Edited by Lawrence Kumpf with Joe Bucciero and Mark Harwood. Contributors include Henning Christiansen, Thomas Groetz, Diedrich Diederichsen, Dick Higgins, Lars Morell, Per Kirkeby, Bjørn Nørgaard, Helmer Nørgaard, Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen, Anton Lukoszevieze, Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Michael Glasmeier, Ute Wasser- mann, Stíne Janvin Motland, Mark Harwood, Lucy Railton, Graham Lambkin, Áine O’Dwyer, Lia Mazzari, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Francesco Conz, and Emily Harvey.  The third issue of Blank Forms’ journal is released in conjunction with Freedom is Around the Corner, a retrospective exhibition and performance series devoted to the work of pioneering Danish composer and artist Henning Christiansen (1932–2008). Perhaps best known for his collaborations and artistic affinities with notable artists such as Joseph Beuys and Fluxus members like Nam June Paik and Dick Higgins, Christiansen, who worked primarily on the remote Danish island of Møn, moved beyond his Fluxus roots to create a vast, often ineffable body of work that spanned music, performance, film, and visual art over the course of a fifty-year career. Yet Christiansen’s work has remained under the radar, even in the ten years following his death: only a few of his recordings were available until recently, and his prolific compositional and visual outputs have rarely been performed or exhibited in the United States. Freedom is Around the Corner—the exhibition, the performance series, and the journal—seek to present Christiansen’s life and work in a holistic manner that befits his dynamic practice. Like previous issues of the Blank Forms journal, Freedom is Around the Corner collects a combination of newly discovered, never-before published, and newly translated materials; in this case, many of the materials were found in the Henning Christian- sen Archive during the exhibition’s curatorial process. The issue begins with the first of four newly translated interviews with Christiansen himself, conducted circa 2006 by the German writer Thomas Groetz. Two others, conducted by Francesco Conz and Michael Glasmeier in the 1990s, come later in the issue; together these three interviews, which had only existed as audio recordings before, offer a well-rounded picture of the late-career Christiansen through his own, good-humored lens. The fourth interview, a more experimental text conducted by Helmer Nørgaard, was originally published in Danish in the magazine DMT, in a 1986/87 issue devoted to Christiansen. In this issue we’ve created a translated facsimile of that DMT issue, which also featured texts on Christiansen by his prominent Danish collaborators, the writer Lars Morell and the artists Per Kirkeby and Bjørn Nørgaard. We hear from other Christiansen collaborators through correspondence—including in transcribed letters from Emily Harvey and Dick Higgins, whose messages to and from Christiansen were recently discovered in the Archive—and through interviews, including newly conducted interviews with his wife and longtime collaborator, Ursula Reuter Christiansen; Bjorn Nørgaard, who spoke with Christiansen’s son Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen; and later musical collaborators Werner Durand and Ute Wassermann. Except Nørgaard, these collaborators will all speak or perform as part of the Freedom is Around the Corner programming; a section of this issue features many of the other performers as well, younger artists who have grappled with Christiansen’s legacy. Represented through interviews (Lucy Railton), original artworks (Graham Lambkin, Áine O’Dwyer, Stíne Janvin), and essays (Mark Harwood, Anton Lukoszevieze of Apartment House), these artists demonstrate the lasting and diverse impact of Christian- sen’s work on today’s musical landscape. Lukoszevieze’s essay introduces a newly translated libretto for Dejligt vejr i dag, n’est-ce pas, Ibsen, a 1964 opera with music by Christiansen and libretto by Hans-Jørgen Nielsen which Apartment House, commissioned by Blank Forms, will perform twice during the run of the exhibition. Taken together—and even more, in conjunction with the exhibition and performances—the texts in this journal provide an in-depth look, previously unavailable, especially in the United States, at a towering but overlooked figure in the postwar musical as well as artistic avant-garde. Support for Freedom is Around the Corner comes from the Nordic Culture Point, the Nordic Culture Fund, Snyk, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Royal Norwegian Consulate, Goethe-Institut, the Danish Consulate General, Music Norway, and Ultima Contempo- rary Music Festival.

Published by Rab-Rab Press. 210x140mm, 64 pages, Brown and white offset printed throughout, Perfect bound, Ed. of 600, 2019.“Marx in the Woods presents the first English translation of Jacques Rancière’s early philosophical text “The Dialectic of Reason and Private Interest”, originally published in 1963. Written under the influence of Louis Althusser, the text is discussing the forms of law in Karl Marx’s writings on the “debates on the law on thefts of wood”. As a break from the idealist philosophy, Marx’s writings on thefts of wood is considered to be a turning point in the history of communist theory.In his text, Rancière does not only discuss the complex structure of Marx’s early concepts, but he does this by such ‘wild formalism’ that opens the communist horizon towards unfamiliar realms.Defending this approach still today, Rancière in the new introduction written to the book gives also some clues about his difficult relationship with Althusser.The book is translated by Jussi Pamussari, who also wrote an afterword where he discusses the way Rancière subjects time and history to a certain formalisation through spatiality.”

Published: Infinity Land Press Second edition of 100 copies - Book + CD Softbound with flaps 238 pages // 103 illustrations 148 x180mm ISBN 978-0-9927366-8-2Hector Meinhof has written a book that is both beautiful and cruel. His poetic prose and the doom-laden pictures from his extensive collection of vintage photographs have bled into one tortured, corporeal unity. All these pictures have played a significant part in the writing of Three Nails, Four Wounds. Meinhof has used a tableau of chosen images to keep the narrative flowing, each chapter being concentrated around a specific set of photographs. This is the illustrated scripture for the new dark ages, it will be read and beheld again and again - Martin BladhOn the outskirts of a small town, on top of the mound called Wolf Hill, lay the insane asylum. It was a neo-gothic edifice made of brick, with long winding corridors and a hundred and eleven rooms: sterile rooms, electric rooms, padded rooms, interrogation rooms with one-way mirrors, a kitchen, a large dining room and a photographic studio in the attic.In conjunction with the asylum there was a small chapel, a mortuary, staff quarters and a barn. Behind the barn, beside a forest of spruce and fur, the patients’ cemetery stretched itself across the north side of the mound. It was as though the area had been struck by a peculiar curse. Strange incidents kept occurring, acts of insanity, abuse of animals, unexplained disappearances.

Paperback,144 pages Published 2020 by Book Works ISBN13: 9781912570058 Edition Language English Chalk, gorse, old coppice, redundant dew ponds, a crossroads formed by the intersection of a B road and an ancient fisherman’s track. It’s August. The rain shows no sign of stopping. Licorice, a reclusive middle-aged filmmaker, has only a brief window of opportunity to realise her long-cherished film project about the story of Nan Kemp. A grisly story of infanticide, cannibalism and rough justice remembered on the map: local kids have dared and scared each other to run round ‘the witch’s grave’ since way back when. The rebuilt windmill provides a hypothetical link between the time from which Nan’s ‘story’ springs and the present. For Angie, Licorice herself is something of a legend. Angie’s ex-lover Roy, sees Licorice as a bully and potential rival. Pete, co-directing the film, is consumed with unrequited lust for Angie… While Angie and Roy are definitively not speaking to each other, Pete and Licorice argue endlessly over how to shoot scenes and the direction the film is going to take. But Licorice has a secret only Pete knows. Well-worn tropes lifted from films such as The Mask of Satan, The Blair Witch Project and Irma Vep give this narrative about failing to create a narrative its shape. The idea of folk horror intrigues Licorice. As events spiral out of control, and growing mistrust and exhaustion take their toll on all four filmmakers, the horror tropes they’re working with contextualise an immediate, inescapable sense of unease. Bridget Penney is a writer based in Brighton. Her previous books are Honeymoon with Death and Other Stories (1991), and Index, published by Book Works (2008, 2nd edition, 2015) as the opening entry in the Semina series of experimental novels, guest edited by Stewart Home. Her stories and non-fiction have appeared in magazines and online.

Book Works (2017, Fourth Edition, 2020)Softcover, 164pp113 x 179mmThe quieter you become, the more you are able to hear – Lao TzuDrawing together communiqués, covert interviews, oral and underground history of introvert struggles (Introfada), here for the first time is a detailed documentation of the political demands of shy people.Radicalised against the imperial domination of globalised PR projectionism, extrovert poise and loudness, the Shy Radicals and their guerrilla wing the Shy Underground are a vanguard movement intent on trans-rupting consensus extrovert-supremacist politics and assertiveness culture of the twenty first century. The movement aims to establish an independent homeland – Aspergistan, a utopian state for introverted people, run according to Shyria Law and underpinned by Pan-Shyist ideology, protecting the rights of the oppressed quiet and shy people.Shy Radicals are the Black Panther Party of the introvert class, and this anti-systemic manifesto is a quiet and thoughtful polemic, a satire that uses anti-colonial theory to build a critique of dominant culture and the rising tide of Islamophobia.

Published: Atlas Press, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-900565-73-8, Pages:274pp Type: hardback with decorated endpapers, illustrated in colour and b+w.German translation by Malcolm Green, introduced by Alastair Brotchie and Malcolm Green. “Since my first reading I have been convinced that An Anecdoted Topography of Chanceis one of the great books of the century, a comic masterpiece that touches significantly on many areas of human thought. It is a maquette for a realisation of the dream that human intelligence might take any fragment of the world and reconstruct the universe from the evidence it provides.” — Richard Hamilton inThe Spectator An Anecdoted Topography of Chance is now acknowledged as the most important, and most entertaining “Artists’ Book” of the post-war period, and this edition is the definitive appearance of a unique collaborative work by four artists associated with various avant-garde art movements, including Fluxus and Nouveau Réalisme. What is theTopography? Hard to explain an idea so simple yet so brilliantly executed. Following a rambling conversation with his dear friend Robert Filliou, Daniel Spoerri one day mapped the objects lying at random on a table in his room, adding a rigorously scientific description of each. These objects subsequently evoked associations, memories, anecdotes, not only from the original author, but from his friends as well: a beguiling creation was born, and each time a new edition of the book appeared it grew larger and more elaborate. Many of the principal participants in Fluxus make an appearance, and texts by Higgins, Jouffroy, Kaprow, Restany and Tinguely are included, among others. It is a novel of digressions in the manner of Tristram Shandy, an archaeological game, a poem to the arbitrary, an encyclopaedia, a cabinet of wonders, but above all else, it is a celebration of friendship and creativity. The Topography both personifies and pre-dates the spirit of the Fluxus movement, and constitutes one of the strangest and most compelling insights into the artist’s life. From out of the banal detritus of the everyday a virtual autobiography emerges: of four perceptive, eloquent and engaging members of the human species.

Published: Atlas Press, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-900565-43-9 Pages: 176pp Type: hardback with decorated endpapers, illustrated in b+w.Introduction by Dawn Ades and commentaries by Dawn Ades & Alastair Brotchie, translated by Chris Allen. The story of the triangular relationship between Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood in New York in 1917 is here related through various texts.The main one being the first English translation of Roché’s “novel” Victor, an account of his friendship with Duchamp (nicknamed Victor by his close friends at that time). Although unfinished, Roché’s text offers a unique first-hand account of New York Dada, all of whose principal characters and events duly make an appearance: Francis Picabia, Arthur Cravan, the Arensbergs and theirsoirées, the Blind Man’s Ball and the scandal of Duchamp’sFountainand its rejection from the Independents exhibition, a pivotal moment in modern art. There are also interesting insights into the sexual politics of the period, when a woman could be arrested, or blackmailed, for spending the night with a man to whom she was not married. Victor is followed by a complete facsimile of the Dada magazine produced by these three:The Blind Man, the second issue of which was devoted to the controversy surrounding theFountain. Beatrice Wood’s account of these events follows, taken from her memoirs. Marcel Duchamp needs little introduction, being one of the most influential artists of the last century. Roché, a lifelong friend of his, appears to have been something of a devotee of triangular relationships; he wrote a rather more famous autobiographical novel on the topic, Jules et Jim, which became an emblematic film by François Truffaut. Wood went on to become a celebrated ceramicist, dying in 1998, aged 105.

Published: Bookworks 128 p, ills colour & bw, 13 x 24 cm, pb, EnglishRecalling the short-lived Bureau de Recherches Surréalistesof 1924−1925 − part information centre and ‘public relations’ office, and part surrealist archive − Mark Dion has trawled the Manchester Museum’s own collections and found the raw material for this book and a new installation in the museum. Museums’ attempts to classify and present the world in miniature inevitably mean that much of their collections are forgotten and marginalized. Renowned for his work exploring taxonomy, archaeology and ecology, Mark Dion, in his Bureau documents his opportunistic encounters with the Museum of Manchester’s neglected drawers and overlooked recesses that are home to redundant labels, orphaned mounts, defunct teaching models, botanical freaks, Egyptian fakes and the minutiae that have fallen through the cracks of museum practice and lain abandoned. Dion’s Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy is both a repository for the detritus of museum life and a working process, classifying the museum’s un-classifiable whilst exploring the bureaucratic workings of the institution. Essays by Anna Dezeuze, Julia Kelly and David Lomas Published as part of Book Works Opus Projects (Opus 4) by Book Works and The AHRB Research Centre for the Studies of Surrealism and its Legacies in association with Alchemy/The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester

PiblishedFaber & Faber ISBN 9780571232079 Published 03/05/2007 Format PaperbackFrom Morrissey and Nick Cave to The Streets and Kanye West, this is the book that explores the links between hip-hop and rock. Reynolds has focused on two strands: white alternative rock and black street music. He's identified the strange dance of white bohemian rock and black culture, how they come together at various points and then go their own way. Through interviews he has carried out as a top music journalist for the last twenty years Reynolds is here able to tell a story of musical rivalry which no-one has told before. The approach is similar to Rip It Up and Start Again: a cultural history told through the music we love and the stars and movements that have shaped the world we live in.

PublisherFaber & Faber ISBN 9780571353729 Published 07/11/2019 Format HardbackThe title of this collection of essays refers to a tailor's mannequin that Alfred Brendel spotted in a shop window in Arezzo, a small Tuscan town. Who is this strange lady? What is she looking at? And why is she carrying an egg on her head? The mannequin now graces a room in the attic of Brendel's house in Hampstead. Her features convey great artistic seriousness in combination with absurd comedy: the epitome of his own musical and literary preferences. And so, in his delightful new collection, great masters of nonsense meet great masters of music.

Perhaps Cuba’s most important intellectual of the twentieth century, Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980) was a novelist, a classically trained pianist and musicologist, a producer of avant-garde radio programming, and an influential theorist of politics and literature. Best known for his novels, Carpentier also collaborated with such luminaries as Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Georges Bataille, and Antonin Artaud. Born in Havana, he lived for many years in France and Venezuela but returned to Cuba after the 1959 revolution. ISBN 978-0-8166-3229-9 312 pages, 25 b&w; photos, 5 7/8 x 9, 2003Originally published in 1946 and never before available in an English translation, Music in Cuba is not only the best and most extensive study of Cuban musical history, it is a work of literature. Drawing on such primary documents as church circulars and musical scores, Carpentier encompasses European-style elite Cuban music as well as the popular rural Spanish folk and urban Afro-Cuban music. Music in Cuba sweeps panoramically from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. In a substantial introduction based on extensive original research, Timothy Brennan explores Carpentier’s career prior to the writing of his novels. Looking especially at Carpentier's work as a music reviewer, radio producer, and musical theorist, Brennan suggests new ways of thinking about the role of Latin American artists in Europe between the wars and about the central place of radio and music-club cultures in the European avant-gardes.

Published by Book Works in an edition of 1,500; soft cover with a dust jacket; 200pp; full colour throughout; 165mm × 235mm; designed by A Practice for Everyday Life.Gathering together interviews, essays, rare archival material and translations, The Tempest Society revisits and resuscitates the forgotten heritage of a politicised theatre group – ‘Al Assifa’ – that was born out of the struggles of the Mouvement des travailleurs arabes (MTA), Palestine, anti-colonialism, and workers’ and immigrant labour rights. Contributors explore the legacy of the group – placing this history in the context of the European economic crisis and its effect on Greece, contemporary migration and the conditions of immigrant workers and refugees. Conversations with the artist, and participants and collaborators in her film, consider the potential for politicised art to move between the street and the factory in cultural production today. Following The Tempest Society (2017), the original video installation commissioned for documenta 14, which took Athens as a site to reflect on radical equality, democracy and theatre as a civic space, the book brings to light the specific history, the archive, and the ongoing resonance of the agit-prop theatre group ‘Al-Assifa’ in the context of urgent economic, political and humanitarian upheaval. With contributions from Abdellali Hajjat, Hendrik Folkerts, Pothiti Hantzaroula, and interviews with Philippe Tancelin, surviving member of Al Assifa, Bouchra Khalili, Omar Berrada, and Alexandre Kauffmann, and Isavella Alopoudi, Elias Kiama Tzogonas, and Giannis Sotiriou, the performers in The Tempest Society. Bouchra Khalili is a Moroccan-French visual artist. Raised between Morocco and France, she studied Film at Sorbonne Nouvelle and Fine Arts at École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at MFA, Boston, Jeu de Paume, Paris and Sessession, Vienna. In 2018 she has been shortlisted for both the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize and the Artes Mundi Prize. She currently lives in Berlin.

440 pages Published: November 2003 ISBN: 9781859843680A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos There had always been music along the banks of the Congo River—lutes and drums, the myriad instruments handed down from ancestors. But when Joseph Kabasele and his African Jazz went chop for chop with O.K. Jazz and Bantous de la Capitale, music in Africa would never be the same. A sultry rumba washed in relentless waves across new nations springing up below the Sahara. The Western press would dub the sound soukous or rumba rock; most of Africa called in Congo music. Born in Kinshasa and Brazzaville at the end of World War II, Congon music matured as Africans fought to consolidate their hard-won independence. In addition to great musicians—Franco, Essous, Abeti, Tabu Ley, and youth bands like Zaiko Langa Langa—the cast of characters includes the conniving King Leopold II, the martyred Patrice Lumumba, corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, military strongman Denis Sassou Nguesso, heavyweight boxing champs George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, along with a Belgian baron and a clutch of enterprising Greek expatriates who pioneered the Congolese recording industry. Rumba on the River presents a snapshot of an era when the currents of tradition and modernization collided along the banks of the Congo. It is the story of twin capitals engulfed in political struggle and the vibrant new music that flowered amidst the ferment.

Published: May 1, 2012 ISBN-13 9780819571595 Language: English Pages: 304 Illustrations: 42 illus.In 1964, Bernard Stollman launched the independent record label ESP-Disk' in New York City to document the free jazz movement there. A bare-bones enterprise, ESP was in the right place at the right time, producing albums by artists like Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and Sun Ra, as well as folk-rock bands like the Fugs and Pearls Before Swine. But the label quickly ran into difficulties and, due to the politically subversive nature of some productions and sloppy business practices, it folded in 1974. Always in Trouble tells the story of ESP-Disk' through a multitude of voices--first Stollman's, as he recounts the improbable life of the label, and then the voices of many of the artists involved.

Compositions mixed and mastered by Ryan Streber and Ash Fure.Released: Sound AmericanGraphic design: Daniel Flodin and Jesper Canell.   published in December 2020 English edition 14 x 22 cm (hardcover, cloth binding) 54 pages (color & b/w ill.) + CD   ISBN : 978-1-7333339-2-4  This release comes as a beautiful art book with writing and documentation of Ash Fure's work as well as a digital download and CD. The first ever portrait album of Ash Fure's music, performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra, Rebekah Heller, Brandon Lopez, and Nate Wooley. Released as a limited edition hardcover book with a digital download code included, featuring documentation from Ash Fure's immersive performances, commentary by the composer, an interview with Nate Wooley (Sound American editor), and contributions from Zachary Woolfe (New York Times), Steve Smith (New Yorker), and others. Ash (Ashley) Fure's practice sits at the nexus of experimental music and experiential art. Described by the New Yorker as "staggeringly original" and "the most purely visceral music-theatre outing of the year," her full-bodied listening environments offer space for social reckoning through the political, poetic, and erotic multiplicities in sound.A finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Ash Fure also received a Lincoln Center Emerging Artists Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rome Prize in Music Composition, a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Prize, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant for Artists, a Fulbright Fellowship to France, a Kranichsteiner Musikpreis, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from Columbia University. Notable recent projects include Hive Rise: for Subs and Megas (2020), a migratory performance installation premiered at Berghain/CTM; Filament: for Trio, Orchestra, and Moving Voices (2018) commissioned by the New York Philharmonic; and The Force of Things (2017), an immersive installation opera that wrestles with the rising tide of eco-dread around us.Ash Fure holds a PhD in Music Composition from Harvard University and is an Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College.

Double A-Side comic from two of Scotland’s most innovative images and narrative makers, Rob Churm and Malcy Duff (Usurper). Black and white throughout and both with their own sense of approach to time, space and density. A very special project. Self-published A4, 60 pages, black and white printing with full colour cover, saddle stitched, 2021

Designed by Remake Design (who also created the now iconic Donald Judd: Writings book), this issue features words by or about Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Ornette Coleman, Nicole Kaack, Bradford Bailey, G. Lucas Crane, Jennie Gottschalk, Ambrose Akinmusire, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Margasak, Terry Riley, Kim Brandt, John Cage, Josh Sinton, Edgard Varése, Marc Hannaford, John Zorn, Matthew Mehlan, Million Tongues Festival, Alex Mincek, Lester St. Louis, Steve Lehman... A quarterly 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.Sun Ra (1914-1993) is an African-American experimental jazz pianist and composer. A prolific artist, he recorded over one-hundred albums with his band, the Sun Ra Arkestra. His work is imprinted with esoteric elements drawn from a personal cosmic philosophy that had a great influence on Afrofuturism.

Mayhem are the most influential Black Metal band in the world, and obviously no strangers to controversy. Death Archives offer never before seen photographs and unique insight into one of music’s most extreme subcultures.During the band’s ongoing career, now spanning thirty years, bass player and only surviving band member from the original line-up, Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud, has collected enormous amounts of photographs, video diaries and memorabilia. In this unique documentary book, Stubberud shares the first groundbreaking years of Mayhem’s existence including their first photo-sessions in full corpse regalia; recording sessions, and exclusive stills from live video footage of their earliest gigs. In Necrobutcher’s Death Archives he shares rarely seen photos of the band before death of singer Pelle “Dead” Ohlin and murder of guitarist Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth.Once Mayhem established their unique sound, The Norwegian Black Metal scene grew ferociously and globally finding common ground in violent imagery, horror iconography, fierce anti-Christian views, which ultimately led to over fifty church fires, among them the iconic Fantoft Stavkirke in Bergen. The violent nature of the music also led to the brutal murder of Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth in 1993 by Varg “Count Grishnak” Vikernes internationally known as Burzum.Today, Norwegian Black Metal is one of the most distinct and controversial subcultures in the music world, its popularity spanning globally from China to Mexico. The book is not only a documentation of a band – it is also a story about Norway, and a unique Norwegian subculture where a deep fascination for authentic Nordic culture and nature is deeply immersed.  Death Archives: Mayhem 1984-94 by Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud with Svein Strømmen & Christian Belgaux Published by Ecstatic Peace Library with afterword by Thurston MooreSoftcover, 2018256pp195 x 266 mm