicological studies concern acousmatic repertoire. Maison ONA, September 2024 bilingual edition (English / French) Softcover, 184 ppJean-Christophe Thomas analyzes François Bayle's complete work in 52 recurring features (book augmented with 151 sound examples to download). Diabolus in musica offers a guided and commented listening experience through François Bayle's catalog. Augmented with 151 sound files (examples), it can be approached in a non-linear way, through the listening or the concept it illustrates. The 52 thematics are characteristic traits or recurrences in the way he creates, conceives or organizes his materials—making his art unique. One of the major contributors to acousmatic music, François Bayle (born 1932 in Tamatave, Madagascar) strives to promote the GRM and its values, as well as pursuing the development of the acousmonium, a multi-speaker apparatus designed for the performative projection of sounds. As far as his music is concerned, he is known for his vast compositional cycles whose style unites articulation and fluidity, color, and energetic creation.François Bayle studied with Stockhausen and Messiaen. He joined the ORTF Groupe de Musique Concrète in 1960. He later led the group when it became the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1966. Most of his compositions are electronic, and his first important work, "Espaces inhabitables" (1967) is suggestive of an imaginary world in which nature is distorted in a dream-like fashion. He later utilized natural and synthetic sounds in his compositions, such as the recorded sounds made in a Lebanese cave. He has stated that his purpose as a composer is to enable the listener to feel the motion and vibration of energy in the universe.

Jean-Christophe Thomas – François Bayle: Diabolus in Musica – 2008-2024

Edited by Stephen Barber.Introduction by Ros Murray.Translated from the French by Clayton Eshleman.   Diaphenes, November 2021 bilingual edition (English / French) softcover, 128ppThe translated transcripts of two radio broadcasts by Artaud: To have done with the judgement of god (1947-48) and Madness and Black Magic (1946). Correspondences from that period are also included. In the last two years of his life, following his release from the Rodez asylum, Antonin Artaud decided he wanted his new work to connect with a vast public audience, and chose to record radio broadcasts in order to carry through that aim. That determination led him to his most experimental and incendiary project, To have done with the judgement of god, 1947-48, in which he attempted to create a new language of texts, screams, and cacophonies: a language designed to be heard by millions, aimed, as Artaud said, for “road-menders”. In the broadcast, he interrogated corporeality and introduced the idea of the “body without organs”, crucial to the later work of Deleuze and Guattari. The broadcast, commissioned by the French national radio station, was banned shortly before its planned transmission, to Artaud's fury.This volume collects all of the texts for To have done with the judgement of god, together with several of the letters Artaud wrote to friends and enemies in the short period between his work's censorship and his death. Also included is the text of an earlier broadcast from 1946, Madness and Black Magic, written as a manifesto prefiguring his subsequent broadcast. Clayton Eshleman's extraordinary translations of the broadcasts activate these works in their extreme provocation.

Antonin Artaud – Radio Works – 1946-48