Indeed, the crisis is already behind us: Artists are fed up with making art, curators are fed up with producing artists, both prepare themselves to embark on the silk road to become editors in their own right. A book about artistic book-making after the book, NO-ISBN may come to the rescue. Partly concerned with the current hype around self-publishing practises, its main focus is on art
NO-ISBNat Multiple Art Days Exhibition: May 22 - 24, from 12 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Talk and Performance: May 24, 16:00
La Maison Rouge
10 Bd. de la Bastille, 75012 Paris
Indeed, the crisis is already behind us: Artists are fed up with making art, curators are fed up with producing artists, both prepare themselves to embark on the silk road to become editors in their own right. A book about artistic book-making after the book, NO-ISBN may come to the rescue.
Partly concerned with the current hype around self-publishing practises, its main focus is on art books and other self-released publications that are distributed outside of the reach of the ISBN indexation.
Ever since Cella called for such books at the New York Art Book Fair in 2009 and received more than 500 publications as a reaction, he was interested in taking a closer look at the phenomenon: Where do the authors come from and what aesthetic, social or political procedures are behind their decision to publish? Do they deliberately avoid the system of ISBN, or are the majority even disinterested in a public reception of their work?
Over the years, 2000 recent NO-ISBNs have been collected and investigated. Conceptual artist Bernhard Cella and his NO-ISBN research team from Vienna are glad to announce their participation in Multiple Art Days (MAD#1) 2015. Together with cultural scientist Agnes Blaha and media philosopher Leo Findeisen, Cella will reflect and perform on the topic of NO-ISBN.
From the table of contents:
…more real than art. The art of assembling * Register of the NO-ISBN collection * The downfall of the Gutenberg galaxy * Printed space as a legacy of conceptual art * Do you like Mexico? * The phenomenon of micro-edition: a silk road * Tackling tactility * Post-digital publishing * UbuWeb wants to be free * The political body beyond its limits * NO-ISBN as a political strategy * Gezilla vs. ISIStanbul * Print on Demand is Xerox for bound books * Surviving on books * On the state of free media in the year Snowden 02 * …more real than art. Archival strategies
The research Project NO-ISBN and the production of the publication were funded by the Austrian Research Agency FWF as part of the PEEK program.
Bernhard Cella is interested in the economic and sculptural framework in which artists’ books – highly informed objects in themselves – can be used as artistic materials. To this end, he conceptualized the ’Salon für Kunstbuch’, a life-size model of a bookshop, in his studio in Vienna. Since 2007, more than 10.000 artists' books have accumulated and entered into unfamiliar vicinities and dialogues. Buying and selling these objects become an integral part of an original artistic practice.
Salon für Kunstbuch
Mondscheingasse 11
A-1070 Vienna, Austria
In der Zeit von 21. bis 25. Mai ist der Salon geschlossen. Zwischen 26. und 29. Mai ist der Salon nur auf Anfrage geöffnet.
www.cella.at, www.neokuratin.com, http://collectingbooks.cella.at
http://www.multipleartdays.com/#exhibitors
NO-ISBN. On self-publishing
400 pages, ca. 380 illustrations.
Edited by Bernhard Cella, Leo Findeisen, Agnes Blaha
The book is published in both an English and a German edition.
Release date: June 2015