This catalog was produced on the occasion of the exhibition Roscoe MitchellKeeper of the Code: Paintings 1963–2022January 20–March 11, 2023Corbett vs. Dempsey2156 West Fulton StreetChicago, IL 60612 Publication Editor: Katie CatoText: John Corbett, Roscoe MitchellDesign: Michael Dyer/RemakePhotography: Joseph Blough, Robert Chase Heishman, John Corbett, Bob Crawford, Wendy NelsonFirst printing, edition of 1000Printed on 100# Classic Crest Eggshell Solar White and 70# Starbright Smooth White Opaque TextRoscoe Mitchell (b. 1940) has been a leading figure in the performing arts for over 50 years. Keeper of the Code is the first solo exhibition to spotlight his work in the visual arts. Born and raised in Chicago, Mitchell formed the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble in 1966, featuring Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors. Three years later, adding Joseph Jarman, upon their departure to Paris for a two-year sojourn the group transformed into the collective interdisciplinary troupe called the Art Ensemble of Chicago. By that time Mitchell had already recorded the first LP of music affiliated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Sound (Delmark, 1966), and he had joined forces with St. Louis trumpeter Bowie for Numbers 1 & 2 (Nessa, 1967), which featured a painting by Mitchell on its cover. Indeed, Mitchell had been painting since 1963, and he continued on and off into the heyday of the Art Ensemble and through a hyperproductive sequence of decades of solo music, improvised encounters, and music for Mitchell-led ensembles.

584 pp. 2024.  Mark Lehmstedt (b. 1961) is a German publisher, editor and historian. Lehmstedt publishers focusing on cultural history was rewarded Best German Publisher in 2019 and 2020. Mark Lehmstedt teaches media history at the University of Leipzig mainly dealing with German book history from the 15th century to the present day. At the occasion of the 100th birthday of Art Tatum in 2009 he published the first biography of the pianist in German.For the first time this book in detail reconstructs the often blurred traces of the life of the Afro American piano virtuoso from Toledo, Ohio. Based on the stories of many contemporaries and fellow musicians and on countless reports in the daily press and jazz journals, a fascinating portrait emerges of a unique artist and the pulsating world of jazz of his time. Ever since his first appearance in New York City in 1932, Art Tatum has been regarded as the most important pianist in the history of jazz. His technique took the breath away even from concert pianists of the calibre of Horowitz, his touch was of unparalleled lightness and elegance, and his improvisations across the entire harmonic spectrum put him decades ahead of his time.

One of Dennis Cooper's favourite books of 2024 (no small feat) Hesse K. is a writer. Her criticism and poetry has appeared in MAP magazine and Montez Radio, and in anthologies by Sticky Fingers Publishing, Toothgrinder, Worms and Pilot Press, among others. She lives in London.  Pilot, July 2024 Paperback 248pp ISBN: 9781739364984One night a satellite falls out of the sky and splits a girl in half. Disquiet Drive is a book scraped together from the shorn parts of a person who may no longer exist. Beginning with an admission that language and embodiment seem indistinguishable, yet refusing to claim a singular voice, the texts in this collection lurch between the fiery crucible of a transition and the weird jaggedness of our own continuity; between inverted memoir and prose-poetry; the raw, irrepressible lyric and the essay as an exercise in the art of digging-one’s-heels-in. Disquiet Drive is about undoing the words we’re handed so that language can survive, and undoing the body so that it can find a way to live.

Filling a significant gap in contemporary cultural studies, Musical Elaborations examines the intersection of the public and private meaning of music. Incorporating the music criticism of Adorno, musical ideas from literary works by Proust, and criticism by Benjamin and de Man into his work, noted critic Edward W. Said discusses performers such as Glenn Gould, Arturo Toscanini, and Alfred Brendel and such composers as Beethoven, Wagner, and Strauss.   Born in Jerusalem in 1935, Edward W. Said was one of the world's most celebrated, outspoken, and influential public intellectuals until his death on September 24, 2003. He is the author of more than twenty books that have been translated into thirty-six languages, including Beginnings (1975); The Question of Palestine (1979); the internationally acclaimed Orientalism (1979); Covering Islam (1980); The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983); After the Last Sky (1986); Musical Elaborations (1991); Culture and Imperialism (1993); Out of Place: A Memoir (1999); Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (2001); Power, Politics, and Culture (2001); and Freud and the Non-European (2003). He began teaching at Columbia University in 1963 and became University Professor of English and Comparative Literature there in 1992. He was a past president of the Modern Language Association and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and the American Philosophical Society. Said was the recipient of numerous prizes and distinctions—including twenty honorary doctorates—and he was first U.S. citizen to receive the prestigious Sultan Owais Prize.

128pp, Karma Books, New York, 2024This volume is an intimate consideration of musician Kim Gordon’s brother’s life and art featuring personal photographs and pages from his journals. Following Keller Gordon’s death in 2023, his sister collected mementos including drawings, photos, poems and the diaries he kept at various stages of lucidity. Through Kim’s prose and Keller’s own words, Keller extends and destabilises the form of the biography, foregrounding the fragmented and the imperfect. Including a diaristic essay about their childhood, the complexities of family dynamics and the double-edged sword of creating and maintaining legends about those we love and admire. Designed to evoke the format of Keller’s diaries, this volume features facsimiles of his writings, offering insight into the complicated figure of Keller Gordon as well as his sister’s life.  Kim Gordon is an artist and cofounding member of the bands Sonic Youth and Body/Head, and the author of the memoir Girl in a Band.

Softcover, 42 pp AUM Fidelity, circa 2011Thorough surprise storage space find of this scarce book by William Parker. Text written in 1999 and self-published on WP's Centering imprint in a very small edition (we reasonably estimate not more than 200 copies) circa 2011. 42 pages filled with copious text. The form is a science fiction novella, though with so much science fiction becoming non-fiction in these rapidly ensuing years, William's brief introduction is best:"A word is a sound. On paper it is an image that is both Black and white and in color at the same time. The Mayor of Punkville is a tone poem about the future of yesterday. It speaks about the salvation of humanity through music." -William Parker.

2019 edition of Poems by Silver Jews'  David Berman: features variant dust-jacket artwork, variant full-color endpapers, enlarged typeface and a larger overall dimension (6” x 8”) to accompany the ever-expanding prose of David Berman. Previous Drag City hardcover edition of 500 was released on August 18, 2003. Original paperback edition released by Open City in 1999.

edited by Stephen Barber This volume is a collaborative translation by Paul Buck, Catherine Petit, Clayton Eshelman and David Rattray in its complete form in English for the first time with an introduction by John Zorn.  Softcover, 224pp Diaphenes, April 2024Drawings on texts and letters dating from 1946, some of them written while he was still confined at the Rodez psychiatric hospital, Artaud devoted the months of November 1946 to February 1947 to completing his book through a long series of vocal improvisations titled Interjections, dictated at his pavilion on the edge of Paris. He cursed the assassins he believed were on their way there to steal his semen, to make his brain go “up in smoke as under the action of one of those machines created to suck up filth from the floor,” and finally to erase him.

Hardcover, 14 x 14, 48 pp JRP Editions, 2024 Edited by the artist, Everything in the Universe is Unfinished combines never-before-published texts and invitation pieces written in 2016–18 with drawings from the Franklin Summer series Ono started in 1994. For Ono, words, artworks and books still have the power to change the world we live in for the better. Thus she continuously shares with us her vision and philosophy toward life—one that is made of pivotal experiences, unstoppable optimism and a love for the other. Coming after several volumes that have proved to be life companions for many, Everything in the Universe Is Unfinished reflects on her most recent feelings through a delicate interweaving of poems, aphorisms, short stories and drawings.

Softcover, 60pp, Risograph printed Old Hair Comix, Glasgow 2024Look Out! is a new anthology of graphic and narrative art from Glasgow (and her satellites). Old Hair Comix has been initiated as a holding cell in which to gather the work of mavrick artists that draw the non-idiomatic, psychedelic, folk, rap, techno, ambient, pop, free moods typically dispersed through an overlapping and undulating art/music scene. Often congealed into the form of posters, album art, t-shirts, pamphlets and phone ephemera their works are now available bound and portable for your pleasure. Sixty pages of colour risograph and digital printing by Sunday's Print Service, published by Old Hair Comix; a division of OLD HAIR CORPS.   Your Look Out! artists are: Marc Baines, Rob Churm, Jim Colquhoun, Malcy Duff, Aki Hassan, Jamie Johnson, Peter 'Suds' McKenna, Metaphrog, Julian Dicken, Hardeep Pandhal, Verity Pease, Mick Peter, Oliver Pitt, Sue Tompkins, Nat Walpole, Fritz Welch, Al White

Softcover, 12x19cm, 224pp Varamo Press, Brussels/Oslo, January 2025    After diagnosis, the fact was that Austin Gross lived in his home country. He sat on the porch squinting like a potato and it was a comforting thing to imagine: rock-climbing with a blindfold. ‘Can swim, eyes open,’ he jotted and covered his eyes again. Sun, centrifuge, prognosis, bird-listening. The collision shaped genres like tectonic ripples. Windows open, a story while forgetting. ‘I am a memory eater.’Aras was furloughed from prison that summer. Five years before, she’d missed their movie plan, and the fact was that since then, she lived in her home country. Furlough, Aras wrote, was ‘no-time.’ They investigated the situation together. Austin Gross is an essayist and collaborator in elliptical orbit. His home discipline is philosophy and language English, on one condition: having left home. Trans-disciplinarity gives us a chance to be hosts and guests.

Softcover A4, 140pp Sonduke Magazine, Kuwait 2024Kuwait-based SONDUKE Magazine, an independent digital platform for regional and global artists launched at Focal Point in 2024, their first printed publication and fifth issue, comprising a range of experimental artists and musicians from the SWANA region and beyond, provides a glimpse into the magazine’s creative process and inspirations.   SONDUKE (Arabic for crate, vault or safe) spotlights experimental and industrial art and sound. The ‘interiority’ signalled by the name SONDUKE evokes the formation of a counter space for art otherwise delineated as marginal. They support both under-represented and impactful artists, providing a platform to showcase their craft. In doing so, SONDUKE fosters creative and counter-cultural dialogue.

Hardback, 544pp   White Rabbit Press, March 2025Volcanic Tongue presents the first ever collection of multi-award-winning author David Keenan's music writings. Keenan has been writing about music since publishing his first fanzine, inspired by The Pastels and by Glasgow (and Airdrie's) DIY music scene, in 1988. Since then, he has written about music for Melody Maker, NME, Uncut, Mojo, The New York Times, Ugly Things, The Literary Review, The Social and, most consistently, The Wire. Volcanic Tongue was also the name of the record shop and mail order that Keenan ran with his partner, Heather Leigh, in Glasgow from 2005-2015.Volcanic Tongue features the best of his reviews, interviews and think pieces, with exclusive in-depth conversations between Keenan and Nick Cave, members of legendary industrial bands Coil and Throbbing Gristle, krautrock legends like Faust, Shirley Collins, the first lady of English folk, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, German auto-destructives Einstürzende Neubauten, as well as discographical analysis of the back catalogues of groups like Sonic Youth and musicians like John Fahey, extensive writings on free jazz and obsessive in-depth digs into favourites like Pere Ubu, Metal Box-era Public Image Ltd, Sun Ra, guitarist and vocalist John Martyn and many more. It is an essential addition to any music fan's bookshelf.This first collection of his legendary criticism functions as an extended love letter to the revolutionary music of the 20th century and the incredible culture that sustained it.

Paperback, 304pp Velocity Press, Nov 2024In July 2019, eleven years after Jay-Z became the first hip-hop artist to headline Glastonbury, Stormzy became the first English rapper to follow suit. Wearing a customised stab-proof vest designed by Banksy, the South London rapper delivered an explosive performance and finished by thanking the “legends for paving the way,” name-checking Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, and Giggs. Despite how unlikely it seemed for decades, UK rap was now firmly a part of pop music and the greater hip-hop canon. Rich, nuanced, and often misunderstood, the history of UK rap is a story of music that refused to stand still. Factoring in socioeconomics, gender, identity, music industry disruption, and innovation, What Do You Call It? charts the artform’s first four decades, beginning when rap landed on our island in the early 1980s. Shaped by sound system culture, inspired by punk, and accelerated by rave, it has evolved from Britcore, UK hip-hop, and trip-hop of the late twentieth century to garage, grime, and drill. Through cultural theory, historical research, and original interviews with key figures and collaborators in the UK rap scene, from pioneers like Malcolm McLaren, Soul II Soul, Tricky, Roots Manuva, and Roll Deep to modern artists like Dave, CASISDEAD, Little Simz, Loyle Carner, and Skengdo x AM, adds a rich human dimension to the UK rap story — one that helped change British music and culture forever.

A5, Sewnbound 20pp Hopscpotch Reading Room, Cutt Press, 2025, BerlinExplores the echoes across time and space that link Carla Grandi’s book of poetry “Contraproyecto” (1985/1987) & Meredith Monk’s film and album “Book of Days” (1988).The zine is a rare chance for English speakers to be introduced to Grandi’s work, with several poems translated from Spanish for the first time specially for the event.“In a time of increasing authoritarianism, misogyny, and lethal polarization, we revisit these works to learn strategies of mourning and political defiance.And to understand the appeal of medieval settings to capture repressive regimes and the subversive potentials of magic, myth, and madness. Conceived of at roughly the same time and yet under very different circumstances, both works interweave medieval storytelling and contemporary events to protest racial and political violence and to celebrate intellectual and physical survival. Carla Grandi wrote“Contraproyecto” as a personal and affective response to the everyday restrictions and heinous violence of Augusto Pinochet’s regime in Chile, which barred her and many other leftists from teaching and publishing. Written and produced in the late 1980s, in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, and affected by the uncertainties and injustices of the Cold War, Meredith Monk’s film “Book of Days” shifts between a fictional medieval town and contemporary footage from New York City. With a soundtrack composed by the avant-garde artist and composer, and voiced by herself and a twelve-voice ensemble, the film deserves to be listened to as much as to be seen.”

Edited by Marion Schmid and Emma Wilson Marion Schmid is Professor of French Literature and Film at the University of Edinburgh. Emma Wilson is Professor of French Literature and the Visual Arts at the University of Cambridge.   Paperback, 160pp Legenda, 2019  Chantal Akerman was one of the most significant directors of our times. A radical innovator of cinematic forms, she was at the forefront of feminist and women’s filmmaking. In the 1990s, she developed an important installation practice and began to experiment with self-writing. Focusing on Akerman’s works of the last two decades, a period during which she diversified her creative practice, this collection traces her artistic trajectory across different media. From her documentaries ‘bordering on fiction’ to her final installation, NOW, the volume elucidates the thematic and aesthetic concerns of the later works, placing particular emphasis on self-portraiture, the exploration of intimacy, and the treatment of trauma, memory and exile. It also attends to the aural and visual textures that underpin her art. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches as well as engaging more creatively with Akerman’s work, the essays provide a new optic for understanding this deeply personal, prescient oeuvre.

Hardback, 7.10(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.00(d), 280pp A24, December 2024     This book is jam-packed with over 100 kid - and adult - approved movie night recommendations that span decades, countries, and genres, with chapters for Preschoolers, Little Kids, Big Kids, and Tweens, featuring an introduction by Julian Shapiro-Barnum, host of Recess Therapy; an illustrated symbol system that flags age-inappropriate elements like scary characters or bad language; special sections dedicated to beloved genres and directors; fun activities and how-tos, including “How to Watch and Talk About Movies”; and a family film tracker to log your loves, likes, and mehs.

by Be Oakley Softcover, 110 x 185mm, 48 pp, Risograph Edition of 250 Genderfail, 2024Typography as Memorial - Seize Control of the FDA is an essay based on a typeset designed by Be Oakley. This font was made from the design of protest signs used during an important and historic event in queer liberation. By sourcing letters from the handwritten signs, the font looks to both historicize and reenact this important event in the ACT UP Timeline. This publication also features a reprinting of the first section of FDA Action Handbook. This handbook was created from the Seize Control of the FDA event, to demand that HIV and AIDS medication be fast approved and reprioritized. This is a powerful text on our relationship to medication during the early days of the AIDS pandemic. The handbook, as well as other historical documentation from the Act Up movement. The Introduction: WHY THE FDA? is an excerpt from The FDA Action Handbook by Jim Eigo, Mark Harrington, Margaret McCarthy, Stephen Spinella, Rick Sugden 9-12-88.